We meet several times per year and encourage those with an interest in model railroading to attend ourmeets and eventsat various venues in our area that reside in the counties of: Cayuga, Genesee, Livingston, Monroe, Ontario, Orleans, Seneca, Stuben, Wayne, Wyoming, and Yates as well as NMRA members from other divisions.
An NMRA Special Interest Group (SIG) is an independent, non-profit, membership group organized to provide a forum for the exchange and collection of railroad prototype and/or model railroad information about specific topics.
Before the 1930s, there were no common standards pertaining to model railroad equipment. One manufacturer's equipment would not necessarily work with another manufacturer's or even run on someone else's track. Many modelers built to their own standard or from their own designs and ideas. In many cases it was difficult, if not impossible, to take your cars or locomotives to another modeler's railroad and expect them to run without problems. There were nearly as many couplers as there were manufacturers. This situation could only work to the detriment of the hobby as a whole.
The NMRA came into being in 1935 with a gathering of model railroaders, manufacturer's, and publishers, in response to the need to bring order out of chaos. The NMRA Standards were developed as a way to help insure that equipment could be interchanged between one model railroad and another and that cars and locomotives of one manufacturer could run on the track of another manufacturer together with cars and equipment of still other manufacturers and modelers.
Since 1936, many of these basic Standards have remained virtually unchanged from the time of their original publication. They have been added to and refined, but they have stood the test of time and have proven to have been of great benefit to the hobby of model railroading and have contributed greatly to allowing the hobby to develop to the point where it is today.