New IBLS Secretary, North American Region

[dnevil]

Dear Fellow Live Steamers,

As you may know, Kenneth V. Shattock passed away 6 May 2017. He served as the Secretary of the North American Region of the International Brotherhood of Live Steamers until his death. We mourn his passing, and will miss his insight and passion for the Live Steam hobby.

Ken did not appoint a replacement for the position he leaves vacant. I know Ken would not want to see the IBLS dissolve. In fact, it was under his leadership that the IBLS was resurrected and is still a viable organization today. I was privileged to work under Ken's tutelage while we built the IBLS website.

For these reasons I have decided to step forward and serve as the Secretary of the North American Region of the IBLS. I did not make this decision lightly. I counseled with Bob Hornsby and Keith Taylor, both former IBLS Secretaries, and they endorse this decision. Keith wrote the following note:

To my fellow Live Steamers in North America;

My friend Daris Nevil has volunteered to assume the mantle of "Secretary, North American Region" after the passing of Kenneth Shattock. I am happy to see the traditions of the Brotherhood of Live Steamers will continue into the future in Daris' most capable hands. He has already invested countless hours into creating a web site filled with invaluable information and history. Please visit the web site and offer contributions that will allow all Live Steamers to share in your hobby.

Best regards, Keith Taylor former IBLS East Coast Secretary

Bob Hornsby wrote:

I am endorsing Daris Nevil; I was former IBLS Secretary for the Eastern United States for 20 years. I took over from Barney Barnfather when he passed away in 1978. I turned my position over to Keith Taylor when I moved from New England to Texas in 1998.

I pledge to you that I will do my best to promote the Live Steam hobby though the IBLS. I look forward to meeting those of you I don't know. I'd very much like to hear from you.


Happy steaming!


Daris A Nevil

[wa6mdi]

Hi Daris,

I knew Ken from my time in the Bay Area and I'm sure he would approve. Outstanding move and you have my full approval. Thank You

Dick Melcher

[NP317]

Daris:
Thank you for taking the mantel from Ken S. IBLS is valuable and needs to continue.
Much appreciated.
~RN

[Pat Fahey]

Hi Daris
Glad to see you step in , somebody has to do it, Good Luck Pat Fahey WLS

[Kimball McGinley]

That is terrific Daris! My IBLS card was signed by Dwight Durkee around 1983 I think?

PS - Please check PM's

Kimball

[Builder01]

What are the benefits of being a "member"?

David

[Glenn Brooks]

Hi Daris,

Many thanks for stepping up after Ken passed. I enjoyed corresponding with Ken as he was always ready and interested in sharing his wealth of knowledge - indeed he was an eye witness in many ways to the early days of the live steaming hobby. I know you have already followed in his footsteps online!

So as you are stepping into the leadership role for IBLS, I would like to recommend an important initiative I've always thought IBLS should take the lead - offering an insurance pool for member's backyard railroads.

As you may know, the cost of liability insurance for live steam railroading can be a real barrier to participating in the hobby. IBLS is about the only organization in the world that could coordinate and offer a member based insurance pool to provide liability coverage for hobby railroads.

My past experience with insurance pools is that they succeed by spreading risk amongst large groups of participants; and they keep costs low by establishing and communicating peer reviewed best operating and safety practices. As a result, individual members enjoy much lower annual premiums for excellent insurance coverage, and often are the only way individual participants can afford to buy coverage. Underwriters benefit from the combined professional expertise of the membership group, hence are encouraged to write policies that endorse the organization's collective operating and equipment expertise, and incorporate member knowledge of safe operating practices. So in many ways, IBLS liability coverage for members would be a win-win situation.

Insurance pools are common and popular in other sectors, both hobby and commercial venues - for example: go karting, youth sports, and small family entertainment centers come to mind.

Clearly an IBLS insurance pool could include both privately owned backyard railroads and club tracts. And include all hobby scales and gauges larger than tabletop modeling and smaller than FRA inspected 24" ga operations. For example, I am personally concerned with liability insurance for private, Grand Scale backyard railroads in 12" gauge. However, there are nearly as many hobby gauge railroads (in English and Metric!) as there are whole numbers between 1 and 600. So any insurance plan could and should include all the various live steam gauges and scales commonly found in backyard and Club tracks.

Anyway, I hope you will consider adopting this aspect as a benefit of IBLS membership as we all go forward in sustaining the hobby. I believe such a program could have as significant impact on the future of the hobby as was the effort to establish standard gauges and wheel dimensions 75 years ago.

Best Regards,

Glenn Brooks

[Atkinson_Railroad]

David’s question related to benefits of membership is a valid one. (What’s in it for him, or anyone?)

Learning about the original thinking behind the formation of the International Brotherhood of Live Steamers should be rekindled first.

http://ibls.org/mediawiki/index.php?tit ... t_the_IBLS

The whole insurance “thang” Glenn is eluding to has been discussed over and over through so many passing generations related to this activity.
If it’s an important aspect to how he views and participates in the hobby, he should toss it out here again for a re-hashed discussion on its own thread. Authentic published statistics related to deaths and injuries related to participation in the outdoor miniature railroading activity would
be helpful. If someone has valid URLs to the info, please post it.

One’s dog is a bigger liability to the railroading enthusiast than their hobby related railroad operation.

To stay on the thread topic:

Daris, your devotion to the hobby in this age of Internet is “Super Scale”.

I too, am behind your passion to keep the IBLS alive.

John D. Atkinson

[Builder01]

Hi John,

Yes, I did see that the original intent of the IBLS was to put like minded folks in touch with each other. Is this still done? How is it done? Is this "service" different or better than what the internet offers? Many folks have been able to contact each other because of the internet, near and far. The internet has made the world much smaller than it was in 1932.

The internet allowed me to find a club close enough to drive to and connect with the people there. I have now built an operational steam locomotive. This would not have been possible without the internet. I live in Pennsylvania, some of the modifications I made to my loco were suggested to me by a fellow in England.

Currently, the IBLS, from my stand point, looks like it is a wealth of information all posted to an internet website. This is an extremely valuable resource that I am certainly in favor of preserving. But, "membership", I'm not sure what that would do for me unless there is something only available to members.

David

[Atkinson_Railroad]

Totally agree with you David. All of this discussion has taken place before.

Everyone is perplexed in how to deal with the information that's presented to us everyday.
What's authentic? What's relevant? What's helpful?

No (one)... living human being... has ever had the capacity to absorb all relationships linking information available to them on any given subject matter of modern or ancient endeavor. So, we're all on our own.

Sort through the IBLS info and make up your own mind.

John

[dnevil]

I am grateful and humbled for the support you all have shown in this thread. I have received many hours of enjoyment (and quite an education!) while working with Ken Shattock and many others in building the IBLS Website. This is currently the main asset of the organization.

The IBLS was shut down around 2005 because it was felt that it no longer filled its function of getting live steamers together, as this is so easily done through email, text, etc. Because my email address is on the Website I field questions from live steamers, and point them in the right direction, most often to other individuals, so in this way the IBLS is fulfilling its original charter.

However, things changed in the 1970's when the IBLS Wheel Standard was published. This meant that a whole new era of service was taken on by the IBLS. Ken Shattock saw the worth of this service, and brought back the IBLS. I am attempting to keep that going, and I have some ideas for the future. One of the areas I'd like to tackle is a standard, or at least specifications, for couplers for various scales. Bob Hornsby wrote about this a couple of years ago in Live Steam & Outdoor Railroading.

Another need filled by the IBLS is recording the history of the hobby. I try to capture as much old, forgotten material as possible, and publish on the website. To accomplish this I am collecting as much printed material related to the hobby as I can get my hands on. Much of it is from the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's. Some of it goes to the first of the last century! So the IBLS now has a huge library available to members. A partial listing is available here:

http://ibls.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=IBLS_Library

Per David's question, the IBLS offers Library checkout privileges to members. And when you sign up you get a membership card and a patch!

Regarding the insurance pool. An insurance pool was attempted back in the late 1980's by Seymour Johnson. They called it "Mini-Rail Corporation". Here is more information about it:

http://ibls.org/mediawiki/index.php?tit ... orporation

Operating an insurance pool is outside the charter of the IBLS. However, such a pool might be beneficial to the live steam community. I encourage Glenn to continue pursuing this idea.

Finally, I invite and encourage you all to submit ideas and material that could be added to the IBLS website. A great example of this is an article put together by John D. Atkinson. We worked together by email on this project for a couple of weeks. You can see the result here:

http://ibls.org/mediawiki/index.php?tit ... n_Railroad

Happy steaming!

Daris Nevil

[NP317]

RE the value of the IBLS:
Several years ago I gave a 1-hour presentation to the Washington State Boiler Inspectors and Insurers organization, for their 50 anniversary. Their day-long meeting was at the Seattle Museum of Flight. Kitsap Live Steams was asked to give a presentation on "Hobby Boilers" to this group, and I was the lucky person so tasked.

Toward the end of this presentation, I provided a list of internet contacts pertinent to our hobby. The IBLS connection was discussed as the premier source of history and "standards" that we use. Not so much for boilers, as those rules vary by geographical location. But the inspectors were quite interested in the existence of the IBLS, and this added serious credit to their view of our hobby.
~RN