Alternative to the NMRA Master Model Railroader?

[Green_Elite_Cab]

But you have said it yourself - 'just by being on the internet'. That's the new starting point. The local paper, the yellow pages, even flyers at hobby shops are no longer the dominant media for natives. Many immigrants have learned the value of this source as well. I don't watch the news anymore - not that I spent a great deal of time watching it before the internet came along. But if I want information I'll read a news outlet online or go to a niche like a forum or newsgroup around that particular interest to learn more. I still read the Sunday paper but only a few pages deep before I work the Sudoku - and only because my wife takes the paper in order to get the coupons! hock:

I suppose, but i thought your point was that people are only occaisionally getting in touch, which is not the case. the face to face is still happening, its just that you read the flyer on a website instead of picking it up at a hobby shop.

If anything, i'd argue that the death of hobby shops at the hands of internet suppliers is doing more damage to the way modelers meet than they way people communicate with the internet. There are physically less places for fellow modelers to meet and congregate.

whats more, today's hectic lifestyles of constant movement does more to separate people than any preference for the impersonal anonymous environment of the internet. One of my good friends has to take a night job, so i don't see him down at the railroad club all that often, or at any other time for that matter. People don't have time to work on this stuff anymore, or at the very least they don't percieve they have the time. At the rate i'm going, its going to take me months to complete projects that used to take only a week or so when I had more time as a teenager.

While there may be other contemporary acheivement programs out there, the NMRA's was developed well before the internet came into being, if I recall. It's not a sign on and play a video game process either, but a longer process that should take a few years to acheive. Apples & oranges.

I wouldn't necessarily say game and model railroad achievements are apples and oranges either, I would actually say that they are almost the same apart from the fact that one is a physical thing that requires a little more sophistication and the other virtual. but i digress.

The main point is that the internet and digital media are not necessarily making an achievement program obsolete. Its all based on the willingness of us as model railroaders to participate in it or not. This decision is not based in digital media, but in the personal feelings of people.

I strongly suspect that for every "extroverted" model railroader of the "Pre-internet era", you'll have several more who probably just kept to themselves, happy with their basement empire, who never joined the NMRA and were never interested in achievement programs (rather, i suspect the NMRA attracted the types who saw value in such a program).

All the internet did was reveal the thoughts of people across the globe, extending our awareness beyond our immeadiate area and to people we would be otherwise unable to reach.

You're probably right that the hobby is going to be making big changes to take full advantage of these new connections, but i think achievements will have their place, and that those who want to play the model railroad achievement game will. There is no reason it cannot adapt to today's needs.