Mark your calendar. Jay Beckham is having an open house at his Berkeley Springs, WV,O scale, 2-rail layout on 12 December from 1 to 5 PM. A mask and physical distancing are required to visit his 60’ x 30’ layout, based on the Pennsylvania Railroad. The layout operates with NCE DCC and C/MRI CTC signaling.
Jay and his crew have done a lot of work this year. Find Jay online at jaysoscalelayout.blogspot.com and see more of the recent progress on his layout at the SMD Facebook page. If you plan to visit, private message Jay on Facebook with your name, scale you model, and city where you live. Or send an email to the SMD at southmountaindiv@gmail.com and we will put you in touch with Jay.
By Kurt Thompson, MMR, President, Mid-Eastern Region, NMRA, Inc.
November 10, 2020
My fellow Mid-Eastern Region members:
It is November and we are approaching the holiday season which is a time of happiness and celebration and gift-giving. Sadly, someone is practicing to be the Grinch and is trading on the good name of the Mid-Eastern Region and me, as your President.
The MER has been struck by a scamming artist. The person has taken all the email addresses on the MER website and then masquerading as me, asked almost all the MER staff and the Division Superintendents to buy gift cards in support of a charitable cause. The culprit makes it sound very convincing. So much so that several members have called me and others have emailed me to verify the email as spam.
I will not forward the email here. Suffice to say, the closing salutation is incorrect and doesn’t carry my usual ending. Also the reply email address is not my official email address at all. When in doubt, let your mouse hover over the email address and look at the actual return address. It should be president@mer-nmra.com. If it’s not from the email address, it is not from me!!!
As President of the MER, I will never ask you to purchase gift cards or donate money to a cause, other than your donation to the MER itself. The MER is a 501(c)3 organization which means we can accept donations and they can be treated as a tax benefit to the donor. The MER does not make donations outside the organization.
The MER will take measures to strengthen the security of information on the website.
If you ever receive an email purportedly from me as the President of the Mid-Eastern Region that asks you to purchase and mail gift cards, please stop and consider the nature of the request. It will be fraudulent. If you still question or feel that there may be some truth to the request in the email, feel free to call me on my cell phone which is listed on the MER webpage and in the NMRA Magazine.
If I don’t answer the phone call immediately, please leave me a message and DO NOT make any purchases based on the email. I will call you back within 24 hours. No purchase has to be made in haste that waiting 24 hours will cause the world to fail.
Wishing you a happy holiday season. May you and yours enjoy it.
THE 2021 NMRA MID-EASTERN REGION MODEL RAILROAD CONVENTION
The first monthly Mount Clare Junction newsletter has been released. Visit mtclarejct.com for more details and to sign up for future announcements.
The Mount Clare Junction team is interested in hearing from you. Click here to send us a message and let us know what you want to see and learn during the event.
I would like to invite you to the MER Annual Group Meeting. Due to the pandemic, this meeting will be held virtually. The meeting will begin at 7 PM, Saturday, October 10, 2020. It will be held using the Zoom meeting service.
Links to both the Annual Group Meeting and the MER Board of Directors meeting are listed below. The MER Board of Directors meeting will be held on Thursday, October 8th at 7 PM.
Also there is a general service note for you to follow to install and use Zoom. This document was prepared for you by our Webmaster, Jeff Burch.
If you are not familiar with using Zoom, please do not wait until meeting time to attempt to use and install it. Jeff and I will open the meeting up between 6:30 and 6:45 PM Saturday evening.
I look forward to having as many of you attend as possible. This time the meeting is available virtually which means you don’t have to leave home to attend.
Kurt Thompson, MMR
President, Mid-Eastern Region, NMRA, Inc.
Detailed instructions regarding the MER-NMRA Board of Directors Meeting, please read if you plan to attend virtually.http://mer-nmra.com/bod.html
Detailed instructions regarding the MER-NMRA Annual Group Meeting, please read if you plan to attend virtually.http://mer-nmra.com/agm.html
Due to the current Coronavirus pandemic there will not be a National Convention this year. Because of this the required NMRA 2020 Annual Meeting of members also cannot be held. A virtual meeting will be held as per the following reminder I received from Bob Weinheimer, MMR® the NMRA Regional Advisory Council (RAC) Director.
I encourage all that are interested to either participate or submit questions as directed below.
Region Presidents,
This is a reminder that the subject meeting will take place starting at 3 PM EDT Sunday September 13. This is the event required by Ohio law and normally conducted one evening at the national convention. As that wasn’t possible this year, this will be a virtual event.
To participate please send a note to John Stevens, Vice President for Administration at vpadmin@nmra.org by September 4. If you wish to submit a question to President Pete Magoun MMR® please send the question to Rick Coble, NMRA Secretary, at secy@nmra.org by September 4.
Please feel free to distribute this to members in your Region.
Mark your calendar. Jay Beckham is having an open house at his Berkeley Springs, WV, O scale, 2-rail layout on 12 December from 1 to 5 PM. A mask and physical distancing are required to visit his 60’ x 30’ layout, based on the Pennsylvania Railroad. The layout operates with NCE DCC and C/MRI CTC signaling.
Jay and his crew have done a lot of work this year. Find Jay online at jaysoscalelayout.blogspot.com and see more of the recent progress on his layout at the SMD Facebook page. If you plan to visit, private message Jay on Facebook with your name, scale you model, and city where you live. Or send an email to the SMD at southmountaindiv@gmail.com and we will put you in touch with Jay.
THE 2021 NMRA MID-EASTERN REGION MODEL RAILROAD CONVENTION
My fellow MER members: