News

News

Dues Increase

The members at the January meeting voted to increase the dues to $10 from $6 to help defray some of the costs of the chapter. The National Organization also raised their dues from $16 to $20. They will continue to publish their publication ETE Express quarterly and costs for a quality publication continue to rise. The new fees have been reflected in the membership form found on this website - though ETE's main website does not reflect our newer dues. Please use our updated form for renewals and new memberships.

Name Change

Per the discussion at our annual business meeting in January, Don Gaw, Chapter President, requested from the ETE National Board of Directors permission to change the chapter’s name to more accurately reflect the area we recruit from. The name suggested was ETE Southern California (ETESoCal for short). The Board has responded and granted the name change.

We will change our website to reflect the new name shortly. SDETE.org will continue to be active for at least another year but ETESoCal.org will be our official home.

EuroWest 2006

From Cindy Gaw, SIG President, Aug 22, 2006:

First!!! Welcome to our new SIG members who joined us at EuroWest: Joe de Cordoba, Glenn Grandfield, and Robert Toole! Welcome and thanks for joining us. It will be super to have you active from within our group. Don and I will organize another module-building session to help you get started if you wish to be part of us in that way. Just let us know.

Thank you so much for a great EuroWest. We had such a large showing. With our general membership and family members, San Diego had over 20 people in attendance and 14 at the dinner! Looking at the San Francisco shirts, I think we may have even had more attendees than they did! Thank you for your participation. We definitely had the largest layout and were well received. I had a chance to talk with Peter Barnes, Steve Stern and Steve Imalek at length as well as some of the other SFO leaders and gathered lots of praise to share with you and, with my asking questions, some valuable information about a huge range of subjects including fundraising and layout issues.

This was a great turnout for our group - even over such a great distance. SIG members Don and Cindy Gaw, Erik Nilsen, Rick Anglin, Richard Coons, Chris and Tim Higgins, and Kevin Walker made it up for the setup. Joe de Cordoba joined us to help with the teardown. Thankfully, our layout is quick to pack since we had to be out of the museum in an hour and we did it! Thanks to Robert and Marcie Toole, Gerard Papa and his family, Ed Sehrt, Peter Ladouceur, and Glenn Grandfield for making the trip and joining us for EuroWest!

Our next big event is the Great Train Expo in San Diego (Del Mar) December 2 and 3. For those of you that couldn't see us at EuroWest, come see what we've done! Cindy Gaw put quite a bit of effort into Rick Anglin's modules to put the finishing touches as needed and got the catenary installed. Kevin Walker has his new rural module so our trains have even more room to run!

See you in Del Mar!