Vancouver TraiNgang

The Vancouver TraiNgang is a modular n-gauge model railroad club based in the greater Vancouver area, in beautiful British Columbia, Canada.

Most modules are owned by members, who have varied interests in rolling stock, and trains of North American, European, British, and Japanese prototype may be seen rolling by on the layout. Our members are always ready to talk about "their" layout and club at shows and are readily identifiable at all events by their blue golf shirts, vests or caps complete with TraiNgang logo.

Club History

Back in the mid 1970's there was a group called Vancouver Area N Scalers (VANS) who constructed modules which were involved in one of the first N Scale track exhibits in the National Model Railroad Association (NMRA) convention in San Diego, California believed to be in 1974. The module was 8 feet long and still exists as part of a former members home layout.

They also participated in the 1977 NMRA convention in Denver, the 1979 NMRA convention in Calgary, and the 1981 NMRA convention in San Mateo.

Various members of the TraiNgang built a modular but not N-Trak, layout for the Burnaby Art Gallery Show in 1982. This layout which represented the CPR mainline from Vancouver to the Alberta foothills, including Mt.Stephen and the Spiral Tunnels, the Fraser Canyon, and the Vancouver waterfront (Canadian Pacific Railway Station, Dunsmuir Tunnel and Pier BC), was displayed at the NMRA convention in Winnipeg in 1983 and the Glenbow Museum in Calgary in 1983 and 1984, before returning to Vancouver.

Later in the mid 1980's a group of Vancouver N Scale Modeler's decided to develop an N Scale modular layout using the N-Trak standards. The first TraiNgang layout was well received at its public debut at the TRAINS Show at the Cameron Recreation Center in November of 1986. This layout had 4 foot corners, 3 integrated modules on one side and balanced by a 3 module yard. In the fall of 1987 the layout was on show at the Pacific National Exhibition for 14 days.

The TraiNgang layout was also regularly displayed in the lobby of the BC Rail Building in North Vancouver as part of the annual Port Canada display (no longer held).

There was also an N Scale module group in Victoria, BC. Their modules had the three tracks plus the mountain division, which provide a 4th mainline at a higher elevation.

Often Victoria N-Trak modules would be brought to Vancouver to be added to the TraiNgang layouts at the annual TRAINS Show in the Cameron Recreation Center, usually held over the Remembrance Day weekend. Over the years the TraiNgang has won many ribbons for individual modules and has several Best in Show awards.

Thanks to Bob Berbeck, we have these two images of some early TraiNgang N-trak modules, prior to the addition of the mountain division to the club standard.

On the web

In 2005 the club moved launched it's first dedicated web site, thanks to the capable efforts of member and webmaster, Tom Carr. Part of the final "old" home page is seen here...

This site drew many accolades, but early in 2009 it was decided to create a new website to replace the old. An informal subcommittee of members Tom Carr, Rob McKee and Patrick Schafli reviewed the current and possible future requirements of the club, and set out to build a new web site based on the Drupal content management framework.

We hope that our members and visitors enjoy the current site at least as much as they did the old one!

Here are screen shots of the awards won by our first web site!

Club Gear

All members are required to wear club shirts at all public functions, club jackets and vests are optional at the discretion of the member. The official club shirts are a royal blue (preferred) or black knitted, short sleeve, golf style shirt with a pocket on the left breast, the club logo is embroidered in gold thread above the pocket. The approximate cost is $26.00 per shirt, including taxes, oversizes slightly more.

The official supplier of TraiNgang shirts is Barrie Sansom, business manager of the British Columbia Society of Model Engineers (BCSME). To order your TraiNgang shirts please email Barrie directly at: sansomca2001_AT_yahoo.ca (Please replace _AT_ by @ before sending message).

Privacy Statement

The Vancouver TraiNgang respects the privacy of its' members and visitors. Our membership, e-mail and telephone lists are used only to contact individuals for club related purposes, they are not available for sale or distribution outside of our club.

The Vancouver TraiNgang reserves the right to publish names and/or photographs of our activities, events and meetings on our web site and in our newsletter for the sole purposes of publicizing ourselves and model railroading.

Copyright Notice

Unless otherwise stated all content - text, photographs, graphics and video - on this web site is copyrighted by The Vancouver TraiNgang. Member photographs are owned by members and used with permission. Non TraiNgang logos are owned by the respective copyright holders.