So Long mark

From my perspective, Mark Dance burst onto the Vancouver model railway scene fully-formed. There were no years of showing up at meets and sitting at the back of clinics, no decades of collecting whatever struck his fancy at train shows, no screeds explaining the superiority of his one-day layout. No, my introduction to Mark was his inaugural operating session in 2008, to which I somehow wrangled an invitation.

And what an impressive session it was! We’re used to seeing layouts early in their construction: you must squint and use your imagination to envision the owner’s enthusiastic plans. At that initial operating session of the Columbia and Western, all 230 feet of N-scale track were in play, and the trains worked at least as well as any HO scale layout. There was even scenery on the upper deck!

It was as if he had been shot from a cannon. In less than three years Mark had filled a two-car garage, and the progress continued without flagging. New scenes and models appeared like clockwork.

I once asked him how he did it. He shrugged and explained that he basically approached each project like he would at work. He identified and mitigated risks, broke down tasks, delegated what he could; he set milestones, and he met them.

When he joined the organizing committee for Vancouver Train Expo and subsequently the Railway Modellers’ Meet of BC, I found that he extended the same discipline to other areas of his life too. By the end of his first year, he had recruited his successor, and had set the RMMBC on a path of continuous improvement that we enjoy to this day.

Appearing in numerous articles in Model Railroad Planning, N-Scale Magazine, Model Railroader, Railroad Model Craftsman and Canadian Railway Modeller, the Columbia and Western was draw-dropping. In 1:160 scale, Mark completed models that many would struggle with in scales twice the size. For many, this was inspiration. But it is really Mark’s focused and deliberate approach that I find inspiring. Energy and passion are great, and we all have them in abundance. But, directed, disciplined energy and passion is dynamite!

That is what Mark brought to everything he did: directed, disciplined energy and passion. So I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that after he got sick, he brought the same package to fighting his disease, Multiple System Atrophy. Before long he had a project team busily innovating and designing aids for his life, leaning deeply into the science that would enable him to extend it despite his body’s inexorable decline.

He probably extended his life by a year as a result. And for that, and the other sixteen years during which I basked in his friendship, I will be forever grateful.