With the sad cancellation of the annual Perth Model Railway Exhibition for the second year running due to COVID-19, Rail Heritage WA in conjunction with the WAMRC and several other model railway club will be holding a “Mini Model Railway Expo” at the Rail Transport Museum in Bassendean on Sunday 6th June 2021.
For more details, please see the poster below.
Our sister club, the Edmonton Model Railroad Association (https://www.emra.club/) has once again sent us one of their excellent calendars for 2021. They produce this calendar every year using photos taken by their own members.
In a letter from their President (Tim Walker) accompanying the calendar, it sounds like their past year has been considerable more difficult than ours. We are so very lucky to have been as minimally affected by COVID-19 as we have!
This year has been unlike any other preceding it. With the COVID pandemic, we made the decision to suspend operations back in March. We had some relief from August to November when we able to access the building and work in small groups on projects. Unfortunately, at this time we have had to suspend operations until the new year. I’m sure this is like what you have been experiencing. Our model railroad community is small, and we have been trying to keep communication open between our members by hosting various online video events. Hopefully with the vaccine rolling out in Canada, we are nearing the end of these strange times.
Tim Walker, President — Edmonton Model Railroad Association
Thank you very much for the calendar EMRA and we wish you a speedy return to normal operations!
The layout room is beginning to look much better after the laying of the first set of floor tiles yesterday. It has taken months to complete removal of the layers of old, tired carpet in the room — painstakingly moving shelves, cupboards and progressively lifting the legs of the layouts to get the carpet out. Then weeks of back-breaking work to remove the old glue from the floor!
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The WA State Government is encouraging recycling through the Containers for Change program. Eligible containers (most aluminium cans and PET plastic bottles) are able to be collected and recycled with a reward of 10c per container. The WAMRC has registered for the scheme and our scheme ID is C10321786:
Anyone can donate their recycling reward directly to the club by quoting the Scheme ID above. We have already made about $30 through the scheme by recycling containers we collected during RailFest and from within the club!
RailFest is happening again on Sunday 11th October! This year however will be a bit different due to COVID-19 restrictions. Admission is capped at an absolute maximum of 1200 people, with 1100 tickets available for pre-sale over staggered entrance times at TryBooking (https://trybooking.com/BLLOS). Tickets at the door will be extremely limited so buying your tickets ahead of time is highly recommended!
FYI and reading pleasure, a whole heap of new links have been added to the Links Page. Lots of great resources and information there!
Where did these new links come from? I’m glad you asked.
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The current situation with Coronavirus/COVID-19 has placed the club in a difficult position.
We have suspended all club meetings, social activities and get togethers for the time being.
As such, we are currently unable to commit to opening to the public when the museum is open.
On behalf of the club I apologise for the inconvenience, but trust you understand that the health and safety of our members is paramount.
I’d never seen this fantastic sketch of WA railways before when it popped up in a group on Facebook (“Railage Sketch and Freight Diagram of Western Australia”, 3rd Edition, 1922, H.E.C. Robinson Ltd.).
It’s not a map as such, more a schematic sketch of the railway routes, but importantly shows the name of every ‘station’ in the state at the time and mileage to Perth (or other centre). It’s a great resource for the club as we use WA station names on our main HO layout — deliberately picking one station starting with every letter of the alphabet to end up with 26 locations on the layout. (We had to stretch the rule about with ‘X’ — no stations in WA start with ‘X’! Instead we used the WA town name ‘Xantippe’ which was never served by the railways.)
This is another example from the wonderful free online resource that is Trove from the National Library of Australia: https://trove.nla.gov.au/version/26359059
That image above is quite low resolution — good enough to make out most of the names. The full, high-resolution version is a whopping 576 Mbyte image available from Trove (see link above) which is quite difficult to download or view even with a fast computer and good internet link. I have created a high resolution PDF version which is a much more manageable 13.2 Mbytes: nla.obj-233482959.pdf
RailFest is on again as usual on the last Sunday of the October school holidays. This year marks the 30th Anniversary of the Railway Museum so promises to be a big one!
A special fair is being held by Vintage Services in conjunction with the W.A. Doll and Toy Group at Cannington Exhibition Centre on Sunday 4th August 2019.
There is a booking from someone disposing of an extensive collection of N Gauge model trains that she is taking to the Fair, so it may of some interest to railway modellers.
If anyone is looking to sell some stuff themselves, they can apply directly to the fair using this form: https://wamrc.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019-Antique-Fair-Form-4-AUGUST-2019.pdf