The long-planned-for container has finally arrived and has been installed behind the clubrooms. When I was last at the club rooms during the busy-bee last Saturday, it was all hands on deck painting it to match the clubrooms, installing a door through into the main clubrooms and welding supports in place internally to support the work benches.

This is a fantastic addition to the club’s facilities and credit must go to all those who have been involved — particularly Harry G. for finding the container in the first place, Paul H. for organising transport and the crane and Mark B. for negotiating access through Bradkens and being the driving force behind the subsequent modifications. A brilliant team effort!

Chris K. took some photos on his phone during the operation to lift it into place — head over to the galleries to check them out: Container Lift Photos

A clever pictorial display of the “Zanthus” building has been put together by the G‑Scale group for display inside the clubrooms (click on the picture above to see it in more detail). It shows six historical pictures of the building as it was in-situ on the Trans-Continental Railway, one picture as it is now — relocated and reconstructed just outside our clubrooms — and three pictures of the G‑Scale scale model of the same building built by Stan Major.

This pictorial record is now on display in the public viewing area of the main clubrooms.

Lotterywest sent us a nice little plaque (free of charge) for us to put up in the clubrooms to acknowledge their contribution towards our new air conditioning. It fits nicely on the sliding door plinth near the ice cream fridge, and is highly visible to members of the public as they enter and exit the building.

The WAMRC main layout room is now air conditioned with two powerful evaporative air conditioning units, courtesy of a $6,600 grant from Lotterywest. They were commissioned on the 22^nd January 2008 in the middle of a heatwave, and the immediate difference they have made to the club rooms is truly incredible!

Great thanks go to Mark Butler and Paul Heaney for preparing the grant application, completing all the paperwork, getting numerous quotes and arranging the actual installation. And of course, huge thanks got to Lotterywest for supporting the club financially in this way!

There was some initial concern about how the air-conditioners had been wired into the club’s main power switchboard, and whether our routine practice of the last person out turning off main power as they leave was going to interfere with the normal shutdown operation of the air-conditioning units — or whether they could be inadvertently left on. So we conducted some simple experiments and also contacted the manufacturer (Jarrahdale) to get some answers.

It turns out the air-conditioners are wired into the switched master circuit of the club — when you turn the master switch off as you leave, power is cut to the air-conditioners as well. This is a good thing as it means the air-conditioners can’t be accidentally left on!

The air-conditioners automatically drain their water (about 10–12 litres) when they lose power (in other words they require power to hold their water during normal operation), although a pressure relief valve in the system means that it can take up to a minute after power is lost before water actually begins to drain. There is nothing in the design of the air-conditioners or controllers that means turning the power off abruptly is necessarily worse than turning them off at the controller (the service guy I spoke to says that is routinely what he does when servicing them), but even so, for normal operation he does recommend turning it off at the controller first.

The air conditioners hold their water for about 5 minutes after being turned off at the controller. So he suggests as a general rule of thumb we should aim to turn them off at the controllers about 10 minutes before the last person leaves the club and the power is switched off — but if that doesn’t happen and the power is just switched off at the master switch while the air-conditioners are still on it will still be OK — the units will still drain their water even without power.

Below are some more pictures of the installation. Click on any thumbnail to view the picture.