Sid & Yvette Harvey

An article from The West Australian, Wednesday, 29 May, 1963 showing the WAMRC layout in the Harveys’ home in Cottesloe. 

As discussed at the last general meeting, a wonderful piece remembering early members of the club, Sid & Yvette Harvey, has been written by life member Don Finlayson — thanks Don!

By a terrific stroke of coincidence, a few months ago a member of the public gave us the above newspaper clipping above from May 1963 which is directly relevant to the story. Head over to the Harveys’ page to read all about it.

Galleries Restored

T_and_EL_MR

All of the image galleries from the club’s old website have now been migrated across to this new website. This was the final outstanding bit of the old website to be migrated — so the new website is now complete and the old one can be retired permanently.

To see the image galleries, click on “Galleries” in the menu bar at the top — or follow this link: Galleries

 

Hard Work — Soft Light

3km bridge at Hotham Valley Railway following heavy rains at the end of May.

The Railway Museum will be exhibiting selected photographic prints by WA photographer Kevin Scott taken for the new book 48 months, 48 minutes — building the Perth to Mandurah railway. The exhibition will be on display Sunday afternoons from 29th June 2008 for a limited time only. This book, and others about the new line, is on sale at the museum. [Hard Work — Soft Light Photographic Exhibition Flyer]

The official opening of the photographic exhibition will be on Sunday 29th June at 3pm. Kevin Scott will be at the museum to open the exhibition and speak about this project — get your copy of the book signed by the photographer!

AMRA have started sending the Branchline newsletter electronically to us, instead of by post, so I’ll upload them to this website from now on rather than printing them out: AMRA Branchline — June 2008. One advantage of getting it electronically is that all the pictures are in colour!

This edition contains the wrap up from the Model Railway Show as well as an interesting snippet about sound equipped DCC locos. The issue of excessive noise levels in the club rooms as a result of the constant throbbing of sound equipped diesel locos, or the chuffing of steamers, has come up on a couple of occasions in our club. AMRA have obviously had the same issue as their committee has decided that sound equipped locos may only be run (with the sound on) in their clubrooms for a 10 minute period following each hour (i.e. from ‘o’clock’ to ‘ten past’, one sixth of the time).

Remember the devastating bushfires around Dwellingup at the beginning of 2007? Thousands of hectares of bush were burnt out, and the Hotham Valley Tourist Railway was severely affected as every one of their timber trestle bridges was destroyed — as well as many drainage culverts and thousands of wooden sleepers. Restoration and rebuilding of the railway is proceeding well, and I was delighted to discover progress is being documented and photographed on-line on the news pages on their web site.

A link to the Hotham Valley Tourist Railway has been added to the links page.

Image: The rebuilt 3km bridge on the Hotham Valley Tourist Railway after heavy rains at the beginning of June 2008 (from the HVTR web site).

Calling for Nominations for Committee

It’s that time of year again — less than four weeks until the AGM. So that means we need nominations for committee positions. Download the Committee Nomination Form 2008, complete it and get it back to the Secretary by Wednesday 25th June 2008.

The membership list on the members page has been updated with our recent new members, so be sure to grab a copy and update your records. The club now has over 40 members — first time for a while!

Also in news, the Albany Model Railway Association are holding the Albany Hobby Expo again this year over the middle weekend of the October school holidays. The N‑Scale boys at the club are keen to exhibit and are planning to take down Weepy Junction — with a new station module and hidden fiddle yard. The image above is of a test track plan — using a plastic lid as a turntable substitute!

Image: Weepy Junction new station module — embyonic form

Added link to DCC Concepts

DCC Concepts

I’ve added a link to Richard Johnson’s DCC Concepts web site to the links page (thanks for the suggestion Peter S!). DCC Concepts is a local supplier of digital products, tools and components for modellers, by modellers — Richard is an active modeller at AMRA(WA).

If you’ve never had a look at Richard’s site, please do. Not only does he have a lot of information about the products he carries and sells, he also has a lot of useful links and general information of use to all modellers.

Update (1/3/08): Peter S. has pointed out that DCC Concepts are now in Naval Base (not far from the US Model Railway Club of WA), not Canning Vale. Apparently the building they were in was sold and they had to vacate.