The August issue of the AMRA Branchline newsletter is now available: 
August AMRA Branchline
August AMRA Branchline
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Life membership for George Sumner
The AGM was held a couple of weeks ago and there is little to report — apart from the fact that George Sumner was unanimously voted to life membership of the club in recognition of his 27 years of uninterrupted dedication and service to the club.
Unfortunately George was unable to make it to the AGM as he wasn’t too well, so we had to wait a couple of weeks to surprise him. The photo above shows President Tony Gray (right) presenting George with a certificate. A life membership section staff is also being prepared and will be given to George once it is ready.
Image: George Sumner (left) holding his Life Membership certificate
June AMRA Branchline
The June issue of the AMRA Branchline newsletter is now available: June AMRA Branchline
Annual Model Railway Exhibition
The annual Model Railway Exhibition is coming up again on the long weekend in June. Full details are available in the flyer attached: Poster 2011 A4 Colour Version 1d
Image: AMRA’s Swan View layout
April AMRA Branchline
The April issue of the AMRA Branchline newsletter is now available: April AMRA Branchline
N Scale progress
The N Scale boys had another good evening last Wednesday putting together one of the larger end pieces of the new layout and then attaching legs and bolting the modules together.
Still haven’t got around to doing the last minutes or sending out the notice of next general meeting — must get on to that!
March General Meeting postponed one week
The Secretary (Ross) will be away with work on the 16th March, so rather than press-ganging someone else into taking the minutes, the committee intends to delay the next regular general meeting by a week to Wednesday 23rd March (still at 8pm in the clubrooms). Formal notice of the meeting will go out this coming Wednesday (2nd March) as normal.
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We received a nice note from our travelling President a few days ago. Sounds like his trip is going well:
Hi, Yes we are still alive! Mind you we just about got fried alive going across the Nullarbor; 43°C for about 5 days in a row. Philip island was nice and cool. In Portland, Victoria at the moment with some bad weather on its way tonight; 30 to 40mm rain forecast. At this stage we will be home on the 7th March, a week before my rostered day on. Say hi to the other members for me.
Thanks Mark & Beryl
Half their luck — after 14 nights of minimums greater than 20°C, I could do with a bit of ‘bad weather’ about now…
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Finally, the N‑Scale boys finally got cracking last Wednesday night and knocked up four wooden frames in a little over an hour (see picture above) — each one measuring 2.4 x 1 metre. And that was in spite of all the *ahem* ‘helpful advice and encouragement’ *cough* from the rest of the assembled peanut gallery club members. 🙂
Message from Paul
Paul H sends greetings from the other side of the planet. He reports that he is going to a Model Railroad exhibition every weekend somewhere or another that is as big as the one we get here once a year! Oh — and he is sick of having to dig his car out of the snow every morning. 🙂
Paul also found the picture above of a scratch built coking plant in 1:32 scale on the internet. Read all about it (including loads more pictures) here: http://modeltrainsweathered.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=441. He reckons it would make a good project for our G‑Scale group! 🙂
Latest Updates
We had a good turn out at the club on Wednesday night. Nobody came down the week before because of Australia Day so I think everyone was keen to come back. Even Peter Tullis turned up — back from his travels around the world over the past couple of months, although it might take him a few days to recover fully! Its good to see some activity down the club again following the traditionally slow Christmas period.
The N‑Scale crew finally finished dismantling the old ‘Redwintul Park West’ layout — and Weepee Junction — and stacked the old modules neatly in a corner so that construction of the new N‑Scale layout can commence in earnest; the HO boys appear to have finally got the wiring for the new DCC boosters sorted out so you don’t get intermittent shorts when driving from section to section on the HO layout; and the daylighters are in the process of cleaning out the outdoor pond following the discovery that the refilling mechanism had failed.
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The February 2011 AMRA Branchline is available here: AMRA Branchline Feb 2011
Image: Quarry/mine on the old N‑Scale layout as it looked at the last RailFest.
New Email address
The club’s old email address is still not fixed (although we are still working on it), so we have set up a new permanent address for the club.
Please update your address book(s) with the address on the contact page.
[Email address subsequently removed from this blog post to limit spam.]
Image: Cars at a level crossing at Yoting on the Gunyidi HO layout