Station Masters of Western Australia

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Jeff Austin (member of Rail Heritage WA and co-author of Rails Through the Bush) has written a book detailing another aspect of the railway history of Western Australia. This one is called Station Masters of Western Australia and is certainly a definitive review of the subject.

The book will be officially launched by Martin Whitely (MP) at 11am at RailFest 2011 on Sunday 16th October, and Jeff will be on hand to sign copies. It is available for pre-order now from Rail Heritage for $22 — a discount of over 25% over the regular cover price of $29.50:  Station Masters pre-order form

Image: Cover picture from Station Masters of Western Australia. The station personnel at North Fremantle c1899. The Station master, Mr E.H. Hickey, is seated second from our left. The others would be mainly clerks, porters, signalmen or shunters. State Library WA 28673P.

Life membership for George Sumner

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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

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N Scale progress

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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

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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

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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! 🙂