The May edition of the Rail Heritage newsletter is now available.
Rail Heritage May Newsletter
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At the Club — a noisy evening!
Geoff L. was proudly showing off his new sound equipped DCC HO steamer at the club.
Rowan B. was amusing himself by driving this BHP Iron Ore double header around the layout — both locos DCC sound equipped and roaring away.
Garry W. was playing with his N‑Scale Amtrak DCC diesel loco — also (you guessed it) sound equipped!
With the number of sound equipped locos we are regularly getting down at the club on Wednesday evenings now, you can hardly hear yourself think! 🙂
Also spotted, Paul H. has taken photographs of all the public layout and G‑Scale recommended consists (click on the thumbnails above for bigger versions). These are in a folder on the rear of the public layout and will be a valuable reference for those on duty.
Rail Heritage April Newsletter
The April edition of the Rail Heritage newsletter is now available. Note the “pre-read” railway books and magazines sale at the museum on Sunday 20th April. Sales start at 10am for members (of both RHWA and WAMRC), and the museum is open to the public from 11am — hence we are opening 2 hours early that day too.
We have received a note from our sister club in Canada (the Edmonton Model Railroad Association) thanking us for our donation of a copy of Rails Through the Bush to their club. Thanks to Peter Osment for organising the inscription and posting it to them.
General Meeting 19th March
At the general meeting on Wednesday night, two new members were accepted into the club (Simon Pegram — as a junior member, and Anthony Reeder). Welcome to the club guys! Chris Kalajzic was accepted by the membership as our new committee member and we also discussed and agreed to replace the dirty carpet in the public area with industrial vinyl, which should be a lot easier to keep clean.
Terry Kestel supplied me with a legend for his scratch built steel mill, so I have marked up a photograph of all the components (see above). Terry based his design on pictures of the Walthers Steel Mill kit that was produced in HO scale in 1996. We have been looking for one of these Walthers kits for the club for some time, but they have been out of production for a while now. Although some second hand models are sometimes available on eBay, they are usually assembled — hence shipping costs to Australia become prohibitive! I think Terry has done a terrific job, especially considering the ordinary everyday items he has build it from.
Below are some more photographs from the night — the steel mill from the other end (it is so long it is very difficult to photograph in its entirety!) , Chris K. — our new committee member, and a general shot of some of the workers and watchers — anxiously fiddling with stuff after being forced to sit still during another general meeting.
Rail Heritage March Newsletter
The March issue of the Rail Heritage newsletter is now available. The newsletter is interesting to us as it contains snippets of information about current museum activities.
At the club last night
Spotted at the club last night was the second half of Terry K.‘s scratch built steel mill — an amazing conglomeration of recycled materials — including even the super glue bottles that held the glue that holds it all together!
Also noted was the much tidier workshop area — as promised by Peter O. Click on the thumbnails below to see more detail.
We had a committee meeting last night (as we generally do two weeks ahead of a general meeting), so I didn’t get much of chance to do much else. But the new Rails Through The Bush books are now waiting at the club for those that pre-ordered. Wow — what an amazing quality publication!
Notice of General Meeting
The minutes from the last general meeting (January 2008) are now available on the members page. The next general meeting is in two weeks time, Wednesday 19th March, and formal notice has now been sent to all members.
Image: California State Railroad Museum, Old Sacremento, Feb. 2004
Added link to 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.
Down at the club tonight…
We finally got the the new NCE PowerCab DCC controller and old Pace DC controller properly wired into a changeover switch in the workshop. This now means both DCC and DC locos can be repaired, cleaned and programmed (well the DCC ones can be programmed at any rate), without messing with the “round and round” boys playing on the main layout. The toggle switch can be seen on the fascia below the (very messy!) work bench in the picture above.
There are N‑scale tracks in there too, so the “mice men” are catered for also. They are on a smaller second shelf above the HO tracks at the top of the picture.
Other things going on down at the club tonight: Garry W. & Graham R. hard at work propping up the N‑scale layout, Peter T. busy working on the N‑scale wiring, Harry G. moving on to the next patch of scenery backboard, and Peter O. fixing some HO points. It was a very warm day today, so the new air-conditioning was put to very good use tonight!
Rails Through the Bush — Book Launch Friday 29th February
Rail Heritage WA are launching the long awaited second edition of “Rails Through The Bush” by Adrian Gunzberg & Jeff Austin at the “WA On Show” exhibition (main stage), Perth Convention Centre, 11:30am Friday 29th February. Entry to the exhibition is free over the entire four days it is running and Rail Heritage WA will have a stand there where you can buy a copy of this book, and many others — so why not pop along and check it out?