Steve's Railway Pages

A Fictional Railway

An article in the AMRA Journal in which a model railway is set in a fictional world got me thinking about the sort of railway I'd expect that world to introduce. As I wasn't thinking about actually being able to model it, I could think along different lines to that in the original article (which at the time of writing this I still haven't read). As the article isn't really related to either model or prototype railways I put my thoughts about a Diskworld Railway on my personal blog rather than here.

AMRA 60th Anniversary Award

AMRA celebrated their 60th Anniversary in Melbourne on the same weekend as the N Scale Convention was on in Sydney. The choice of which of the two to attend was difficult. As I didn't attend the 60th Anniversary, they were unable to present me with an award during that celebration and so they presented it to me at the May committee meeting instead. Only a few of these awards were issued to some of AMRA's most outstanding, currently active members and receiving such an award came as a complete surprise to me - similar to the surprise I got at being presented with a Meritorious Award at the AMRA 50th Anniversary.

N Scale Convention

This convention will be held between 12th and 15th May this year - only a couple of weeks from now. I will be attending and hope to get lots of photos to add to this site.

Small Scales

At the AMRA exhibition earlier this month I saw a T scale layout in a biscuit tin. Nothing special about that as last year we had an HOn3 layout in the same sized tin. What I am wondering though is has anyone built a decent sized T scale layout with an entire station area or anything resembling a normal layout. You could get an awful lot on a 6'x4' board.

Vale Cyril Freezer

Cyril was editor of the Railway Modeller from issue number 5 (when it was still with Ian Allen) through the move to Peco where he remained editor until 1984. Much of what I learnt about Model Railways came from what he published - both what he wrote himsel;f and what he selected for the Railway Modeller. I am sure that he will be missed by many modellers.

New Design

Rather obvious to anyone who has visited the site in the past is that I have given the pages a complete facelift. Gone is the left sidebar with all the links to be replaced with a menu bar across the top of the page. The light blue background has also been replaced with a white background to make the site easier to read.

RailForum Discontinued

Since the rail forum was taking me more time to maintain it than it actually got used by everyone else I have decided to close it down. My apologies to anyone who has arrived here looking for it.

Not Completely Forgotten

I have been so busy with other tasks in recent months that I haven't even had time to update the featured article entry. I haven't forgotten about this site and will add more to it when time permits.

New Forum Rules

Due to the increasing number of spam messages being posted to the railway forums I will now be checking all new registrations before granting permission to post to the forums. I have just spent several hours manually checking all of the existing members details and have deleted those whose profiles or posts do not clearly indicate an interest in railways. Hopefully this will keep the spammers out while not adding too much to my workload.

Ideas Wanted

Are you just starting out in the hobby? If so is there any aspect of the hobby that you think I do not yet have adequately covered with the articles on this site? I am looking for ideas for more articles that I will hopefully find time to write later in the year.

Happy New Year

Wishing everyone all the best for 2006. May you finally finish that modelling project.

Awards

This site has recently been honoured with a couple of new railway awards. The award page on the site have been reorganised into three separate pages so that you can view the awards I have received (and offer) without having to wait too long for the page to load.

Home Page Update

The home page of Steve's Railway pages has now been updated to display the latest entry from my weblog. Now you will always be able to see the latest comment I have added to the site.

Club Membership Software

I have added a new category of pages to the site - Reviews - and to start things off have written a review of a software program that handles Club Membership. Model Railway Clubs may find this information useful.

Hi All

I haven't forgotten about this site, it is just that I have been rather busy with other things the past few months. Please don't forget about the Railway Community Forums where you can post your own information about railways.

Exhibition

The AMRA NSW branch exhibition is on at the Whitlam Centre at Liverpool this long weekend. I will be there on Monday.

New British N Gauge

There has been a fair amount of discussion on the N Gauge Modern email group regarding Dapol and Hornby commencing production of British N Gauge models. It will be interesting to see what they produce. Hopefully this additional supply of models will encourage more people to take up modelling British N.

New Page Added

I have added a newarticle today.

As I don't currently have any ideas for future topics and don't know when I will next have time to write them, I have removed the 'coming soon' section from the Recent Updates page.

Check out the Rail Forum

I guess the updates here will fairly irregular - only when I think of something railway related to say.

You are invited to check out my Railway Community Forums where everyone is invited to make their own railway related comments.

Developments in Model Railways

A friend of mine has just advised me that he intends to return to the hobby after a break of several years.