President	Ted Williams	02 4384 3089
Vice President	Bruce Langdon	02 4396 3767
Secretary	Peter Holt	02 4397 2700
Treasurer	Norm Browne	02 4396 3564
Members’ Board Member	John Crowhurst	02 4343 1980
Boiler Inspector	Lindsay Brack	02 4353 4673

RUNNING DAY 1^st Saturday of each month
CLUB MEETING Last Thursday of each month 7.30 pm at the club, Lot 10 Showground Road, Narara

POSTAL ADDRESS P.O. Box 692, Gosford, 2250

EDITOR Rob Lougher

The Birthday run on Saturday the 2^nd of August was again another great day for the club. The day started off with a very chilly start of just 2 degrees and fine clear weather this wasn’t enough to deter our usual band of volunteers who set about setting up the grounds and helping to unload locos. The running on Saturday seemed a little quieter than usual but this allowed our members and guests a little more time for a chat and a cuppa and on Saturday we even had time for morning tea.

We had 5 visiting locos on the Saturday and 2 on the Sunday including one of the biggest locos that has ever run on our track the 71/4" gauge "BLUEGUM" from the Luddenham club.

Some of our members and guests took the chance to participate in another area of our hobby that is fairly new to us this being radio control. At one stage on the Saturday we had two R/C boats cruising Narara Creek a R/C car and a scale model of Panzer Tank running on the shore it did make for good entertainment seeing the tank take aim and pretend to fire at a 421 class. The tank won’t actually fire a thing but goes through all the sound effects and even recoils when fired.

We had around 35 members and guests stay for dinner on Saturday night and some people took the chance to have a night run whilst others took the chance to sit back and have a chat all in all a good night was had by all.

Sunday was a reasonably quiet day that gave us a chance to have a good clean up from the day before and a bit of relaxation time with 5 members locos running and two visiting locos a good day was had by all. It was good to see some members calling in on Sunday just to say hello and have a chat we even managed to make $28 in donations on the Sunday when some of the public stopped to have a look at the locos and trains on the day.

I would like to thank everyone that helped make the birthday run a success but a special thanks must go to Helen Smith, Edith Bearman, Ron and Amanda Cowell and my wife Louise for there help with the cooking and catering through out the weekend.

Some of the members who were at the last club meeting would have heard about a new hobby shop, Gosford Hobbies that has opened in Brooks Avenue at Wyoming.

I recently called in there to purchase some materials for another wagon and after talking with Glenn and Shane was able to negotiate a discount deal with them for our club members when purchasing modelling materials.

You might ask what a hobby shop would have to offer for us as model engineers?

I to wondered at this until I needed a piece of 2mm brass rod which they had in the K&S Metal stand along with this there is also a good range of model ship parts which come in handy for scale rolling stock and one of our members was even noted sizing up dolls furniture for one of his passenger cars.

All we need to do to get a discount is introduce ourselves and show our current club membership card.

Allan Fogarty has been busy again in the last month those members that visit the club regularly would have noticed the driveway starting to take shape. Along with all of this Allan has also been continuing his work on the drains with a further 1.3 cubic metres of concrete being used on this project. Other concrete projects that have been receiving Allan’s attention have included the new concrete walkway at the top steaming bay, the concrete pad for the trailer unloading ramp near the top steaming bay, concrete the second unloading ramp in the top steaming bay, add to this the smaller jobs of foundations on the drive and pathways. All this gave us a total of 8.1 cubic metres of concrete poured on site over the month of July including one pour that finished in the dark. Thanks to Allan and his helpers and also to Pioneer Concrete for the concrete.

A ritual that goes on every day somewhere in N.S.W. is the crossing of XPT’s that service the interstate and country areas it is however very rare for two fine models to cross in this time honoured fashion but at the June running day Trevor Crowhurst was on hand to capture visitor Peter Laws’ 71/4" gauge XPT passing Allan Fogarty’s 5" loco.

We’ve managed to stay inside Australia Posts 50c loading gauge once more don’t forget Members are reminded of the need to make sure that their Annual Subscriptions are paid in order to be able to vote at the Annual General Meeting to be held in the clubhouse at 7:30pm on Thursday the 25^th of September.