AUSTRALIAN MODEL RAILWAY ASSOCIATION INCORPORATED

Please make a note in your diary for the October long weekend 2012 when the NSW branch will be holding their 50th Model Railway Exhibition.

Plans are underway to make this the biggest and best model railway exhibition that the branch has ever held.

The page listing what is in the latest Journal has now been updated to list the content of the March/April issue. It has also been uploaded to the Member's Area.

If you are not yet a member of AMRA you will be able to access the new Journal (as well as recent past Journals) via the Member's Area once you join.

This is one of the best times of year to join AMRA. Those who join from 1st March get membership right through to 31st August NEXT YEAR. That's 18 months membership (including NINE issues of our full colour Journal) plus an information packed new member kit for one relatively low price. For those who wish to pay by cheque or money order the new form is already available so that you can fill out your details, print the form and send it so as to ensure it is received as soon as possible.

Many years ago AMRA ran a poster competition for members to design a poster to display in hobby shops to promote the Association. We have now decided that it is time to retire that poster and replace it with a new one and so are running another poster competition.

The new poster competition is open to ALL members of the Association. Your mission is to design a new A4 sized poster that can be displayed in hobby shops to advertise the Association. Entries can be submitted either as hard copy or electronically to the Federal Secretary by the 31st May.

By submitting an entry you grant AMRA the right to use your submission (if it wins) to promote AMRA in whichever ways that the Federal CoM decides to use it. In return the person producing the winning entry will have three years added to their current membership of the Association

The page listing what is in the latest Journal has now been updated to list the content of the January/February issue. It will be uploaded to the Member's Area later in the month and posted out to those members who get a print copy early next month.

If you are not yet a member of AMRA you will be able to access the new Journal (as well as recent past Journals) via the Member's Area once you join.

Profiles of the members who received special recognition for the Association's 60th Anniversary have now been added to the Member Profiles page alongside those recognised at the 50th Anniversary.

The Victorian Branch have now set up a blog separate from their web site so as to be able to more easily post updates to clubroom activities. A link to their blog has been added to the Victorian Branch Page.

Commencing from the 60th Anniversary issue back in July/August the AMRA Journal has been produced in full colour instead of just the cover and centre pages as had previously been the case. Those of our advertisers who had supplied their ad in colour benefited from this change by having their ad displayed in colour for half the year with the Association covering the extra printing costs. As the Association cannot continue to subsidise advertisers in this way and as our advertising charges have remained the same for the past ten years, a small increase in the advertising rates for Journal will apply starting from the January/February 2012 issue.

It is now even easier to fill out the application form to join AMRA. Instead of printing out the form first you can now use the same online application form as was previously provided to those joining through Paypal. A button to print your filled out application form is next to the one that goes to Paypal. While the prior PDF version of the form did allow you to fill in the details before printing it this new process checks the information supplied so as to make sure the form is filled out correctly.