During the general meeting preceeding president Noel apologised for not being able to stay for the party. However his mother was celebrating her 100th birthday with a family party, so of course that took priority.

Santa wasn’t able to attend as he had missed his train.

Happily this did nothing to lessen the enjoyment of all the attendees.

A delicous lunch followed consisting of chicken and various salads and side dishes. So everyone did ample justice to the array of food on offer.

It had been decided prior that there would be a running day to complete the afternoon festivities.

This turned out to be a spectacular event as just about everybody bought some of their collection to run.

It was very pleasing to see that John O’Donnell, father of the late Mick O’Donnell, came along with some of Mick’s huge collection of American trains to run. John has the unenviable task of trying to prepare this collection for sale, not an easy task.

There was a good representation from the N Scale modellers of the club which now number five and growing. Actually, keen N Scaler Greg Spekking was seen to be running some HO Scale locos and rolling stock. Someone was heard to ask him "have you been putting Dynamic Lifter on your N Scale stuff?"

There was some discussion on the past year and the general consensus was that bit had been a very successful one, with the induction of several new members and the return of a couple of old ones.

This followed the huge amount of work completed on Somerton and Branch layouts and also a complete revamp of the N Scale layout.

President Noel and the rest of the committee thanked all members for their continued cheerful and helpful assistance, especially those members who continue to surprise everyone with their modeling skills. But many feel this is engendered by the new spirit in the club.

The committee and members would like to wish all our friends out there all the very best for Christmas and the New Year.