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Like Sam Carse Kiwi modellers tended to select a proprietary gauge and adjust the scale to represent the 3'6" gauge - 9mm scale on 32 mm gauge, S scale on OO/HO gauge track (Sn3½) 1:120 Scale on N gauge track (TT). While 1:120 modelling is largely based around proprietary N gauge track, and loco mechanisms, 9mm & Sn3½ modellers have designed and developed their own 3'6" track systems and loco.stock running gear.  Recently some modellers have adapted American On30 locos and stock for modelling New Zealand Bush railways (logging) https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1080932674061524 Not sure about Australian Ng as such scale and gauge used tehds to vary from State to State although apparrenlty Auscission ( equivalent Accurascale, Revolution Trains) have produced RTR Queensland 3'6" stock in HOm. Although Tri-ang produced its 'Transcontinental' range in OO for the Australian & NZ markets, Australian modellers and manufacturers use HO scale for modelling Standard and Broad gauge locos and stock. The Transcontinental double ended diesels is based on locos supplied by GM to Victorian Railways.    

Extremely neat work!  

A typical Irish rural branch would have but one loco out-stationed at the terminus and it did two or three return trips to the junction each day, with the same two or three-sixwheelers, or a single bogie composite and a 6-wheeled brake van (later a tin van if it was a C class diesel). Two trips, typically, would be passenger and the other mixed - so a full day's (one-man!) operation would be three return trips of the same set, with maybe half a dozen goods vans and a guard's van at the back of one of them! On many of these branches (Achill, Loughrea as examples) virtually all the traffic was inwards, with mostl empty wagons going back to the junction. Beet, GAA, pilgrimages and fair days might bring another loco in - very often of the same type! So, on the negative side, a bit like today's Tralee or Sligo; zero variety, nothing but ICRs coming and going, like a Luas stop. On the p[ositive side, easy for ONE person to operate prototypically, and every operational session can be a fair day or a GAA special day as well....  I wondered about this when designing Dugort Harbour.It is a basic end-to-end set-up, with a fiddle yard at one end and a small terminus at the other. In the middle is a "main line" station. This is in place for operational interest. I COULD have had something I could operate like the Waterford & Tramore. If I wanted to be realistic, I'd have a J15 and four coaches, or a three-car AEC set, just going back and forth like a shuttle on a loom. Anyone would get tired of that in 2 minutes flat. Thinking of Baltimore and Valentia Harbour, where the "main line" stopped short (Cahirciveen & Skib), and what almost amounted to a local service went on through the overgrown hedges a few miles more to a barren and tiny terminus seemed the answer. Westport and Westport Quay would be another example. So, a train leaving the fiddle yard is a "main line" set - a Woolwich and four corridor bogies, or a 141 with later designs. This has come from Dublin, ir Cork, Athlone, whatever, and is bound for the station in the middle, which in my case is a fictitious Castletown West. A separate goods train with a larger engine and all sorts of stuff on it - grain, timber in Bullied opens, goods vans of all types galore. Large cattle town (Castleisland / Newcastle West). There the main line train terminates, with a connecting service of a mixed train from there to the Dugort Harbour. This gives operational interest - main line goods, main line passenger (with one a day perhaps working through to the harbour), then a branch mixed. Even a set-up like that in steam days would likely have had a sole diet of J15s like Valentia or Kernmare did, certainly in latter days. From 1955-63, Loughrea almost never saw anything but a J18/19, even on fair days (though earlier it had more variety). In diesel days, you're looking in real life at a system operated by nothing but an AEC set on passenger, and a C on the branch. Even the main line goods might be a C (or an A). Fast forward to the 60s, 70s and 80s, and you've thiry years of little but 141s! (Which is why I've 6 or 7...). There is a timetable, but this is basically a running sequence, e.g. first movement of the day is main line passenger heading off to the fiddle yard "metropolis". Then the ex-Cork goods arrives, followed by the ex-Tralee goods. Much shunting ensues, followed by the branch mixed bumbling off to the harbour and returning in time to transfer wagons to the departing goods. And so on.  I had considered full signalling, bell codes, the FULL works in that regard, but in all reality life's too short and I am not in my first flush of youth.  So what I have described does me fine. I have a WTT with the basic timetable, plus as in real life paths for beet, cattle, GAA, pilgrimages, fair day extras, summer Sunday excursions, and the like. When you have a winter day with 2 beet specials and a busy cattle fair day, the shunting challengers are surprisingly complex and an extra pilot loco is needed to deal with everything in a realistic manner. When operating steam, the branch is a former MGWR 2.4.0 (JM Design), with an ex-CBSCR 472 class 0.6.0ST (00 Works) as station pilot, and the main line has Woolwiches and J15s (both types; 00 Works). When it's late steam days, main line goods are beginning to see (silver or green) "A" class, and I had two Silverfox "C"'s. Into the 1960s and the black'n'tan era, and it's A's on the main line goods, and 141s on just about everything else. Should a RTR "C" class ever appear, I'll be in for a few of those, as such a line would probably have been monopolised by them (think West Cork, especially if the Bantry passenger had remained loco-hauled - the whole system would have been worked by the C class in its final years). I based operations on the real life 1960 West Cork timetable, where you've two return trips a day from Bantry to Cork and back, plus goods. But in my scenario, it's as if there was a Westport-Quay-like "extension" from Bantry, but with a passenger service, worked as a separate branch locally. I concocted suitable times for that which would logically connect with a real-life main terminus whose arrivels and departures mirrored those at Bantry. So overall, much to occupy me in the attic on what otherwise is a basic end-to-end single track line. Each to our own, of course, but that suits me as a good compromise between absolute, 100% fully signalled operation, and just playing trains. I saw Drew's layout once, and Sam Carse's once. I'd love to have seen Richard Chown's - I recall the article about it in a Railway modeller in the late 1960s - that's one copy I read and re-read from the day I bought it. Sam's sons, Barry & David Carse, were among the extremely privileged few CHILDREN to be allowed to see Cyril Fry's layout in full operation - normally Fry didn't allow children in at all, but Sam was a friend of his! Barry told me that they were warned to stand still, and not ask questions until they were asked if they wanted to!  

Bit of a tidy up at home in junk/decorations attic, found a box hidden away and un-labeled. It was heavy, but after some wrangling, it was liberated to find......all 130 issues, unopened of a Hachette Partworks - Build Your Mallard.  A few hours this evening and we have 8 issues built. I'm soldering instead of gluing for a longer lasting build. Going to take a while, but already have an A1 Scotman, and an A4 Bittern without valances built, so be nice addition when it done.

After attending Mass of course