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That's a good point David about the spikes. I tried putting them in and found it too onerous and am not sure they were missed, mainly because people focus on the trains and scenery? But Rob's bases are a big step forward and the track looks good and is very strong as a 'monocoque' over a length as opposed to a single sleeper. I must look again at Northport Quay and your use of AJs! I'm considering them.

Superb modelling by the way Mol!

06:00 Ex Belfast / 08:50 Ex Dublin 6 Car CAF today 08:00 Ex Belfast / 10:50 Ex Dublin 3 Car CAF

Thanks David. Yes, I did use scribed lines to guide the work. The screw up came from not paying proper attention while merrily punching rivets! As you say, very addictive.

Gets a wow from me because know how difficult it can be to produce a line of straight rivets. Have you tried scoring a fine line on the reverse? You can then use it to help alignment - though the clamps and wheels take most of the strain out of things. Rivet transfers are ok, but the GW press is very addictive!

My three thou of an inch calculation was for Paul's 25.3mms gauge widening. Three fifths of five eighths of not very much? Well, as Paul has already said, it can make a difference - even in ordinary fine scale - and S is more than just that. The track on Fintonagh/Swillybegs is 21mm gauge, code 83 rail, with 1mm flangeways in the point crossings. The back to back on the wheels is set to 19.2mm and have found that anything more than 0.1mm out can cause problems. On 36.75mm, using Code 100 fb rail, it is surprising what you can get away with on plain track with gentle curves - even a full millimetre too wide does not cause derailment! That said, as already documented on Northport Quay, a six foot radius reverse curve certainly caused issues with AJ couplings, something that adding checkrails is yet to fully cure. The P4/S7 folk's quest for true fidelity certainly has merit, but of course comes with other challenges. As for flat bottom rail fixings, on Belmullet, I briefly experimented with trying to replicate them. First track pins. Way too tedious for me. Same with small bits of microstrip. Ditto. Then tried tiny blobs of pva, which were then painted with rust colour. Another form of torture! The best I could come up with was adding blobs of thick acrylic paint, which gave a hint of texture and an all important variety of colour from both rail and sleepers. There are pictures somewhere on the Belmullet thread and it looks ok. Why go to all this trouble? When it is not there, the eyes don't really register the omission in the overall scene, but once it is, you suddenly realise that small, extra dimension genuinely enhances things. No plans to do anything to my track at the moment, but these 3D prints look fab, so well done all those who are pushing the boundaries.

I certainly agree, SP. Their volunteers make a lot of a little and with a cheerful smile.

Just 3 or 4 had, a month earlier. But the GSR(s) took in many more.

Correct me if I’ve got it wrong but most of the railways had agreed to form the Great Southern Railway but political interference…… Stephen

Gosh, is this weathering supposed to add value? Noting that Rails themselves have brand new, upgraded design Murphy 141s for £40 less... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/196924966977 They might have got almost that grubby in the IE era but not in CIE days.

https://www.ebay.ie/itm/267101502564?_skw=Murphy+models&itmmeta=01JGMAZX0D10EZATM4P1K5VD0M&hash=item3e307d7c64:g:AdoAAOSwdCRnY07g&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA8HoV3kP08IDx%2BKZ9MfhVJKl8zE8F0jNy018OuxwpBuuSAzPjiEB2IeAgw00osiFOJWcbQnKLX%2FLsShIbir%2BsSSCOtjk5JOnyfRo1JBSf1U1qDqRg9AytvXs2XEMs34rj26wIYO6a1k1%2B%2FgxcnpR3XXQJJdpvemQLOPTcF10M8G7r%2Bnwjnr1typ6M6R4RKbehaPGe3cIbuhyn5YZKwl5R5l1zhkDxkB9Pq4pfJz2%2BbC4EJ6Cuo8qAcmuGZ6wYBQ4wh4CXXp7gAaDMWypyz47SsiL%2B%2FKk8TXSAa26i12btu3gQoZZfrjrX7Mdj67Gvf7GXMA%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR6bQ_4qFZQ

Great persistence and a lovely result with that rivetting tool. Looks much better than the NWSL version I bought 20 years ago and struggled with.

Back to No.6's tender. Taking a leaf from @Mayner's book (thank you John), I attacked the tender chassis again and fitted patches inside the frames to give it two sprung axles riding in slots. Bit of a dog's dinner by the time I'd finished hacking it around but it works and it won't be seen. Tender frames cut and shaped as a pair before being separated... ...then a role for my new toy, a GW Models Universal Rivet Tool. A lovely bit of kit and quite addictive. Tender body sides cut and shaped as a pair then separated for another riveting performance. I made a mess of the second one - that diagonal line of rivets strayed off line and trying to fix it only made things worse. I had to cut another side and start again. Eventually got a matching pair. The beading along the top edge is 0.33mm brass rod. I thought this tender would be fairly straightforward to assemble but the more I look at it the more complicated it becomes. More soon. Alan

Seems like a set is out of order atm.

216 on 18.05 ex Belfast yesterday

Happy new year all 3006 worked 0600 1200 ex Belfast & 0850 1450 ex Dublin Tuesday 3003+3005 worked 0800 1400 ex Belfast & 1050 1650 ex Dublin 6 car CAF worked 1005 1605 ex Belfast & 1250 1850 ex Dublin yesterday 3 car on entire 0600 roster today, 6 car on entire 0800 roster. IE 22217 worked the 1100 x Belfast.

The Templot track is based on a chair that plugs into a rectangular slot in the sleeper. In reality the chair is quite a substantial casting and this gives it strength in its own right in model form, so it can be a separate component. With spiked flat bottom rail there isn't any form of chair, and often no baseplate (at the most, a small thin one). It would be more difficult to create a robust rail fastening as a separate component to represent the spikes without it becoming too heavy and visually intrusive. My experiment in 4mm scale used laser-cut sleeper bases with spike holes pre-'drilled' with the laser, and Peco track pins as the spikes. They're still a bit heavy though, but not too bad from normal viewing distance once weathered in a bit: My method is also very time-consuming to lay as it needs hundreds of pins, so I'm interested to see how the 3D printed versions work out. I might decide I ought to be using bullhead track anyway, it depends on which prototype I end up going for. Mol

It is, but there could be allowance for FB rail in future developments. Who knows?

Decals and light weathering to finish. Cheers Darius

Now, whilst on the subject of early containers, I would like to talk about the odd frameworks that are seen fitted to some 4-wheel container wagons in the early 1970s. I'd better state up front that this is conjecture based on photos, and I'd welcome any facts to prove or disprove my thoughts. I'm sure many forum members will be familiar with this image of a B+I liner train, which is included in at least 3 editions of Jane's Freight Containers as well as several other publications from the early 1970s. In this photo, alternate wagons have a strange oversize framework instead of a container: It's worth noting that there are other photos of B+I and Bell liner trains from the same period that don't have these things, just containers, like these three different trains pictured in the nli archive dated 1971: https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000307812 https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000308267 https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000307819 Now, here's a link to a very interesting photo by Jonathan Allen on Flickr, which shows a mixed freight heading south from Lisburn around 1972. The third and fourth vehicles are 4-wheel container flats, both carrying early Bell containers. One is normal, and the other has one of the strange frameworks with the container loaded inside it. There is negligible difference between the heights of the containers, suggesting that the framework doesn't have much thickness at floor level under the container: However, the fact that a container can be loaded inside the framework, apparently with a bit of space around it, shows that the framework must be significantly larger in footprint than the nominal 20'x8' of the wagon floor. Being longer than the wagon floor probably meant that the couldn't be loaded on consecutive wagons without fouling each other, hence the alternate marshalling of the train in the first photo. So now we come to this excellent photo uploaded by Wrenneire in this thread https://irishrailwaymodeller.com/topic/8148-freight-containers-irish-oo-gauge-40ft-or-20-ft/page/3/, which shows the frameworks more clearly: The first thing to note is that the frameworks carry the wagon number; the nearer one is 25904, one of the later examples of the 25436 series. This strongly suggests that they are attached to the wagon, rather than being a 'swapbody' or other intermodal container which would be numbered independently of the wagon (* see below). It's also interesting that there is something loaded inside the framework, being craned in or out. The load appears to be a 'Lancashire Flat', laden with crates and sheeted over with an orange and black sheet. Very similar to the one on the adjacent road vehicle. So, as with the train at Lisburn, the framework is intended to have a container loaded inside it. So what were they for? Why not just load the containers directly on the wagons, which would have been perfectly viable? I suggest that they were a security measure, intended to prevent theft of the containers' contents, or other tampering. The framework would prevent access to any container loaded inside it, because the doors couldn't be opened (whether side or end door). I think they were deliberately made to signficantly overhang the ends of the wagons, so that they would also prevent the end doors of containers on adjacent wagons being opened sufficiently to access the contents. They would also provide some additional protection to sheeted loads on Lancashire Flats (as in Wrenneire's photo) just by making it more difficult to access and handle the loads. Whatever they were, they seem to have been quite short-lived, perhaps an unsuccessful experiment? Any more info welcome! * Note: the CIE swapbodies had their own numbers; the only sensible approach as they were designed to be swapped between wagons, as shown by these photos from Brian Flannigan on Flickr: Keg swapbody number 340, in 1971: Pallet swapbody, number only partially visible but ends in 53, in 1971:

Ah, that brings back happy memories, visited the Chinnor and Princes Risborough line for a Thomas The Tank Engine day when my son was small (must be almost 20 years ago!), he was so excited and a great day out was had by all. Unlike yourself @leslie10646 we had lovely summer weather......

The Templot plug track is excellent. I think its just for bullhead track though, not spiked flat bottom?

Its a drawing of a Hunslet overlaid onto a photo of the former Adelaide yard

Now, I mentioned earlier that the CIE container asset listings in the annual reports changed in 1974, becoming less detailed. The categories were reduced to: Rail: Covered Rail: Lancashire Flat Rail: Other Road: Covered Road: Lancashire Flat There was no split between ISO and pre-ISO, and the 'other' category swept up all the less common types. The distribution is shown in the graph below, through to the split of CIE in 1987 and a little beyond. The 1973 totals for rail and road are also shown to provide a comparison with the previous graphs: Between 1973 and 1974 there was negligible change in the totals for road and rail, so it is likely that the 1974 fleet was much the same as for 1973, just categorised differently. The overall trends from 1974 onwards are: The road container fleet gradually reduced each year until it reached zero in 1990. It seems unlikely that there were many new containers built for the road fleet in this period. The rail container fleet increased significantly in the 1974-1979 period, and then gradually declined slightly. Among the rail containers, the 'covered' category increased by 250% from 487 to a peak of 1703. Among the rail containers, the 'other' category doubled from 198 to a peak of 420. 'Lancashire Flats' gradually decreased throughout the period. The only Jane's I have for this period is the 1982 edition. That doesn't have a detailed fleet listing for CIE but states: "A total of 2035 containers and 323 flats are owned" [total 2358]. Comparing with the data in the CIE annual report for 1982, and combining road and rail, the totals are 259 Lancashire Flats and 2148 for everything else [total 2405], which isn't too far off considering that the counts may represent different dates and some of the 'others' may have been types of flat. So from 1974 onwards we would expect to see large increases in the numbers of CIE containers, and in the variety of types, but the statistical data from the annual reports and from Jane's don't give us any specifics. We'll have to work it out from photos and I haven't started that study yet! As a taster, this wonderful photo linked from Jonathan Allen on Flickr is dated 1977 and shows a long train of CIE containers: From the front, we have: Side door container, 8'6" high (new type) Side door container, 8'0" high (old type mentioned in previous posts) Bulk Freight container, 8'0" high (new type) Side door container, 8'6" high (new type) Tiltainer, 8'6" high (mentioned in previous posts) Side door container, 8'0" high (old type mentioned in previous posts) Side door container, 8'6" high (new type) Side door container, 8'6" high (new type) Double Side door container, 8'6" high (new type) Side door container, 8'6" high (new type) Side door container, 8'0" high (old type mentioned in previous posts) Tiltainer, 8'6" high (mentioned in previous posts) Open-top half-height container (possibly under the umbrella of the 'Lancashire Flat' group) Side door container, 8'6" high (new type) Tiltainer, 8'6" high (mentioned in previous posts) Side door container, 8'6" high (new type)

Sorry, I missed this excellent photo of a tiltainer from Wrenneire in this thread: https://irishrailwaymodeller.com/topic/8148-freight-containers-irish-oo-gauge-40ft-or-20-ft/page/3/ This does confirm that the sheet and the container numbers matched, and that they were in a 1400 series.