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To me, religious zealot that I am, lent means going out on the soup three nights a week instead of four.

Ah, sure, Ivan - Saint's Days are exempt - at least in the Church of England and the Presbyterian Church - but then the latter disapprove of intoxicating liquor anyway ......

I gave up Lent for Lent. Although I managed to observe Lent for two years, what killed the whole sacrifice thing for me was realising that St. Patrick's Day (and the drink that is sine qua non) always came before the end of Lent.

Agree on J15 being unlikely short term WT is very possible S class Have a good chance, but I always put them behind the.. ..V class, which stand a pretty good chance. Lack of GNRI coaches hurts them a bit, but Merlin is active RPSI Can't discount the 800s when IRM have the three Hunslets. And you can haul PRs behind them. Q class and T2s especially would be wonderful, love the T2s, but alas my top three in terms of most likely candidates, in no particular order are.. V class, 800 class, WTs Steam wildcards are a J26 or Sambo since you mentioned tanks. On the off chance its a diesel, C class.

Nice little quick project repainting and weathering these three old Hornby and bachmann wagons I about 20 years ago. Having got rid of those old massive couplers can anyone suggest a good chain coupling option? Cheers in advance Chris

Indeed they were. They even ran trains as far as Clones. But the announcement won't be these locos - all gone before the iRM chaps were born ....... Happily I have three of them!

Personally, I think that a plain black loco with mahogany coaches is ALMOST as attractive as the blue variant. The PP looks super, David. Happily, I did manage a run behind ONE of them!

If a rail service is required for the Ryder Cup Cup, the promotors could pay for the necessary rail upgrade and charter a MK4 Set or possibly Intercity Railcars to transport VIPs and spectators to the cup. As far as I understand the Limerick-Foynes upgrade is paid for by the Port Company possibly to secure the output form the Pallas Green ore body and stave off potential competition from Cork or Waterford Ports. Difficult to imagine Foynes becoming a Container Port unless a major shipping line decides to serve Ireland directly through Foynes from the Far East or America rather than through Cork, Waterford, Dublin and Belfast ports. Railfreight just about works in New Zealand because its not practicable to export heavy bulky commodities by Ro Ro ferry to customers in Australia let alone, China, Europe and US the major markets for our dairy and meat products. The bulk of Irelands manufacturing industry tends to be high value in nature and located near ports, high value items often exported in accompanied trailer from the factory or warehouse in Ireland sometimes with satellite tracking to its destination in Europe, not something to chance shipping by rail.

Wrong side of the water unfortunately. C'est la vie

Mayo Mayo

There's a Cravens and a Park Royal in this train hauled by 186, in 1972. You don't necessarily need RPSI-liveried carriages for an RPSI railtour: https://www.steamtrainsireland.com/members/galleries/132/north-kerry-railtour-1972

In my experience airline services within the United States make UK & Irish rail services appear the picture of punctuality. In 2023 we ended up having to take a bus for the final 235 miles to reach our destination after a series of cancelled and delayed flights by American Airlines between Heuston Texas & Fargo ND. Our initial flight from Heuston was delayed 8hrs by a delayed incoming flight from Chicago (possibly a defect), our connecting flight from Chicago to Fargo had departed when we finally arrived in Chicago and the next flight was not until 3 days later, when we were due to depart for North Carolina. The one American Airlines customer service person on duty (when we arrived around mid night) managed to sort us out with an early morning flight to Minneapolis & I managed to book seats on the daily Greyhound bus as the wife did not want me hiring a car and driving long distance jetlagged. Our customers service person was an ex-military combat medic who told us he found working customer service for an airline stressful compared with his duties with the military.

As @Mol_PMB says - RPSI coaches are out there, including IRM's own Mk 2s. Any chance of a train set like the LMR one Accurascale brought out?

Looks great! Nice work. The gauge glasses are very effective.

There are two existing types of carriage which could run with five of Leslie's six: Cravens and Mk2s. Park Royals are also suitable for some of them.

A GNR suburban tank engine would indeed be a nice little yoke to have. Could be used in a branch setting too, though these particular ones were suburban locos. Interesting to look at Leslie's list above; now here's a thought to provoke...... Leslie has mentioned SIX locos. So, question: what existing coaches could run with any of them? More IRM carriages needed!

Very handy little engines, the Ts, Leslie. On loan to the NCC, one managed Belfast to Carrick in 12’45!

The guesses at "what it'll be" should get saner now that you lads are off alcohol for Lent. Here's my self-centred view. It won't be a J15, but 2029 seems a good year to bring out No.186? Unhappily, the Class WT looks all too likely, in which case I'll be taking an even more expensive holiday this year with what I've saved. A GNR S Class is a possibility, BUT No.171 has been in bits when Paul Isles was measuring things up, so maybe not? Forget No.800 - it wouldn't offer Accurascale the sales volume. A GNR Q Class would be really nice, but might be too much off peoples' radar despite being around on track recently. What I really want and will buy a couple of them before Paul sits down after his announcement is a GNR Compound. No.85 been around for the last ten years, so people are familiar with it. People have been ranting on about the annoucement being for a Tank and many alternatives have been offered, but not these lovely little engines, just 25 to choose from: Amiens Street Shed, 1957 Photo the late Lance King, Copyright IRRS

Achingly slow progress on the PP. Cab is more or less done / even if reversing gear moved too far right when I was glueing it Few bits of toning down to do but almost there. Making transparent gauge glasses was ‘fun’

What does a (scale) mile and a quarter of 21mm gauge track look like? Still awaiting for one of the Beta testers to send me his postal address......

22001 + 22005 have been in action all week

Likewise. Need to acquire some FB Code 75 rail now....

Where are you?

Lovely job!

I'm pleased to say that I have managed to make time for a good few hours of modelling today, and I've been focusing on the chassis for the E class. Making up the High Level hornblocks and hornguides and getting them all to be a smooth fit was a time-consuming task, lots of fettling required as the parts supplied had some dimensional variations. I got there in the end though. Main frame components ready for assembly: Hornguides fitted and fettled (again) so the blocks all slide freely: Once that was done, progress was much faster. Here are the main parts soldered together and checked for fit. I had to file a little off the ends as they clashed with my messy soldering of the vacuum pipes inside the bufferbeams, but otherwise it fits well: CSB pivots and brake hanger rods fitted, nuts added to coupler mounting plates. Geartrain case completed and the hornblocks ready to fit: Rough positioning of the QuaDriver motor and gearbox which drives the two closely-spaced axles at the front. The geartrain in the foreground connects to the third axle: And finally for today, the gubbins tray which bolts in place above the motor. My intention is that this can be used to carry extra weight, and/or to mount decoder, stay-alives etc. There's plenty of room above it in the bonnet: Hopefully at the weekend I can try fitting this all together with axles, gears, wheels, suspension and pickups. If that goes well it will be ready for a test-run, so I was delighted to hear that my 21mm gauge flexitrack bases went in the post today!