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A little display of models at the IRRS Manchester Christmas meet: Mine in the background, Richard’s in the foreground. He’s got some lovely models!

Still showing: "Expected delivery date: Q4, 2025......" Will it be a vvvvery nice Christmas I wonder......

Whoops... missed those David! There's no mention of them in the written instructions but they appear in one of the diagrams- and in all the prototype photos of course so no excuses for not noticing Many thanks. I'll add those.

Fab work Alan. Is there also a vertical handrail to fit the cab cutouts ?

Following on from another thread about locos that CIÉ painted green, here’s one about locos that UTA painted green. Generally when the UTA repainted locos, they painted them black. There were some exceptions – apparently a Jeep, a W, and a U2 painted in experimental apple green, Brunswick green, and olive green This Jeep, No. 5, is apparently painted in “apple green”. You can clearly see that the lining is very bright and the tanks, cab, wheels, and boiler are much brighter than the black smokebox and chimbley This W, 98, is apparently painted a darker Brunswick green This BCDR loco, No. 21, is apparently pictured after overhaul in 1953 – it seems to be in kind of an olive green, and to me that doesn’t look like BCDR lining as it’s more white/green than yellow, especially compared to the yellow numbers. An experimental livery…?

The rest of the PPs kit has now succumbed to my tender mercies. It was a challenging build partly because there are lots of seam joins which are tricky to get at if the aim is to keep as much of the solder as possible out of sight on the inside. Few fingers remained unburned. The etch also had a number of small errors and the instructions were peppered with work-arounds to deal with these. The tender chassis was built with the rear axle in fixed bearings and the other two moving up and down about 1 mm in slots and sprung with 0.33mm brass wire. Brake rigging was put together using much the same approach as for the loco. This small sheet of foam plastic packaging is very useful for keeping things in line while the solder goes in. Not much more to do now - arranging a coupling between loco and tender and fitting pickups to the rear tender wheels. The loco is only picking up on the 4 drivers so a bit of extra help from the tender would be useful. Essential maybe. Alan

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An NIR 80 Class unit has an admirer at Whiterock Station. Cheers Darius

Loved watching “Model World” on TV in the ‘70s - still have the book with all the plans in the back somewhere. Cheers Darius

Continuing on 850 after another stall due to family issues;- The pony truck detail parts cleaned up, ready for folding and soldering. Jigging. Soldered up and the guard irons bent into shape. Multipal plastic washers installed to center the axles on the trucks. Trucks test fitted and .4mm NS wire electrical wiper pickups installed. Motor wired up and almost ready to give it a test run, except for the rods, crosshead n valve gear which is next..... Eoin

Instantly recognisable!

The mill looks very well - as Patrick says the stonework looks well but I also think the timber doors and window frames set it off nicely

AI has a problem with peoples hands too

Fabulous!! Love the stone texture on the building!

Not much to report, a little more progress on assembling the mill building, and my tree order has arrived. this isn’t the final placing for the trees, indeed I may put one at the other end of the layout These professionally-made ones will be in the foreground, backed by a couple of homemade seamoss trees and then painted ones on the backscene. I’ll try to keep them all in a similar autumn colour palette.

Back to the workshop to keep Bachmann K27 464 on the road until it disintegrates. The locos was last in the shops in July for emergency repairs after the engine tender coupler failed when the loco pulled the dragbox out of the tender. The loco operated reasonably reliably until the end of the winter season despite the leading pony truck occasionally de-rail and the loco ceasing to chuff, though other sound functions continued to operate normally. So finally time to bring the loco into the shops to carry out modifications to the leading truck and trouble shoot the sound system, before tidying up the workbench to resume working on small scale stuff! The problem the Pony Truck. The original (plastic) pony truck dissintegrated several years ago and I fabricated a replacement (to the origonal design)from brass bar and plate though the leading wheels tended to run at an angle to the track due to the relatively short distance between the pivot and axle. The leading end of the diecast frames/pilot (a weak point of the design)had fractured (metal fatigue) which I patched several years ago with brass strip and bolts. The solution increase the distance between axle and pivot point. I increased the distance using a piece of brass plate I had in stock, bolted and soldered to the existing truck boring out the necessary holes with a pillar drill. Next step was to drill & tap a 5mm dia hole (to take a n m6X1mm tap) in the frames close to the end point of a plastic guide/suspension beam intended to control latteral and vertical movement of the leading truck. Time for the nitty gritty getting in with an M6 X1mm tap! The modified pony truck. I originally intended to use a turned brass pivot bolt that would screw into the chassis, unfortunately the screw thread cut in the brass with my 6M-1mm die did not match the hole tapped in the chassis (possibly softness of the brass) but accepted an M6 x1mm bolt I had in stock! I did not want the securing bolt to be continuously working loose in service, so I machined a brass spacing bush with a collar which both helps keep the pony truck pivot at the correct height and allows the truck to pivot from side to side. I retained part of the Bachmann suspension/guide beam which includes a sprung plunger which hopefully will help keep the pony truck wheels in contact with the track. Apart from some adjustment to increase vertical play the loco ran successfully without de-railing the leading truck on several test rund. Why no Chuff-Chuff? 2000 era Large Scale Plug & Play DCC/RC decodersThe exhaust chuff is controlled by a reed switched operated by a pair of magnets on one of the tender axles. Trouble shooting involved removing the tender body and checking through the rats nest of wires, thankfully one of the wires from the reed switch had come adrift from the large terminal block in the right centre of the photo. Bachmann introduced the K27 in 2007 with a Plug n Play interface for DCC decoders & RC power controllers not exactly compact or P&P but allowed me to convert the loco to battery RC without having to totally re-wire the loco! The large 8 pin terminal block is basically for controlling sound and lighting functions. The 6 pin + - 1-4 power control functions, small terminal on right next to power controller connections from radio receiver. Small board on tender floor in centre of loco sound controller with large speaker hidden beneath main power board and main batteries. Small board on left of tender power on/off to loco /charger switch. Batteries are 7.2V 3000ma/h like the Drumm batteries of the 30s good for approx 4 years at this stage #464 is on her second set of batteries. Tender body replaced! Radio receiver on board on far right loinked by 'servo leads" to power control board. Radio control system K27 and other Bachmann large scale locos originally produced by RCS systems (late Tony Walsingham) (Australia) during the late 2000s. Significantly smaller combined radio receiver/power controllers have been released in recent years not dissimilar to DCC decoders, my Accuracraft K27 has a significantly smaller receiver/power controller and much more simple wiring! Interestingly main complaint about the Bachmann K27 was cranks working loose when the loco was originally released, problem appears to have been resolved in the second batch released in 2008 my #464 appears to be from the 2008 batch and no problems with cranks, but almost everything else.! Though not bad when considering a 17 year old loco that appears to have been worked fairly hard before I picked her up. Remaining repairs to #464 include reinforcing sections of cab which have become brittle/damaged and wiring repairs to loco headlight and classification lights which failed in recent weeks.

Cheers Darius

@Portadown, Yes they are still available at the moment. Regards, John

Been on the scout on how the old moyasta mk3s are doing at their new home

After a lot of grunts, moans and a lot of sweeping dog hairs The tracks connected gonna click it to the controller and then try think of ways to prevent dust and dog hair getting at it tomorrow

There is a long tradition of (often young) volunteers travelling great distances to work on railway restoration projects. ITG members regularly crossed the Irish Sea from the Midlands and North (of England) to work at their base at Carrick on Suir and no doubt Inchacore and Downpatrick and help out on other Irish perservation projects. Back in the day (30 off years ago) I regularly (fortnightly) made a 440 mile round journey by car from Watford to Portmadoc to Volunteer on the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway, at one stage I was living in Scotland and made a monthly 672 mile journey from Stirling to Port to carry out substructure work for the RED shed. As shuttering carpenter my job was to set up the shutters and holding down bolts for a pour by our concrete gang who made a 479 mile round trip by car from West London. Sometime I travelled by rail from Stirling to Warrington where I was picked up by a group of volunteers who regularly travelled by car from York to Port, other time I drove. We were mainly single guys with reasonably well paid jobs without family responsibilities, though a younger generation of volunteers teens and 20s had began to become involved, some of whom have become long term volunteers/company officers. One significant differences between the Festiniog, Welsh Highland Heritage and other heritage railways in the UK, is that both the FR & WHHR provide overnight volunteer accommodation, the Festiniog Hostel and the WHHR caravan accomodation owned by volunteer groups. Interestingly vintage carriage restoration/construction is mainly lead by a volunteers of a younger age group focused on the heritage aspect of the railway, while the older generation of volunteers/members were mainly focused on building a narrow gauge modern railway.

Long time since I was in this So long i thought I couldn’t find this About the 2 American locos, I loaned them to try fox but me being an amateur didn’t do too good of a job Wanna post a bit more on this as Connolly for the past while was giving me a headache from my own pressure on myself unsure where to start to balancing time with school So here I am after coming home from the MRSI to see the Christmas decorations starting to be put up So it’s that’s time of the year Out comes the Christmas train

There hasn't many updates lately due to other commitments but I've been managing to snap the odd photo here and there. The November and December galleries have been updated with images from Portlaoise Dublin Heuston Tara Street Dublin Pearse LUAS in Dublin City Centre including images of the new bridge in the IFSC. November gallery latest images - https://thewandererphotos.smugmug.com/2025-Photos/November-2025/i-wDd27tS December gallery latest images - https://thewandererphotos.smugmug.com/2025-Photos/December-2025

Artificial Ignorance - almost as good as the real thing.