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Following on from my experimental T Gauge- Benefits and Restrictions thread in Letting Off Steam, I thought I'd bring up the possibility, "up the top" of the forum, of serious T gauge modelling. The only company in the rolling stock market currently is Tgauge.com, although recently a few 3d printing and laser cutting companies have offered T gauge buildings and accessories, notably Buggleskelly Station very recently to coincide with his T gauge layout build series. I have compiled a list of products from Tgauge.com that can be used to represent IÉ, CIÉ and NIR models, here: Document 12-1.pdf, although I would recommend reading the most recent post in the initial thread for explanation of the methodology and recommendations. The scenic possibilities of such a scale are evident, but one thing not often mentioned is the possibility for operations as might be seen on a large OO/HO or N gauge layout. Having talked to several people about FREMO layouts at the SDMRC show over the weekend, it occurs to me the operational interest of a huge layout representing a large section or even the entirety of a railway line is not insignificant, but would be difficult to achieve even in fairly space-efficient scales such as N or OO/HO. With T gauge, a 20m layout for example could represent 9km of railway line at 1:450 scale. Now, 20m isn't exactly short but could feasibly fit at an exhibition, especially if curved over on itself. And with that you introduce the possibility of even longer layouts, with a potential 100m layout, which could be bent around itself to easily fit in many exhibition spaces, representing 45km- almost the distance from Heuston to Newbridge, or Connolly to just short of Laytown (almost to Drogheda for those unfamiliar with the Belfast line). That is a simply insane length of railway to model, and if it were in T gauge, one could model a 200m wide area with an 18in wide baseboard. Now, this is of course still a lot of space, so, if you don't have a whole school hall to work with, an average model railway baseboard can still fit a lot on it in T scale. For example, with the baseboards I am currently using for my fairly small 00 branch line terminus layout Ardree Quay I could, with a bit of clever re-aligning of the existing baseboards,, model the entirety of Heuston. The entire station, from the LUAS stop all the way to the bridge over the station throat, and across from the old Platform 1 to the entrance to the Phoenix Park Tunnel. I could even replicate basically all the stock running into the station as 22000s, 201s and MKIVs are all listed in my above guide and could easily be recreated by modifying Tgauge.com products. T gauge has huge (pun intended) potential for modelling and I am seriously considering a project in this scale. In fact, I do have a plan to incorporate it into an upcoming school project, so watch this space. To summarise, I think T gauge is a really exciting scale with plenty of potential and utility which I urge others to look into.

Alright, here is a compiled list of IÉ, CIÉ and NIR car lengths from the 60s to today. Keep in mind this is just stuff that originated with these companies and not inherited stuff, so all locos bought by CIÉ are listed under CIÉ, including those that were later used by IÉ (although 8100s are listed under IÉ as I would consider them more important to IÉ than CIÉ modellers) I have used a system to denote unpowered and powered vehicles that is explained in the document. Keep in mind a motorised chassis is not available for several CIÉ and NIR locos so I have listed unpowered chassis or wagons that are a more accurate length and correct wheel arrangement, and can be modified to represent these locos. Hopefully this covers the majority of stock one would want to model. If I've missed something you would like to model, here is the link to Tgauge.com, see if you can find a suitable chassis. Keep in mind 1 metre is 2.2mm in T scale, and 1 foot is about 0.7mm, and the length of each product in mm is listed when you click on "specifications". Document 12-1.pdf The above PDF should be readable by iOS, Android, Windows and MacOS users. If this helps someone get into T gauge, I will be very glad of it. I might consider making a small T gauge micro layout to draw attention to this.

Thank you so much! That will indeed keep me busy.

Here is the complete Mallow beet programme for winter 1958, nine pages, that will give you something to think about !!

Thank you very much. I'm lucky to have already had great help from several people in IÉ and have all the car lengths down to the millimetre, but speaking of FOI requests, I did find this list of every item of Translink NIR stock as of September 2023 in my quest to find 3000 and 4000 car lengths. NIR Rail Fleet.pdf Hopefully some Northern modellers or enthusiasts might find this of use.

Bear in mind that by 1973 the transplant program was almost if not fully complete and A and C class reliability had gone through the roof. One of the main reasons for so many pilot workings was to cover for A and C class breakdowns.

I look forward to seeing the results, thanks again.

The "Beet Campaign" traffic arrangements were advised in the weekly circular at the start of the season.

That’s a very good question. The WTTs I have for the 1960s/70s are all summer ones (June to September) so they don’t include the beet season. There is a note that the signalbox and loop at Beet Factory Siding were only open when required. I’m not sure whether the beet campaign paths were rigidly defined in the winter WTTs or if they were worked as overload freights in any available path? Perhaps I need to try to find and buy a suitable winter WTT?

How’s does the sugar beet factory factor into mallows pilot situation. As I assume it would have been way busier

Good question. Apologies for delay in replying. These are my thoughts at the moment. 25 mph at scale ratio 1:76 can be observed as a speed of 14.66 cm per second, or 0.1466 metres per second, or 5.77 inches per second. 5.77 inches per second can also be expressed as a speed of 12 inches (distance) in 2.08 seconds (time). So these would be the actual observable speeds at model scale 1:76 for a "scale speed" of 25mph. 25 mph converts to 40.23 kmh While the Ecos allows the user to to define a range of speed from 0 to a max value (kmh), the speedometer feature may not represent the actual speed of the model. I would like to experiment with this myself to evalaute what the Ecos can do. Your question is a good starting point.

Further to yesterday’s post here are the most recent photos that I have of the layout of the layout. I’m hoping by next weekend I should have a few videos of different rolling stock running during breaks of working on the board. I don’t have full dimensions as of yet so again I’ll be updating this thread more thoroughly then. But until then enjoy modelling!

Surprisingly it managed to get to Connolly for the 1050

It's possible that the installation on railway carriages included a pressure regulator or flow control device? It was certainly used for carriage lighting, and I think typically had one gas generator per carriage, feeding several lamps.

This photo from Roger Joanes on Flickr appears to show the Mallow (North) pilot in 1960. It's clearly the daytime shift which in the 1961 WTT was listed as a steam turn, as seen here with J15 156: Ernie also has a couple of images of J15s shunting at Mallow, possibly on the daytime pilot duty in 1960: In 1969, a stealth black C218 seems to be on the Mallow pilot duties:

When we were kids, you could buy calcium carbide at the chemists, a sort of soft brown crumbly substance. Bike lamps used to use it. Put it in with some water, and the acetylene gas would come fizzing out. I think doing it on a coach would be a bit of coming in fits and starts, quite how they would get a steady flow at even pressure would be problematic. Then you have to clean the black goo out of the container before recharge. How did we use it? (Forgive me, father) you could get a glass screw top bottle, half fill it with water, drop a lump or two of carbide in it, then screw the cap down, put it on top of a wall, and run away. (We forgot Mrs. Pearce’s washing was out….)

Wasn't the original first class coach an FO? My understanding is that the original 5-car set was basically as you say, with DBSO, SO, SO, 547 and FO. I think it was a bit short of standard accommodation and had too much first accommodation, so was often extended to 6 cars with an extra SO. However, a single Hunslet was a bit underpowered for 6 cars on the express timings. The second carriage order (new-build MK2c) included a DBFO (not modelled by IRM) which was intended for use in the winter set, to improve the balance of standard and first accommodation. I guess the formation would then have been DBFO, 547, SO, SO, SO. Jonathan Allen's Flickr albums include a good variety of Enterprise formations from the early years if you want to examine the photographic evidence.

08.00 cancelled at Malahide

They got it without anything on the tender so I assume (as they didn’t really care about the significance of the paintjob, which I can’t blame them entirely) they stuck in the GS to make it look better and call it a day. But to have something 60 years in virtually untampered paint from service is fascinating. Some of the things in cultura are getting touch ups paint wise. The longer 800 avoids this the better. speaking of original paint. I was with the ITG the day 134 was being moved out of Moyasta. Some paint was naturally peeling off revealing its old liveries including the 1960s original GM Grey colour Most interestingly of all though was a Dart Green. Part of an experimental livery only 124 wore w probably for the best that this colour scheme never took off

She is indeed in CIE dark green, why Cultra added a G S is a complete mystery.

That's lovely. Broadside and overhead photos are generally difficult to find.

The two Jinties were regauged by: - removing the wheels from the axles - taking the tyres off the wheels - turning the wheel centres around so that the inside faces would now face outside - refitting to original axles - refitting the tyres This was made possible by the discovery that the thickness of the driving wheel boss allowed the wheels to be simply flipped round to achieve the correct distance for 5'3". Almost no machining was required.

How would the shorter 5 coach winter set have been made up ? Aside from 547 and a BDTS , I guess an FK and two SO coaches ?