Galteemore

Sorry - mea culpa! The steam crane was a daily sight on my school commute to York Road in the 80s so I should have remembered.....

And here it is courtesy of Flickr. Although worth noting that it is a hand powered crane and not a steam one..........https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=rpsi+hand+crane&client=safari&hl=en-gb&prmd=isvn&sxsrf=ACYBGNT706QApIJN8UrCHshRRAGEUaJdag:1579641281121&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiN7LurzpXnAhWSo3EKHRTtC-kQ_AUoAXoECAsQAQ&biw=375&bih=628&dpr=2#imgrc=n4q-nnw9OfZl3M

Interesting comment John, on the D6 class. They are striking locos with a real presence, like a GNRI S class which had spent a lot of time in the gym... photo courtesy of Mike Morant’s smugmug site....https://transportsofdelight.smugmug.com/RAILWAYS/IRISH-RAILWAYS/GREAT-SOUTHERN-RAILWAY-STEAM/i-72sHVQm

Thanks for posting, Dave. Glad I got to see it for real when we lived in Dublin from 99-02.

Thanks David - sounds like a good and ingenious fix! Any recommendations on a source for the magnets, please?

Thanks Eoin. Mike Sharman only died last year. He was an engine technician in the RAF, working latterly on Hercules transport planes but excelled at small scale engineering too! I’d never seen video of his work before.

Rather like the late G P Keen, Fry had an eclectic modelling style uncommon today. Thankfully so - hence we have this wonderful cornucopia of odd prototypes that never made preservation - and are not modelled elsewhere. A real treasure trove.

Had hoped to make Stevenage but life got in the way! Sorry to hear about the layout frustrations but sounds like you’ve been busy; hope all the gremlins get sorted. And that’s a pretty stellar social gathering....definitely A-list! I’d be interested to hear about the magnets as I have heard of this issue when researching for my own installation.

Beautiful. Those 4-4-0s had a spidery grace that marks them out and you have really captured it.

Thanks gents. All part of a work in progress to (a) disguise an ugly bracket at the front of the layout and (b) to help mask the fiddle yard exit. The normal convention is a bridge or tunnel, but a railway bridge spanning 4 tracks wouldn’t fit with the topography of the town, and such a feature would look odd anyway in such a railway backwater - it’s not the Cork main line! So a few dodges will be employed. This is the first - a fisherman’s shed (of which we only see the rear) with an abandoned boat and other aquatic detritus. Other disguises are in preparation...the shed needed a bit of thought as it’s right at the baseboard edge and fulfils a semi-structural role. So it’s made from ply and covered with DAS to replicate the rough render one sees in some parts. More bedding in to do yet...

Got a resin rowing boat for Rosses Point and painted it up to look suitably wrecked...will hopefully add a nautical air as I haven’t got room to model a shoreline...more foliage to add yet 😀

There is one possible way round it, with a degree of plausible historicity inspired by events a bit further east: one of the side notes in Cavan and Leitrim history is the application of Irish tricolour lining to one of the 4-4-0 tanks circa 1920 during the War of Independence. The loco was then known as ‘the Sinn Fein engine’. The political attitudes of Irish railwaymen played a role in the wider conflict, such as refusals to convey military traffic. Given the long history of Irish nationalism amongst the ‘men of the West’ it is no big stretch to imagine some enthusiastic Redmondites in a remote outpost like Belmullet painting its ironwork and woodwork green in the Home Rule crisis of 1911-14....

That is spectacular!!! Really captures the look. Reminds me of my own trips along the old MGWR in the 80s - when such architecture characterised stations like Athlone.,Beautiful, understated work

Yes, it’s funny how our minds move on to project 2 right in middle of project 1! Dioramas are a great way to go - and quick! And you really can knock up 36.75 track quite easily with old Hornby oo rail and card sleepers. This whole thing took less than an hour from start to finish as a rough test piece of 5’3” track ...