Galteemore

Very elegant solution Alan. Agreed - the fore and aft bolts can cause all manner of issues

BUT what does it mean ?

That Sligo one is terrific. Just wish they could have found a clean tender !

That’s looking great Alan, and a nice solution.

Agreed and the PPs would have looked endearingly like Edward the Blue Engine!

S class got it in the 1938-ish rebuilds. The big mystery is why the U class got it (eventually) but the Qs never did!

Wasn’t it 1936 that the blue appeared ? The compounds were black when delivered in 1932.

One of my recent exhibition favourites was an enormous 009 layout which had a number of stations and one could track a train’s progress around it. Fabulous ly entertaining. I suppose the key thing is that elusive ‘atmosphere’. If a layout has that, sometimes even a sparse train service js enough. It’s all about theatre and staging at the end of the day really. Sometimes it needs a full dress cast and stage scenes to get it right - sometimes a bare stage with two actors in black polonecks can achieve the same effect !

Think A15 was 1971 Patrick but can’t check exactly as my books are still mostly boxed up after moving last week…

Yes, it’s the kind of layout that has really gone out of fashion, but was once fairly standard. Peter Denny - whose work I have been studying a lot recently - blazed a trail in 1940s Britain by downscaling the concept to EM, and emphasising scenery. As modelling has ‘evolved’ - and as knowledge of actual historic rail operations has faded away - the emphasis has shifted in different directions. I’m just so sorry I missed the opportunity to see Castie Rackrent, which is arguably the best Irish-focused operating system ever built.

Thanks Paul. That’s a fab layout. It’s the sort of setup up that I think CJ Freezer talks about - the trains might as well be tennis balls - what matters is getting the block working right, and the rolling stock/scenery are incidental !

Sublime Ernie ! Especially pleasing to see what looks like an I13 at Bundoran. Gives me proof that they made it so far west and an excuse to run mine!

The tender has probably been used with an S class, as it has the slots for fitting single line tablet collectors on Derry Road trains.

That’s interesting. I am working on a blue engine next and noticed that there was a rather pleasing shade of dark blue that appeared in the late 40s/early 50s. Quite how it weathered to the tender’s shade has attracted all kinds of speculation. In his seminal book on loco painting, Ian Rathbone singles out GNRI blue as a colour no one seems to agree on!

Indeed David. I am actively scoping 3d printing myself. Now Laurie Griffin has shut up shop that’s my main source of loco castings gone…..mercifully I have enough in stock for the next 3 locos but after that…..