Galteemore

Looking forward to it David. The locos will be getting prepped over next day or so …unfortunately the PP crew Andy Stadden painted for me got sent to wrong address so she’ll be running with an empty cab!

1 and 2 both survive. 1 was at Shane’s Castle and Giants causeway. 2 is at Cultra. If memory serves, 3s boiler was used in a stationary capacity for some time after.

Fascinating stuff Ernie! The PP looks so odd with that tender. Enniskillen has her old BP chimney - and was the last of the large tanks to retain it. She lost it in favour of a GN one c1950. Note too the faint remains of the lettering on her tanks.

I did think that if the new RPSI mogul gets finished then calling it Hugh O’Neill would be a fairly inclusive way of nodding to the old NCC naming pattern

The Orange Order have a rule that only the deceased may be commemorated on banners, after an unfortunate incident when a loyal brother ratted on the organisation after having been painted on a banner….

Could always find a compromise candidate for a border station eg ‘Doyle’ after Company Sergeant Major Doyle - who won the VC with the British Army and then became an IRA intelligence officer. Or ‘Despard-French’ after the Viceroy Lord French and his sister Charlotte Despard who was a Sinn Fein activist ! One of the delightful things about our history is that it’s so rarely black and white. In the dying days of the modern Troubles I taught at a school in west Belfast which had once been Protestant but turned Catholic in an overnight demographic change. The area (beside Ballymurphy) was solidly SF but a dusty portrait of the Queen remained under the stage as no-one could quite bring themselves to throw it out!

The logic was that the stations were the nearest significant location connected to the person commemorated. Thus Sligo is named after Sean McDermott, who lived in Co Leitrim. The SLNC station at Kilmakerrill was actually the closest railhead to his homestead but had shut by 1966. Casement station is named thus because Roger Casement, although from the opposite end of the island, was captured near Tralee after landing from a U-boat. And so on for the other stations

That’s a very good conversion.

Now that was comedy gold

Looks fabulous and authentic Alan.

Great stuff Ernie. And you were just down the road from me in west Oxfordshire !

Hope you have a long attention span

That’s quite arch of you Alan

Thanks so much Paul! I figured if anyone knew it would be you And having just looked, Allen has an I13 in his range….

Yes, I had wondered if that might be the case. Whatever happens I know more about GNRI carriages than I did 24 hours ago ….

Thanks Paul. It’s all a bit mysterious to me too, and I’ve asked Allen what he thinks it might be. The label on the etch says J4 but that it ain’t !

Live steam one available from Regner

Thanks Paul - makes perfect sense now! Hopefully one of the carriage gurus such as @Paul 34F will recognise what we have here, as it matches nothing I can see in photos.

After a bit of advice please. I have just received a Worsley etch for a GNRI J4 coach. I’m pretty sure this isn’t actually a J4 as I can’t see any evidence of a brake compartment. That I can live with. However, I’m flummoxed as to two main points. 1. What it actually is, and how it’s laid out internally. 2. What I actually do with it! I can’t work out what to do with the floor etch and where the footboards go. The coach body is a mystery as it seems to have a slit running right along the middle for some reason. This will obviously have to be backed or filled with something. Any ideas or tips welcome please !!

The bearded gent is Bob Symes, an Austrian aristocrat who fled the Nazis and had a remarkable life. His WW2 service for instance - courtesy of Wikipedia… After gaining the required letter of recommendation, due to his ability to speak German, French, Arabic and English, Symes was commissioned as a Lieutenant into the Royal Navy, operating Motor Torpedo Boats (MTBs) in the Mediterranean while based in Alexandria.[2][3] Quickly rising to command his own boat, he broke anti-torpedo measures in a raid on Tripoli.[2][3] After rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander, he took part in protecting the landings that led to the liberation of Crete.[2][3]

Ah yes. That will be ‘The Antlerprise’

But mixed to a precise formula and not simply made up of any old pastel shades they had at the back of the paint shop

Literally my workbench itself this time! For some time it’s become apparent that the Enniskillen diorama was dominating the workbench. Lovely as it may be as a backdrop, much of the time it’s been used as a table for storing modelling things on. So I’ve upended it - it can be taken out of storage and made ready for photos in 5 minutes - and given the space back to modelling. Ironically I now have my longest test track ever..have installed a basic 5’3 line on a series of diorama baseboards stitched together, hidden at back of bench. Pretty it ain’t but functional it is! It doesn’t obtrude but allows long enough of a run to give locos a good workout.

Cheers Harry. Yes, the UTA black is rather fine and actually made the SG3s and UGs rather glamorous. One can only wonder what a VS would have looked like in that livery - possibly like a shrunken Royal Scot in LMS postwar black / livery 6115 Scots Guardsman used to carry in initial preservation. Can’t paste links for some reason but there are lots of images out there.

I take the Henry Ford approach to GN locos. Any colour you like as long as it’s black ….