Galteemore

Classic GSR simplicity prevails in this part of Co Sligo

That’s the cheap part of it. The expense comes in hiring the image consultants who tell them what to make !

https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/30915006/dromahair-creamery-cleen-county-leitrim https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/30915005/w-h-parke-and-son-cleen-county-leitrim Here you go!

Coming together really well David and curved bits are always a pain. That really looks the part.

Belfast had the SS Divis, used until 1979. One of its triple expansion steam engines is preserved at Straffan.

Some receptacles await loading at Rosses Point.....interestingly the official web page for Manorhamilton’s creamery points out that it moved from Lurganboy to its current site to be close to the railway. Although it’s actually in the middle of the town and nowhere convenient for the station ! Dromahair’s creamery was slap beside the SLNC out at Cleen, but was not apparently a source of traffic. The buildings still stand - and I think the trackbed is just behind if Google maps and my memory are to be trusted. My mother tells me that the milk from her farm was collected and taken here - effectively bartered for flour and meal. Just in across the road is this fantastic classically N Leitrim shop....locals would run up bills in shops like this for months on end in the 50s, accounts to be paid off when cattle were sold. Thanks for starting this thread - helps develop the social history side !

Yes - as were chicks. My mother remembers walking up to Lisgorman to get boxes of chicks off the railbus.

As a follow-up, I checked out Michael Hamilton’s SLNC memoirs which include a highly detailed account of every major freight flow through Dromahair in the late 40s - which was a fairly typical rural station in many ways. The only mention of dairy produce was the import of new ‘creamery cans’ (which IIRC is the Irish for ‘churn’ ) for farmers to use. He makes no other mention of milk as a traffic source, apart from occasional imports of ice cream from Sligo. Eggs for export, on the other hand, feature large. The biggest freight flow of all into Dromahair, however, was alcohol....

Cavan and Leitrim had a ‘milk brake van’ 2L. Alphagraphix do a kit. Creameries tended to be local cooperative affairs in Ireland so raw milk didn’t tend to travel too far I think. Nothing like the milk trains supplying London’s lactate needs...PS ....the map here will show how close some of the creameries were to one another. It’s not a map of every facility , just those that were torched in 1920-21.... https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.rte.ie/amp/1137689/.

If you’re really clever you can make them bounce !

Yes it’s a diverse market which is what we need. If I wanted 30 wagons I’d use one of the big firms - as I have often done in the past. By way of illustration, this invoice arrived with some bearings and couplings this am. Old school - goods supplied and you pay on receipt!!

Yes, being mainly a scratch builder these days, I tend to have to use mail order too! But there are also many small High St model shops who are now using mail order to stay alive. It’s worth supporting them if you can. I also use Eileen’s and many of the other 7mm supplier community. That’s one of the big debates in our world - how to best support trade in supplying kit and scratch build needs as RTR grows .....we really want to keep a diverse, mixed model railway economy if we can! We sometimes visit the Kent coast for fish and chips and there’s a tiny shop in Ramsgate which supplies gamers. I have bought wire and metal angle when there as it’s much easier browsing his stock than trying to look at tiny pictures of wire online....

Can’t comment on Mark’s as I haven’t lived in the Republic since 2002, and NI since 06. I currently live near two small model shops in Buckinghamshire and they are great for supplying bits at fair prices. One may pay a little more for big stuff but it’s worth it over time -for convenience (no damaged locos in the post) and no £4 postage costs on a £1.50 pot of paint !

The ‘box-shifters’ tend to to sell ‘boxes’ rather than ‘bits’ if that makes sense. So they are fine for buying big ticket items - often less helpful at supplying the miscellaneous smaller bits that modellers need. The sale of locos and other big ticket items helps smaller shops remain viable to supply those things like wire and switches and little pots of paint.

Thousands of pilgrims can’t be wrong Noel....the real Lough Derg is in Donegal/Fermanagh. What it lacks in size it makes up for in sanctity...https://www.loughderg.org/, and to keep vaguely on a railway topic, it was served by Pettigo station, with a ghastly canopy that was required to shelter all the pilgrims from grim Ulster weather.

And an Irish-American President with a publicly confessed penchant for train travel....

Late to the party here, David...but have you any experience casting vans or box wagons? Trying to work out how the vertical side and end frames would match up...

There are also other wider economic factors to bear in mind. The events of the past year have left a huge hole in public finances, which will have to be repaired by a variety of means. Public sector employment in GB for one will have a pay freeze and I suspect that discretionary disposable income may take something of a hammering for many of us.

You can see why an alternative voice actor was used. Hard to imagine the threats of Vader with a West Country burr!

More useful tips David, as this inspiring build progresses. Looking really good and I will be interested to see your solution to the running plate issue, as it is exercising my mind for a future project. Watching this build closely....

And you can inspect a more fully restored version than the Irish one at Quainton Road near Aylesbury...,

The raw material is stronger, but a lot will depend on how it’s put together. If you’re building 6w coaches I’d use plasticard - much easier to build up the panelling etc.

Depends what you want to build and in what scale. I have used both plastic and metal. Properly treated, plasticard is very robust. What are you thinking of building ?

Very nice as ever David - and a huge milestone as Ken says. It’s a lot of prep work with all the measuring and cutting — then that breathtaking moment when you push the wheeled chassis .... delightful to see and the elegance of the loco is already apparent.

Great work. I’ve built an F6 in 7mm and they are lovely - once you get past making all the curvy bits! What’s the donor loco - an L and Y 2-4-2T?