Galteemore

Well yes. Trainee art restorers are encouraged to practice but you don’t start off with the Mona Lisa!

Sorry Dave - it fell off the back of a lorry - know how it is ...anyway you wouldn’t need a trailer unless you’re driving one of these....

My dad has one in the back garden....will see what I can do !

This is very fine work, Ken, and a most inspiring build. Carlsberg don’t make WT class tanks but if they did....

Van looks suitably grungy and careworn, David! Think you have got away with it and managed to make a purse - to continue the pigs ear metaphor! Loco is spot on - just like an F W Shuttleworth photo. Nice to see a Leitrim class just poking into shot...

Amazing to think that picture was taken 45 years ago - the loco had only been out of traffic 15 years at that point!

Looking good David - still plucking up the courage to finish painting the final bits on mine! I have a vague memory of door amendments,too....

One great thing you have done, Enda, is to curve the track through the station. Simple perhaps but incredibly effective.

Not as a rule, no..... http://www.taillampphotography.com/SGWR 1366_1371.htm

It’s one of those situations, I think, where one cannot eat one’s cake and still have it (I struggle to understand that phrase the other way round). Model railway production has vastly improved but customer expectations on availability may also have to change. From the 1920s until the 1990s (barring World War II/Irish Emergency I) model railway products were freely available but from a very limited range. Hornby Dublo for instance, would only furnish a very limited LM region layout with an 8F, 4MT, Duchess and class 20. The catalogue hardly changed year on year - and only by the last few years was Super Detail rolling stock produced. Otherwise the standard of HD models hardly changed from 1938 to 1968. Factory jigs and personnel at Binns Road were dedicated to the same task for decades. The business model has changed now, and model locos are produced in shorter runs but with increasing prototype fidelity as years go by. Compare a Hornby loco of the 80s with today - and the standard is changing all the time. To go backwards is pricey and inconvenient. As the business model changes, so must the purchasing one. And the sad reality is that you have to buy it when you see it.

Jon is a legend in the 7mm Signal world. You can see why...... .

Glad you learned from my mistakes David! Both looking excellent.

Yes, Ernie, I suppose the Manx Electric, and the Grimsby system are the closest parallels in these islands to interurbans. Although it could be said that the Dalkey route trams were rather special and relatively unusual for these islands, being bogie vehicles.https://en.sporvognsrejser.dk/other/howth-national-transport-museum-postkort-05

Lovely stuff. Even inspired a quick research trawl on Willwood/Crosse and Blackwell....http://builtdublin.com/factory-26-kings-inns-street-dublin-1/

Stunning work as ever, David. Very nicely finished off. The fireman looks suitably resigned to the prospect of a hard slog to the main line!

George - just to give the whole package...Here’s the vice @Georgeconna

TBM 220 comes alone George. There is a cheap vice available. But for precision you really need the compound table and steel vice. I also upgraded to a Roehm Chuck which makes swapping drill bits easier than using the supplied collets.

Long story short, @David Holman! I have recently made my first small steps in metal scratchbuilding as opposed to plastic work. I quickly discovered that the Archimedes drill does not cut nickel silver sheet quickly or efficiently! I discovered that many modellers use a small pillar drill. I’d fought shy of this before as I thought it would be bulky and not really of much value to my needs. This one is ideal though - it’s a Proxxon TBM220 with compound table. It’s already proved its worth. As for the new project, I’ll hopefully be able to post an update this week.

We’ll know it’s time to worry, Eoin, if he comes on here saying ‘gwan fellas, paint your locos whatever colour ye like, is no odds to me’.

The way my modelling went this afternoon I’m happy to look for a while George! Steeling myself for attempt No 3....

Your wish is my command, Mr H - next project under way. Although this one is an altogether bigger job...done under the watchful eye of the Collooney station staff in the background...

This is very nicely done. The transition between ballast and trackside verdancy is spot on.

Cheers MM. They are Methfix transfers from the Historical Model Railway Society - 1920s Southern Railway. The labels such as ‘guard’ and ‘third‘ are straightforward. But producing ‘SLNC’ means cutting out individual letters from the ‘Southern Railway’ carriage transfers. There is if course, no letter C in that phrase. So I took the letter ‘o’ and sliced a chunk out. It was a fiddly job...

This was meant to be a quick fill in project but I think we are finally done after 3 weeks! R W Sparks’ 1920s rebuild of 6w saloon No 4 awaits her loco in the evening sun....loads of mistakes made and lessons learned. It’s not perfect by any means. But for a first effort at an SLNC coach I am not completely disheartened. The real No 4 makes an appearance in an @Irishswissernie shot ..seen here at Enniskillen. This one also made it behind the platform - echoing how the SLNC 6w were stored at Manorhamilton, and where the real no 4 spent much of her last years.

One 7mm card kit is available to start you off...Alphagraphix, naturally. It’s for one of the bogie coaches which started on the Ballymena - Larne ‘boat train’, then ended up in Donegal via Ballycastle. An ideal way to start scratchbuilding with that as a drawing to help you.