Galteemore

Gauge O Guild Virtual Trade Show is on tomorrow - free entry. Good place to see what’s on offer from both large and small traders. For Irish modellers, our friend Alphagraphix (the 7mm incarnation of Paddy Murphy) is having a stall .......https://www.gaugeoguild.com

Oh they were great ! There was an odd little working in the early 90s (once a week IIRC) which ran direct from Newcastle upon Tyne to Stranraer via Edinburgh and Glasgow Central. I used to get on it early am in Edinburgh - dawn train to home with a cup of tea in hand - hard to beat! It even had a name in the timetable - ‘Capitals United’ or some such

Making one’s own kit of parts is all very well but eventually it all has to be stuck together. Rear parts of ‘Enniskillen‘’s body more or less done...it looks quite basic but adding in beading, coal rails, window frames, window grilles and handrails all takes time, as does getting it square !

Not done anything on layout for ages (it’s mostly ‘finished’ anyway). Can you spot the new postbox? Did add real coal, secured with ModPodge, to bunker of No 42, which is posing in the sun....and ‘Titania’ got some too...the lumps look large but prototype pics show similar....

Thanks Ernie: and of course you’ll be uploading SLNC first seriously - many thanks for what you provide us with ...

Classic Millstone Grit. Reminds me v much of holidays along Leeds and Liverpool canal and Worth Valley Rlwy

Yes please !

Sligo Mail c1980.....wonderful ...

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...