Galteemore

Lovely work, David. Those subtle colour highlights really lift the ground cover. And the hawthorn trees are brilliant!

Slow progress here. Touched in the outline of a simple harbour so that quay line had somewhere to go!! You can just glimpse the suggestion of a crane as at Fahan Pier on the Lough Swilly. Then, decided that factory on loading bank looked wrong. Have gone instead for a backdrop of patchwork fields as seen in a colour pic of Glenfarne. Have reused the name of the factory but this time for a shop in ultra low relief. Only lettering, drainpipe, bargeboards and sills are in 3D - all else is flat. Have also given a rendering of the local town itself - all thanks to John Ahern via Mr Holman. Garda barracks, pub and a clothes shop hopefully giving impression of street curving away....Much to do yet but I really need to get back to stock building soon.....

Well deserved award - congratulations! Scenery coming on well too; thanks for sharing how it’s done...most useful! I have a quay line closed off by a gate in the harbour wall. I’d thought of suggesting the other end of the quay on the backscene. Think I will now !

Courtesy of Fred Dean on Flickr

Beautiful work Eoin. Takes me back to Connolly c1980 watching 121s on the Sligo train!

Thanks gents. Glad Ben Bulben was still recognisable! I personally don’t like the arrangement of the scales - would prefer to space them out against a blank wall- but it’s just how they were at Dromahair. We have a letter from an SLNC guard describing how he used to weigh my grandfather’s freshly caught salmon from the River Bonet there (the fish were loaded on the railcar at Lisgorman) for onward transmission to Hanlons the Dublin fish merchant. So out of family loyalty I had to keep it authentic even though I’m not modelling Dromahair itself! And you are right JHB - the bicycle was ubiquitous in a way that we tend to forget now. Mine is modelled on what I remember bachelor farmers riding around North Leitrim in the 70s - bikes that in all probability had been shipped in on the SLNC decades before! Image from Dromahair heritage website.

Bit more scenic work done now. Bit of set dressing and backscenes starting to go in. I’m not really a painter so less is definitely more!

Sorry - mea culpa! The steam crane was a daily sight on my school commute to York Road in the 80s so I should have remembered.....

And here it is courtesy of Flickr. Although worth noting that it is a hand powered crane and not a steam one..........https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=rpsi+hand+crane&client=safari&hl=en-gb&prmd=isvn&sxsrf=ACYBGNT706QApIJN8UrCHshRRAGEUaJdag:1579641281121&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiN7LurzpXnAhWSo3EKHRTtC-kQ_AUoAXoECAsQAQ&biw=375&bih=628&dpr=2#imgrc=n4q-nnw9OfZl3M

Interesting comment John, on the D6 class. They are striking locos with a real presence, like a GNRI S class which had spent a lot of time in the gym... photo courtesy of Mike Morant’s smugmug site....https://transportsofdelight.smugmug.com/RAILWAYS/IRISH-RAILWAYS/GREAT-SOUTHERN-RAILWAY-STEAM/i-72sHVQm

Thanks for posting, Dave. Glad I got to see it for real when we lived in Dublin from 99-02.

Thanks David - sounds like a good and ingenious fix! Any recommendations on a source for the magnets, please?

Thanks Eoin. Mike Sharman only died last year. He was an engine technician in the RAF, working latterly on Hercules transport planes but excelled at small scale engineering too! I’d never seen video of his work before.

Rather like the late G P Keen, Fry had an eclectic modelling style uncommon today. Thankfully so - hence we have this wonderful cornucopia of odd prototypes that never made preservation - and are not modelled elsewhere. A real treasure trove.

Had hoped to make Stevenage but life got in the way! Sorry to hear about the layout frustrations but sounds like you’ve been busy; hope all the gremlins get sorted. And that’s a pretty stellar social gathering....definitely A-list! I’d be interested to hear about the magnets as I have heard of this issue when researching for my own installation.

Beautiful. Those 4-4-0s had a spidery grace that marks them out and you have really captured it.

Thanks gents. All part of a work in progress to (a) disguise an ugly bracket at the front of the layout and (b) to help mask the fiddle yard exit. The normal convention is a bridge or tunnel, but a railway bridge spanning 4 tracks wouldn’t fit with the topography of the town, and such a feature would look odd anyway in such a railway backwater - it’s not the Cork main line! So a few dodges will be employed. This is the first - a fisherman’s shed (of which we only see the rear) with an abandoned boat and other aquatic detritus. Other disguises are in preparation...the shed needed a bit of thought as it’s right at the baseboard edge and fulfils a semi-structural role. So it’s made from ply and covered with DAS to replicate the rough render one sees in some parts. More bedding in to do yet...

Got a resin rowing boat for Rosses Point and painted it up to look suitably wrecked...will hopefully add a nautical air as I haven’t got room to model a shoreline...more foliage to add yet

There is one possible way round it, with a degree of plausible historicity inspired by events a bit further east: one of the side notes in Cavan and Leitrim history is the application of Irish tricolour lining to one of the 4-4-0 tanks circa 1920 during the War of Independence. The loco was then known as ‘the Sinn Fein engine’. The political attitudes of Irish railwaymen played a role in the wider conflict, such as refusals to convey military traffic. Given the long history of Irish nationalism amongst the ‘men of the West’ it is no big stretch to imagine some enthusiastic Redmondites in a remote outpost like Belmullet painting its ironwork and woodwork green in the Home Rule crisis of 1911-14....

That is spectacular!!! Really captures the look. Reminds me of my own trips along the old MGWR in the 80s - when such architecture characterised stations like Athlone.,Beautiful, understated work

Yes, it’s funny how our minds move on to project 2 right in middle of project 1! Dioramas are a great way to go - and quick! And you really can knock up 36.75 track quite easily with old Hornby oo rail and card sleepers. This whole thing took less than an hour from start to finish as a rough test piece of 5’3” track ...

I’m not a maths teacher, JHB, but it does make sense. The only issue would be how much sheer scratch-building one would have to do. It’s tricky enough in ‘pure’ 7mm but using a non-standard scale would shut one off from all kinds of useful stuff from buffers to scenic items. Indeed, the very track itself might look odd as the sleeper spacing would be off scale too if using proprietary 7mm scale track....

I ordered stuff in last week or so and had a quick reply. Said he’d post within the week. So he’s around somewhere !

Well done. They are great fun!