Galteemore

Amazing work, Eoin. And in 4mm, too! Could easily pass for a much larger scale

Good point JHB. The flip side of this is that for other types of business, the commercial model simply didn’t factor in travel either by customers or employees. Hence the myriad of cottage shops (which I remember in 1970s Leitrim). My father started his banking career in tiny towns where the banks probably don’t have a presence now. But in those days the manager and clerk both lived over the shop. And my dad’s laundry travelled home by train more often than he did! Those of us who model the steam era do well to read novels and short stories by the likes of William Trevor and John McGahern which give rather nice glimpses of the social dynamics back then. Alongside Sprinks on my shelf I also have Michael Hamilton’s personal history of the SLNC, which nicely illustrates how people actually used the line. We also have a letter from him describing in detail my grandfather’s fish trade with Dublin...

Presumably such commuter traffic as existed in Cork (the solicitors, bankers, and business owners must have lived somewhere!) was channelled through the tramways and the Passage line. With its double track section and rather racy tank locos, the latter system was (like the BCDR) something of an exception to the Irish railway leaning towards freight

Fascinating stuff. Is that the timetable in its entirety? Just seems that nothing arrived in Albert Quay before 1035! Must have made commuting rather difficult....

Shame! But as we both know, the reality is that it would probably have spent the 70s and early 80s mouldering outside Witham Street until it decayed into oblivion , or been reduced to ashes by the East Antrim Arsonists who regularly targeted Whitehead!

Agreed !! This is one of my hunting grounds - the Bluebell Railway archive of JJ Smith’s Irish stuff, http://www.bluebell-railway-museum.co.uk/archive/photos/jjs/i/index.htm,. It’s fascinating as you can track his movements around the SLNC just before closure and afterwards. He had the wit to record some really interesting stuff including the BCDR main line - four years after closure but still intact.

Just received another edition of my favourite Irish railway book - the one I’d take to a desert island- off eBay. It includes my favourite Irish railway pic - by JJ Smith. But I’d never noticed the car on the flat wagon before.....just ahead of the bogie brake being worked back to EKN for the 7:20 ....

Can’t think who talked me into it!

Indeed it is! It’s exactly a year ago that I took the plunge to model broad gauge. It’s been challenging but most rewarding...cue a few celebratory pics.

Saw one in my local model shop and it set me wondering. Nice little model.

Yes: think a drawing appeared in a recent New Irish Lines

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.