Galteemore

Make contact perhaps via Phil Parker who knows John Campbell. Phil has a blog -searching for something like ‘Phil’s Workbench’ will find it. From my own days as a 16mm modeller, I recall that his speciality is coal fired live steam. A basic off the shelf generic 0-6-0 live steam loco from a factory outfit like Roundhouse will cost around £1500. A hand built T and D steam loco by a master builder is probably heading towards or above 5 figures tbh. 16mm Irish locos are not common, largely because the prototypes were quite big units. Archangel used to do a Cavan and Leitrim 4-4-0T IIRC. Accucraft had launched plans for the same loco c2019 but I am not sure that production actually occurred.

One of my college lecturers said you could judge the literacy rate of a society by how far the graffiti was off the ground….. There’s some fascinating examples of 1950s graffiti in Keith Pirt’s Irish colour photos - including ‘God save Egypt’ chalked on an RT tank at Adelaide during the 1956 Suez crisis….

Interesting to see that it was not always thus. Pictures of Manorhamilton 2 years post closure show the yard full of carriages with every window intact. One wonders, without venturing into simplistic truisms, just how that could happen. After all, it’s not as if the youths of late 50s Leitrim had much to entertain them.

My kids had this - although mostly the plastic Thomas stuff, which we used to make massive systems. Something must have rubbed off - Galteemore Jnr is now a management apprentice with Transport for London….My own weapon if choice as a youngster was Dublo 3-rail, which was a robust and rather fun way to build fairly large systems fairly easily, albeit with an emphasis on operation rather than scenic fidelity!

UTA green is darker than CIE.

Yes. It wasn’t especially well lit. In reality it’s a nice mid green.

TS Hill Books in Dorking have a copy - see ABE Books

Here’s one I did years ago. Rover Brooklands Green aerosol. Sold on to another modeller, for whom I returned it to MGWR russet brown!!

Have a look at raylo.co.uk for more of this kind of thing

Try again on Monday…..

Back in east Antrim more times than usual this year, sadly due to my father in law’s final illness and death. As a lad, he and his brother used the 3’ gauge yard at Larne as a playground / shunting trucks by hand! Spending a fair amount of time around Larne this year rekindled my childhood interest in the east Antrim 3’. Reading some of @Patrick Davey’s musings on scale inspired me to make a little 5.5mm scale diorama on a wargaming base. It allows very cheap and easy sources of material - 16.5mm track and components being easily found…thus standard Hornby train set track duly butchered here to produce 3’ panels. So here’s Kilwaughter siding during lifting c1954, based on a photo kindly supplied by @airfixfan complete with an IoM wagon for now - NCC stuff is in progress! This will be a sideshow to my main projects but may eventually come to something. I have at least 1 loco chassis in stock…..spot the large blade of grass when I tried taking pics in back garden!! Some of the other pics were taken within 20 yards of the GW main line near Swindon- hopefully some day I will find a suitable spot in the Vale of the White Horse to take backdrop pics!

Retro tinplate style. Designed for shed or garden layouts with long runs and an emphasis on operation and sheer atmosphere over detail. Classic and most enjoyable stuff, but a world away from Finescale.

Very very nice indeed. The late Steve Rafferty would have loved that RT of yours! The GW collection is fab - is that a ‘Galloping Alice’ amongst them ?

Great work - really good effort.

Wow, where has this been all my life? Tell us more about locos and stock please…

Fabulous work David. Long and winding road to get there, as it often is, but this is a terrific end result.

As someone who has spent much of his life studying in archives, the more copies of a rare document in circulation, the better. Especially when the fragility of websites and electronic media is borne in mind. There’s probably a case for lodging physical copies of instructions with the HMRS!

Probably grey. But faded, weathered black will be good enough to cover both!

Key shareholders in the BCDR were the Andrews family, who owned a mill in Comber. Thomas Andrews is the most famous scion (of Titanic fame) but the family made a huge impact in the political and industrial life of Co Down and the North in general. In the mid 50s, JM Andrews, a former PM of NI and BCDR director, was still, as a Stormont MP, advocating that the Govt reopen the Ex BCDR main line before it was lifted, pointing out its advantages over road expansion.

Probably could use Scotland as an analogy of what to expect - so lots of class 37s to see….here’s Northern Blue’s take on a 31…. Fascinating to speculate how the LMS would have handled it. Perhaps some of the old LNW classes which were superseded by Stanier designs might have made it across - such as Precursor tanks and George V 4-4-0s…image from LNW society FB.

Very nice. Looks right at home with the Bulleids.

Are you looking at military trains to make a war type scene ?

Ford Wedgwood Blue is cited by at least one source. Image courtesy Scooby’s Paints

Oh go on, indulge us….