Hi WRENNEIRE, I respect this this as your space and appreciate the sequence in which you have been presenting things and don't want to intrude. I don't have the Heljan model but have just ordered the last 3 in stock at Hattons and will post a picture when received it that's in order. I'm in the US so that's a week or more off. I'm also expecting a J15 from OO Works this week and believe this is also worthy of inclusion here (not mass produced but RTR).
Hi WaYSidE, I agree that the Lima products were robust etc. and we still have a HO blue Lima class 33, that was part of a train set that Santa brought my then three year old son many years ago, now minus buffers, but still runs. However, while the early items produced in Irish livery are now legitimately collectible I have to admit to being turned off by them in their time, because to me they lacked any authenticity. Ultimately in modeling, in my view, some licence and compromise is necessary, but to my mind painting British Locos that never ran on Irish Rails in "sort of" Irish Liveries didn't make the cut. This thread really serves to demonstrate how far we have come. I also agree that it was nice to see "Made in Ireland" and "Guaranteed Irish" but on the other hand some of that range was so terrible, it didn't necessarily reflect well on Irish quality.
As a consequence I never considered building an Irish themed layout to be a realistic aspiration. That is until one evening when I was at a loose end on business travel, I wandered into a Hobby Lobby store (chain of very large stores catering in a generalised way to a wide range of hobbies) in Wisconsin and tucked away in one corner I discovered an Irish Train Set by Bachmann. At first I was very skeptical but this tuned out to be the K1 Woolwich loco with albeit LMS coaches in CIE Green livery and for me that made the cut and changed my aspirations completely (I now have three of these sets two of which are still sealed). Being late to the party I paid a bit over the odds (not nearly as much as some) for the Lima 201's on EBay but I'm now considering disposing of these and the GWR items etc. I collected over time (the aspiration was to build GWR) to help pay for all the Irish stuff we are anticipating. However, reading this thread has made me relent on considering disposal of no. 219 that is part of the LIma Train set L105500X05 (River Tolka and 2 x MK 3 coaches), I will now keep this set intact.
As for DCC that's also a long fingered maybe future project I need to crawl before i can walk.