NIR

A tractor cab! What luxury.

I like BR blue with a bit of maroon but not enough to inspire anything.

19 hours ago, LARNE CABIN said:

Hi @NIR, yes, I agree, it was behind a fence and I didn't expect any link to the railway. In the photo of the jeep that @Irishswissernie posted on my Larne Harbour Station thread it shows at least three storage tanks and a couple are very close to the railway, close enough to include as another unique identifying landmark to Larne Harbour! It just seems strange that there is hardly any information available about Lobitos and it must have been quite an important business at that time!

I had a look at that photo and in the back of my mind I'm thinking the tanks were marked Texaco or something in the 70s.

No, they were likely marked Burmah

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Lobitos_Oilfields

It didn't look particularly rail-served, it was on top of a slight cutting behind a wall or a fence.

7 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

What would be best would be maybe three or four models over a period, which along with the existing Cravens would allow MOST variants; with an accurate train being possible with one each of them, plus one Craven - in other words, the haphazard mix that was not just normal, but almost without exception.

Good thought, nobody really needs a full set of anything before Cravens, it's the liveries that are more important, and they were mixed too!

All I know is that generically they are a GEC Stephenson, which led me to this

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/documents/aa110072627

Could relate to the 1 Class, or maybe a competitor for the 101 Class (or even for the 111 Class), could just be an outline.

There are drawings of a GEC Stephenson here

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/152868-steel-works-locos/page/2/

Maybe they were standard, maybe not

17 hours ago, Northman said:

Don't forget about some N.Ireland buses.

Yes, a phlanx of Ulsterbus huddling together for safety at every station!

South Wexford is the one I should have travelled but now can not.

16 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

Maybe a thread about best memories from closed lines!

Already been done!

I'm wondering what routes people have not yet travelled, mine are quite a few...

Coleraine - Portrush

Manulla - Ballina

Athenry - Limerick*

Ballybrophy - Limerick

Limerick - Waterford

Wexford - Rosslare Europort

Mallow - Tralee

Cork - Midleton*

Cork - Cobh

Docklands - Broombridge*

Clonsilla - M3 Parkway*

* opened since I lived over there

Ballybrophy - Limerick - Athenry - Waterford is looking particularly interesting...

A major cost advantage of buying GM was that your small order could be piggybacked onto a much larger build of the same basic locomotive, GM then covered the basics with whatever bodyshell/face you wanted.

GMs were late 40s tech so were tried and tested by the 60s.

Without scaling the drawing the etch windows are a little too tall within themselves and too big within the etch profile.

Using a vernier to scale my touchscreen(!) the etch windows are 1mm too tall, the middle etch window 1mm too wide and the etch profile 2mm too low over the windows but about right everywhere else.

Waterford looks 60s modernisation but I can't think of anything 30s deco or international style except, maybe, Larne Harbour as was.

Barytes has always sounded a bit mystic to me, a bit 'offworld'.

Stand behind the yellow lines!

I don't think it's changed. I wandered from a public park straight onto some track in a European capital city not long back.

It's well known that Ireland is a difficult market to sell into, on many levels, lots of puzzling red-faced anger!

A good photo of these 'back to backs' at Cork Albert Quay

I remember being fascinated by a photo of this area in an early 70s railway magazine, a small fan of sidings closing onto a dead end track under a bridge in a steep cutting.

On 24/8/2020 at 6:02 AM, Buz said:

Without a lot of messing about and a very large space your not going to get anything like a full signalling system but you will get a better version with color lights but it will still only be a hint of a system.

Colour lights are sited more fluidly than semaphores. With each one being both a stop and a distant signal, depending which colour aspect* is showing, it's more about equidistant succession and advance route indication than strict positioning at points.

So on a layout maybe a colour light with route indication sited somewhere before any diverging points on the approach and another sited somewhere beyond the end of the platform before any converging points.

Colour lights on single lines and ground colour lights due to their function** are more or less tied to the same position as semaphores however so should be sited more immediately at entrances/exits of loops and sidings.

* for 3 aspect signals red/yellow/green. 2 aspect signals still pair as a yellow/green 'distant' followed by a red/green 'stop' to give 3 aspects over the space of two signals on more lightly used lines

** on double lines signals ensure separation along each line, on single lines they ensure no oncoming conflicts, in shunting they give authority for a specific movement

1 hour ago, patrick said:

Posted yesterday.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrgVLa8cM6Y

Are those white tank wagons from 01:38 white cement bubbles, in 1964?

The junction with minimal access, the terminus with no capacity for tidal flow, both clearly reductions to absurdity but perhaps of some value when compressing things into an essence.

Everything else? Well that's easy

Antrim onto the Lisburn line looks like a good example, access via the right hand line from somewhere on the other side of the station back when Belfast-Ballymena was double track, and there's even a passenger bay!

(Parting Shot/N Johnston)

I was there a few years ago doing family history. It's really easy to get access and would only take a couple of hours for anyone in Belfast.

48 minutes ago, hexagon789 said:

Not sure if any Irish railway companies followed the same practice as the British Midland?

Yes these are just functional, not prototypical to a company or era, but there's a lot more of it around these days.