Irishswissernie

The station area has 4 goods sidings plus a second loop (apart from the passing loop), the loop is to recess the local passenger as at Claremorris where the Ballina set used to wait between connections at Manulla. The cement silo siding is a loop; it is the curved innner siding leading back to the main fiddle yard and can take 20 wagons. Whilst the bubbles worked mainly as block trains on the prototype, when they reached the terminals they were often split and wagons shunted and re-arranged. At Waterford I videoe-d a set during the day having wagons removed/ and or shunted by 3 different 071 class which in the interim visited the fuelling point. The other sidings in the station are for Guinness, fertiliser or bagged cement. One operation I noticed is that 4 wheel wagons were always worked behind bogie wagons on a train ; noted especially on a mix of Guinness wagons at Claremorris and Waterford and on Containers/Guinness at Limerick Junction. At Claremorris the Ballina branch set and loco shunted Guinness wagons at times with the coaches on one end of the loco and wagons on the other. This was probably to cut down on shunting moves and noise in the middle of the night when the fulls arrived from Dublin. The theme behind the model is that back in the 19th century ore was discovered west of Macroom in County Cork and a port was built between Glengarriff and Castletown Bearhaven on Bantry Bay by the company for exporting the mineral. At the same time the Mining company wanted better transportation by rail to the rest of Ireland and to overcome the problems caused by the Cork & Macroom Company and the CB&SC not being on speaking terms which had resulted in the connection between the 2 companies at Cork being taken out (It was re-instated in WW1 for troop movements at the insistence of the government) Plus of course at the time the Cork City railway had not been built so there was no connection at the time to the rest of the country. The GS&WR wanted a piece of the action so it financed a connection from Kilbarry south west via the cattle markets and Cork North station and then westwards to Ballincolling on the CM&DR. From their terminus at Macroom the line returned to the valley of the River Lee as far as the mine at Ballingeary and then via a tunnel under the Pass of Keimaneigh down to the shores of Bantry Bay , thence via Glengarriff to Castletown Bearhaven. All rather implausible given the gradients involved but I have amended the topography, geology, industry and population where needed to make the line a busy freight network ca2000. The 'Tara' wagons when they come will cover the ore trains from the mine to the port at Seal. Closure of the CB&SC system in the early 1960's resulted in an increase in freight via Glengarriff for the Bantry area and points south plus freight for the Oil industry installations in Bantry Bay. OOPs! Forgot your query Noel. Baseboards and legs etc are 2" x 1" (my usual size used for over 30 years with no problems) and the baseboard tops are Sundeala board. This is relatively soft and can be cut with a sharp carpet Knife. It is braced underneath every 12" The station boards are 1/8th inch lower than the others as they will be ballasted with Gaugemaster ballast (one or two of the points in the photos have this attached still. They are from a previous layout. Well that's enough of tonight's bed-time reading. Lights out everybody!

In late 2016 my wife er sorry I mean my wife and I decided to move house from Haltwhistle (Centre of Britain) to be nearer to our 5 children and their families. As they live in Didcot, Nottingham, Southport, Brandon, Co Durham & Salt Lake City I am still not sure how she plans to achieve this, however this meant the immediate demise of my Model Railway with everything packed away back up in the loft room. 16 months further down the line we have had 2 people view the house and I am not hopeful that this rate of potential buyers will improve. I have accordingly decided to build a new layout but capable of being dismantled and at 10' by 5ft- 3ins easily installed (famous last words) in a new property. I have built numerous layouts over the years and back in the 1980's;90's exhibited 15 different ones at North East England Shows. I also have several different prototype interests Irish, North Eastern Steam, Scottish steam, Swiss and USA short line. I want a layout with shunting interest, fairly long trains (20 wagons) and continous running. The layout would also need extensive storage sidings to hold approx 7-8 complete trains. Storage sidings can be used with any of the particular area/company/country being modelled so only the actual station/yard will need to be inter-changeable. The baseboards are built and I have been checking that the trackwork actually fits the space available.

Yes that looks correct; I have also identified 3 of the others as Thurles and Waterford; thanks. Ernie

I have added another 7 unknown locations to Flickr. This is the link to the Photostream https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishswissernie/? I have another 50 odd Irish negatives from the 1960's already identified to add in due course with more on the way(fingers crossed)

Release date I understand is 29th February 2019! Ernie

These appear to be the same location.3106 appears in the Brake Van view. I looked at Youghal but couldn't find a view with the church. Ernie

Great that checks out, many thanks, here is another one. Ernie

I have just acquired a batch of Irish negatives with more on the way. A fair number need the location identified. ex GN 333 . I will add more to Flickr in the next few days. Any ideas? Ernie

3 Packs ordered! All I need now is somewhere to run them plus the ballasts and bubbles already to hand and the Taras' on order! Oh and the 24t hoppers! ERnie

I have 80 odd photos of the C&L plus a few Tralee & Dingle in tnis Flickr Album to assist in catching the atmosphere! ERnie

Ernie's Railway Archive is a Flickr site with at present some 12000+ photos and over 21 million hits. I have had in the past some problems with copying but always protect the images (especially those I have uploaded with the permission of copyright holders such as the Armstrong Railway Photographic Trust) with copyright holders overlayers. It is easy to copy images useing a snipping tool; I use one myself, but only for images for my own use. You can't stop copying but also if you are going to upload images etc then you should also have the copyright or permission to use the images on an internet site. Ernie

Sorry I havn't; I think I saw some prints on E Bay recently but as I need copyright permission to use on Flickr they were not of much use to me. Having said that sods law dictates several colour original slides should turn up shortly and selll at greatly inflated prices! Found some original Cork City and Albert Quay negs to add to flickr but I am under instructions to visit Mother in Law shortly! regards Ernie

Yes its Roscrea, thanks. I have also amended my post on the 596 photo which thanks to another photo taken by Henry Emeleus appears to confirm that the train is arriving from the Inny Junction direction. The M&GWR does have a gentle curve on its approach. Ernie

Looking for Cavan photos ,I came across some more of Cavan images in my files plus some on the GNRI, now added to Flickr. THe one below by Henry Emeleus is described as Cavan but I don't think it is. The earlier 2 have been identified. Ernie

I thought Cavan but couldn't get the photo to fit the track plan so I've done some more investigation. EDITED! Yes I now agree with you, there is one small clue in the Cavan images I have now added. THe Henry Emeleus photo from the top of the cutting shows the goods loading gauge and a small tip of this shows on the 596 photo Ernie

Yes I had already identified the Bantry views before uploading , its the 4-4-0 ( I think its D14 96) and the 0-6-0 (looks like J19 596) which need the location identified. The 4-4-0 view looks like at a fairly large station. Ernie

I've acquired a few more negatives/slides. 6 uploaded today, 3 of Bantry station and also 2 which need the locations sorted. This is the Flickr 'photostream site' https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishswissernie/? If you click on the 'albums' for specific areas. Put a comment on the relevant photo if you have an idea where the location is. Thanks Ernie

Fertilisers were top of my 'wants' list and I shall also be having the Guinness, container flats and a couple of Plough Vans. Add these to the 121's and also the UK NER G5's J36's & CR 812's also in the pipeline elsewhere and its just as well I was ordered off the drink 40 years ago and my eyesight is too poor for me to drive. Exciting times; if we could only sell the house and get moved nearer civilisation I might be able to get started on the new layout. (s) Ernie

Here in Haltwhistle (Centre of Britain) we have 2 feet of snow, only one road open to the rest of the World, all trains and bus services cancelled, no papers or bread. Nowt on telly -er no that's normal!!! The wife has now gone in meltdown because she has now run out of grapes!!! On the plus side I have ordered my rake of Tara's, uploaded over 50 images to Flickr (mainly 1920's Scottish) and have quite a few Irish images to add (narrow gauge and GNRI steam) I am off to the Keighley & Worth Valley Gala next thursday so we need weather up-turn soon. Still , look on the bright side, another day nearer death!!! Ernie Up-date; just been advised Madame has run out of Kitcats-- AAAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!

Discount still won't work, I have ordered 5 packs (A B C D & E) and have put both the discount voucher codes I have in the 'special instructions' box , if you can apply one of them and refund my Paypal. Thanks Ernie

I thought so, I video-d them several times 2000-2006 but they seemed to be a lot dirtier then. On the video's I took the loaded trains always stopped just past Church Road Box at the overbridge, and I think possibly the couplings were somehow slackened off or the vacumn brakes disconnected before going on to Alexandra Road. A few views in this album ERnie

Is the red oxide livery correct for the 2000 - 2006 Era? I can't tell from my photos and video! Ernie

Is that 70 dollars? Here in the UK we have to pay import duty and a duty collection fee if you are buying outside the EEC and I imagine its probably the same in Eire. I got stung a few times when I purchased some 0 scale freight cars from the US a couple of years ago. Books and magazines are exempt as they are deemed to be educational.There is a Roco one on German Ebay but its not Buy it now. Ernie

http://www.contikits.com/Page_3.html Geof Poulter at Contikits has a couple of s/h Hobbytrain V65's listed. Geof and Alison are old friends of mine, we have done shows and travelled extensively on the Swiss railways over the last 30 plus years and I regularly buy stuff from him (and then sell it back when I decide to do something else - usually a couple of months later!) ERnie

Its HO Scale and I don't think its in production at the moment but there are probably secondhand ones about. Ernie