DJ Dangerous

Awesome photos! Where are the containers actually loaded onto the flats?

Blasphemy!!! Being serious, though, haven't all eighteen of them been heavily rebuilt over the last decade anyhow? If so, they're probably more akin to twenty year olds rather than fifty year olds.

Christmas lights like this?

And no Tin Vans!

How come some of your white / ivory Bubbles have light grey chassis like the Orange ones?

Lovely photo, and a trip to the Wicklow Mountains would really crown my visit well.

Were some of your Bubble chassis donated by selfless orange Bubbles?

Well, for a couple of hours, maybe!

I have to visit Ireland some day and skulk around there for a while!

Savage, what did Fran say yesterday? If we ask for it now, we'll have it in 2024? Or was I just seeing what I want to see?

Yeah, imagine buying HO Gauge Lima coaches to repaint and haul with those locos. Oh, wait... Being serious though, HO Gauge track is the same as OO Gauge, so I can't imagine any benefits in re-tooling anything. So, when are you guys releasing the O Gauge 141's?

Maybe re-title this thread and post regular updates here so... Definitely have one devoted fan here at least!

So much awesomeness crammed into so little space... Five 071's in one photo! Do you go there every Friday?

They've probably had them in stock the last 12 months, just holding them back to troll you and @Noel...

Not looking for any Tin Vans???

I think that @Bumble_Bee is referring more to FB pages than FB groups. FB Groups are almost like internet fora, whereas FB pages are like owner-operated websites with a lot less user interaction. The main reason to have a page is for promotion, not so much for discussion, but building an audience requires work and / or costs money. There needs to be an incentive to do so. I can only assume that Bumble would be on there several times a day, publishing information, articles etc, and investing a couple of hours in sharing these in order to boost popularity.

Just to note, Facebook for example, doesn't seem to show an independent Irish model railway page high up in the search results, so there is definitely an opening to create one. Facebook opens up access to a much much wider audience than the website ever will - Facebook is almost like a giant closed version of the internet. However, the flip side is that unless you're prepared to put in a lot of work in manually sharing posts (trust me, I know how much work it takes with sharing posts about rehoming animals), or prepared to pay to have Facebook share your posts, there will be no visibility. What is your plan regarding the Facebook page, long term? What sort of audience figures do you expect over what time intervals, and what will you do to reach those goals?

I suspect that as @murphaph says, the visual aspect of the parcel plays a role. If it looks like a birthday present, and doesn't set off any detectors, then it's probably gonna pass through no problem... I hope to test this theory very soon with a few IRM buses. Two other factors will be the shippig agent, and how well-prepared the arrival destination is. Here in Las Canarias, they started preparing customs etc for BrExit in 2016, put everything into place, so nothing really changed in January, other than they actually started applying the charges. If something is shipped via Correos / An Post / Royal Mail, it's likely to fly under the cistoms radar due to the volume of parcels these entities deal with, and declaration is then left up to the recipient. If something is shipped va GLS, or Muppets like DHL, they are bored, have nothing to do because tey're terrible and nobody wants to use them, and they are guaranteed to charge fees.

Ah, @BosKonay. The kids of today have an attention span of about five seconds. Fora are too difficult for them, social networking is where it's at.

With all due respect, @ShaneC, and I apologise in advance if this is poorly worded or comes across too strongly, but it almost appears that you are here looking for an argument, rather than looking to learn or share. Some members here (not including myself) are offering you invaluable insights into industry, how things work, what the cost structures are, and instead of taking on board what they say, you dismiss it straight away. We're talking about several lifetimes of combined experience, from many different perspectives. These insights are something that many of us, maybe even most of us, will never have been privileged enough to see before, and should not be taken with a pinch of salt. You seem to be missing the whole point of a business: profit. Comparing what you can print in your bedroom to what a company can do is just nonsensical. It's apples vs. oranges, Canary Islands v. Ireland, there's just no comparison. Profit is generally speaking the incentive for creating a business. You view profit as a cost when planning, along with things like research and development, plant and equipment, wages, materials, taxes, travel and transport, shrinkage, many others, and decide on what is viable. If one were to set up a business and not make any profit, wouldn't one be better off packing shelves in a supermarket? There are always exceptions. I don't know the IRM lads personally, but get the impression that their margins are very small, and in cases such as the Ballast Plough Vans, were probably negative - that was like a favour to the community. Again, I can't speak for them, but when you look at pricing in general, economies of scale, how small the Irish market is now, and how much smaller it was three years ago, you can't help but draw such a conclusion. Likewise for Shapeways. The incentive for providing a marketplace is going to profit. The incentive for sellers using that marketplace is profit. To say that 100g of plastic is worth a Euro is ignoring everything else that has gone into designing and creating the product that costs more than a Euro. With time and experience, manufactures, designers, vendors etc will know what the correct balance is likely to be for a product launch, quantity produced vs. sales/time curve. Nobody wants to spend money on something only to see it not sell, and at the same time they want to sell enough to make the launch worthwhile. I'm sure that @Warbonnet said something to this effect regarding the next run of Irish buses, as 80% of the most recent launch sold out in about three days. I'd suggest that you take on board what you are hearing from these members, and try to use it constructively to learn a little more about how things work in the real world. It would also be great if you were to start selling some of your own SLA products here on the forum - with time, you would have real-world case studies that demonstrate how things compare, rather than just speculation. Going by the footbridge put forth by @RobertRoche, there is definitely interest and support for 3D-Printed projects such as this. Again, I mean no offence, but please start reading what members here post, and try to assimilate the information rather than ignoring it.

And the US has a population of 330 million people versus Ireland's 5 million. I'll be the first to confess that I've never seen a Micro-Trains model in person, nor a side-by-side comparison photo with IRM's stuff, but looking at images online, they remind me of Lima stuff for some reason.

Also worth pointing out that Hungary is even cheaper than China for labour.

Average wage in Dongguan is about a quarter of a Dublin wage, according to this. Probably closer to a fifth or a sixth when factoring in the weekly hours, as you pointed out. Still a huge huge saving if a project is likely to involve hundreds or thousands of man-hours labour. Plus the plant and the experienced technicians are already in place, avoiding start-up costs and quality issues due to inexperience. It would take a very bold investor with a lot of patience to start manufacturing in Ireland, and a market willing to pay ten times the price per item. Maybe with time, as Ireland becomes reknowned as a manufacturing capital, more companies contract Irish manufacturers, and economies of scale kick in, prices would drop. Possible, definitely possible, but probably not probable.

The kids must love you around Christmas time.

She's faking it. The computer isn't even plugged in.