meathdane

Yikes! Painful year on the wallet, gonna need a pack or two of them

Dunshaughlin Harvest Festival is done, a massive thanks to @MikeO and Mike (apologies I'm not sure of your handle on the forum) @LNERW1, and @Metrovik for their displays and help with everything yesterday and today. As well as the forum users who popped by the put faces to names. Bantry got off to a shaky start but after a quick fiddle about we were up and away. Festival committee is already raving about it, as are the majority of the attendees. So much so there are already talks about expanding the event and being given a larger exhibit area for next year, as well as pulling in other non sporting hobbies to give people alternatives to GAA and sporting hobbies. So thank you all for attending and making it what it was, and keep an eye out, there'll be a call to try and get more layouts and hobbyists booked for next year. Thank you all! Photo courtesy of @LNERW1

You and me both! Bantry will be making it's first appearance on Irish soil Sunday for anyone considering making the trek

I did it the good old fashion way, I had an old Hornby wagon with the massive wheel flanges and while the clay was wet I ran it through, cleaned off the wheels and ran it through again, did it a few times and It was perfect. Word of warning, if you're going to sand down Das, the surface layer will be dry after a day or two, depending on humidity and temperature, you want to leave it a week odd before sanding I find, to allow all the moisture to dry out completely, otherwise it's a task to get a smooth finish. Post a few pictures whenever you can, curious to see how you're getting along with this project

Managed to do a little bit with the new distillery I was peer pressured into working into the layout. Decided to go a little further and expand upon it. To me a distillery on its own doesn't make sense, so I've decided to put a little station/halt, in my mind the distillery would have sprung up, with the advantage of a local rail link to bring in skilled labour from further a field, then naturally expanded into rail service as the industry grew and there was a greater demand for the import of raw goods and export of the fine stuff. So using my advanced, top of the line photo editor on my phone and finger, I've illustrated the plan here. Red is the platform, possibly with a raised station building on a bridge going over the tracks. I've yet to decide. Green is a footbridge Purple is Road access Turquoise is road Bridge. I'll move it to where ever the headshunt will accommodate Orange is Signal building Pink is signals for the platforms. Blue is going to be a now unused goods shed that the distillery originally built before expanding operations to take a short siding directly to the building. Yellow is the original distillery building Black is a storage shed and grain unloading dock built after the original distillery to cope with increasing demand. Likely going to be a half brick, half corrugated building, with a lean to to cover the vans as they're unloaded Hopefully this all makes sense Tracks will extended beyond points to give a headshunt and the loading track. All will be laid on 4mm cork. I've yet to figure out where I am going to place in coupling magnets. More than happy to hear any suggestions Thanks all!

Glad to hear you're on the mend Derek, take care of yourself

Some great ideas, I have plenty of containers, including Cie 20s l, Lyons, Harps and a few others. I would certainly like to give them a run over Bantry. The track is being laid on 4mm cork, you can see it poking out on the track leading to Bantry, I'm in the process of laying and cutting track, then itll get the cork treatment. I think you've all convincede that a distillery is the way to go, I may have to use short radius points to get it in, but I think I can manage it, it may be simplified, using Bantry as a drop off point and a pilot loco to shunt it back up the line into the distillery, and shunt from the distillery into Bantry for formation into a train. More to think and consider. I do have about a foot more I can extend the baseboard to give me a little more room to build the distillery

Thought we were going alternative history, you know, only the good stuff, or Shtuff as ye say

I do have a rake of 8 Ferts that need use, part of a special occasionally I was considering it, I have a few bulk Grains, hence the idea of a distillery, could have Hs and grains servicing it. Plus licence for some private owner wagons. Possibly even a Guinness distillery, to use my Guinness 40s in an alternative world where a Cork based brewery still used the rails! @Mike 84C you're a bad influence you know!

Did some track laying. Hmmm'd and hawww'd about putting a distillery or a beets siding on the extension, but decided against it, there's enough operation on Bantry to keep me occupied, so just a small single track continous loop. The second line is a run to the small fiddle yard, disguised as a widening to double tracks, which connects back to the single track, and can double as a run around or storage siding when needed. Going to have a smaller runaround in the fiddleyard for smaller trains. Thanks all

Great stuff Alan, thanks again! The man himself to the rescue, I may have to name it Alan after yourself when it's all said and done

First part has arrived, the new 5 pole motor, which actually fits the current chassis and mount, so great success there! Will be using wires for the connections from pickups to decoder, back to Motor. If anyone has any suggestions for a small decoders that would work in the limited space of an 040 and is compatible with a NCE powercab, I would very much appreciate the suggestions Thanks all!

Thanks Alan, It is ambitious alright, but if I'm gonna try, I'm gonna really try! We'll see how this all goes, it could very well End up going wonky. If it ends up being half of the quality you put out, I'd be a very pleased man! Thank you for those links, exactly the kind of parts I reckon I'm going to need for this project. Though lamp irons are oddly awkward to come by. Most recommended etch is OOP from Markits, the owner of which passed away last month sadly, everything else seems to be coming up either 0 guage or wagon ones! Thanks David! Hopefully it'll come along, should be a fun little piece to try and learn! Gives me a good basis of wiring, quartering, light kitbashing, and getting a chassis running, plus expanding my toolkit!

I was thinking along those lines, possibly a local distillery purchase, loaned to the GSR during busy period, company goes defunct/transitions to road haulage and the GSR purchases it and allocates it to Bantry and surrounding areas as a light mixed traffic/shunter Arrives at Inchicore after transport, reboilered due to internal issues or The emergency causing oil rationing, hence the new chimney and dome, enclose the cab at the distillerys request and a handful of minor modifications, and we have the GSR 101S (Swindon) Not thinking too deeply or too worried about the history, this is just an exercise for the fun of it

Some great stuff on there as always Galtee, i did forget to mention I am going to enclose the cab and build a bunker, old one has been lost to time, but like you said, great practice for plasticard! As for the rest of the body, part of me does want to keep it looking as Hornby 040 as possible, kind of an ode to where many of us likely started, the other half of me wants to go off and do exactly as you suggest. I contemplated moving the dome further forward, not unlike ones seen on J15s. I do need to look into the chimney, at the very least it needs a new top (plasticard practice again? I am going to more or less sand the surface smooth and look into riveting it up myself, and that would include the smoke box. As for the chassis, I get where you're coming from, part of the exercise is to try and get the current chassis running as close as I can get to perfection, and as I said in the original post, realise the potential of the Hornby chassis. The other part of this equation is I don't think I have the experience or tools to build a chassis, I have been watching other build and my skills at soldering are not there yet, I am looking into building a couple of smaller brass kits before taking on and potentially ruining an expensive loco kit. If I was to build something, I'd love to try a Bandon tank kit for Bantry. I'd much prefer to put in that kind of effort to build something more prototypical I think in this instance modifying something existing is easier for my purpose, tools and experience