Warbonnet

Are you going to rename yourself 'burnthebody' as a tribute?

Very good, what will you be recommending to power it and what would the rough price be? I had my hands on the very rare 071 kits a few weeks ago. They're done in resin with white metal bogie frames. The castings are excellent. Pity only 10 were made (I think)

Have been lucky enough to see the 201 in the flesh, super job Tony, well done and welcome!

Great photos guys! A bit late to the party with mine, but pics of 85 and other odds and sods on the final leg on the tour from Wednesday on my flickr page... 221 7:00pm Dubin-Cork Express by franburke, on Flickr

is mrsmaken mrbracken's female alter ego?

I believe gostude has several different accounts on EBay so quite possible!

Well all I can say is a massive thank you to JB for organising a great day out and the DCDR gang for their warm welcome and guidance yesterday. It was a brilliant day out. It was great to meet old and new faces from the site too. Also really encouraging to see a large amount of young volunteers, male and female working hard alongside the older hands in keeping railway preservation in this country running. Some people have questioned if the hobby is dying out, but from what I saw yesterday I can confirm that the preservation side of it is in safe hands for many, many years to come. Well done DCDR and the ITG crew up in Down! Anyway, enough of my waffle, some pics of the day out begin here on my flickr page A few to whet the appetite Downpatrick Shed by franburke, on Flickr 1 Downpatrick by franburke, on Flickr Young Volunteers by franburke, on Flickr

A couple of pics heading through d'local station this morning. Not my best pics by any means but sure hope you enjoy anyway 461 by franburke, on Flickr 85 by franburke, on Flickr

A couple of their steam locos are still split chassis but Bachmann have been upgrading them over the past few years. The new chassis fit under the existing body shell so you should be able to buy the new, upgraded DCC ready chassis and fit them under your existing loco should you split frame horror show go tits up.

Trains have operated in 'top and tail' fashion at high speeds around the world for at least 40 years, both powered at both ends or only at one end with no issues.

They made them in OO too but still a horror show. I demonstrated the size difference between OO and HO on here before with a couple of class 66s http://irishrailwaymodeller.com/showthread.php/2515-HO-scale-popularity/page3?highlight=Mehano

You may get US chips at a slightly lower rate but you'd still be talking 90 euro plus. There are some for 40-50 quid mark with generic sounds but they (well to me, anyway) sound dreadful. Hornby and Bachmann US are doing locos with cheap sounds but the former dont do any EMD sounds and the latter use tsunami sound boards which might not be transplantable. Irish Thump has an F Unit with tsunami sounds so he may be able to help there. They're limited in functions but the engine note is spot on for something like a 141 or 121.

I throw mine on a tiled floor, kick it across the room a couple of times and hope for the best.

Nice! I have a proto 2000 F7 A-B-B-A set in SP black widow with factory sound (QSI) and the sound is so poor compared to yours. I thought the tsunami was the best but the loksound sounds superb! Are the 8 pin or board replacements?

I'd check that the chassis is square (if you built the chassis yourself) and make sure all wheels are contacting the rails too. A simple check would be to put the wagon on a table and see if it rocks (like as if one wheel is not making contact with the table)

Absolutely not hindsight, it's called 'forward planning'. In 2005 the Mark IIs were over 30 years old, corrosion was a major issue and they needed replacing. The Mark IIIs were due an overhaul. Investment was available. Do you refurb 20 year old coaches (which also traditionally had corrosion issues) and continue with shunting arrangements for another 10-15 years lifespan and a large expense, or do you buy new trains for a 30 year lifespan while you have the funding from the government available? That's not 'pure hindsight', it's a business decision. Anyway, as you say. Onwards and upwards.

Exciting stuff Neil, thanks for sharing. Looking forward to seeing 216.

Should've pulled the trigger when you had the chance. 'He who hesitates is lost...' a wise man once said.

I've looked up a couple of figures around business travel, and it appears to equate to somewhere between 10% and 20% of all air travel. So, 80%-90% tagging along for the trip? I think not. http://www.businesstravelnews.com/More-News/HRG---Indisputable--Business-Class-Decline-Among-U-K--Companies/?ida=Airlines&a=proc & http://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-airline-revenue-is-made-from-business-and-first-class-tickets. They pay more for premium seats of course but it's still a small percentage of their business and turnover. The Mark IIIs in the UK have been extensively refurbished at least once in their lifetime. Only one diagram in the UK uses the Mark IIs today (DRS Curmbrian coast service) and the ones sold to the likes of New Zealand have been totally rebuilt, in some cases they're unrecognizable to their original design. IE decided to eliminate shunting movements and their expense and took advantage of a booming economy and capital available to replace them when they did. As an enthusiast I miss the stock, but if they held off back then, stuck with the Mark IIs and Mark IIIs and were to start replacing the stock now as it becomes life expired where would the capital investment come from? The country is broke, the public would see ancient stock and possibly be put off and operating costs would be higher. Rebuilds can cost almost 80% of newbuilds so I can understand IE's logic. 201s and fuel costs. EMD two strokes are known to be thirsty. However, fuel costs ten years ago were soaring and this obviously had a part in IE's decision. Why would car drivers need to access rail services when you argue that the train is not a viable competitor to the car? Business travellers coming to Dublin will no doubt have expense accounts, I know I do. Companies will pay for taxi fares to anywhere in the city. If regular people are travelling from Dublin then the LUAS and bus make the journey handy enough, or a taxi if needs be similar to the airport (but not as out of the way for most Dubliners). Cars make sense in Ireland, but smaller ones make sense in urban areas and they're making less and less sense in Dublin to the point where they're becoming anti-social. I can see a congestion charge situation coming in here in the next few years similar to London, where I thought it was excellent when I lived there as it kept traffic out of central London and easier for everyone to commute. The UK is seeing a growth in passenger numbers as their public policy is pushing more people to use public transport and the car is not a viable proposition to commute to work. See London congestion charge. The growth is around big city commuter travel as cars offer high costs in parking (and trying to find it) or congestion charge. Any growth rurally is due to heavily subsidized fares from the UK government which to my mind defeats the purpose of a private railway. After all, the privately run railway in Britain cost much more to run than BR ever did. I think it's unfair to say IE is run to prevent mass unemployment of their employees. Surely their wages and their infrastructure costs much more than any social welfare payments!!!

Not particularly true in the UK. EWS withdrew a couple of hundred locos that where not life expired (56s, 58s, 60s, 90s, 92s) and scrapped many of them or left them to rot in sidings while replacing them with 280 EMD locos. The reason why older locos are being refurbished by the likes of COLAS and DB is that the emission regs that have come into force mean that there is no current off the shelf design that will fit in the restrictive UK loading gauge design. GBRf are going around Europe looking for spare 710 engines to slap into 66s to get round this as much as possible. The 57 programme was partially successful, but have suffered reliability issues (look up the Cornish sleeper diagrams and you can see it's been littered with failures) and the leasing companies together with Freightliner saw that you could have a new 66 for not much more money. Freightliner quickly binned the 57s when production capacity for the 66s were freed up after the EWS order was completed. The HSTS were remotored as a stop gap as the Government faffed around with the new generation Intercity design and tender award. If the plan had've been more advanced (leaser requirements, electrification requirements, tendering process, bio-mode faffing) then the brilliant but tired HST would already have been retired by now.

No problem!

Your arguments like many of your posts, are a bit all over the place. "Air travel run for business class?" Never noticed any class division on Ryanair on routes to the sun, must've missed that. I fail to see why curtains are the be all and end all for business class train travel. I have used laptops on ICRs, with a handy plug socket at every seat (something missing on older coaching stock) without the need for a curtain. Comfort, the Mark IIIs were very good but were tired. Economic decision to get new trains while the money is there over expensive refurbishment made sense (this is where Kieran's point about new seats came into it that you happily dismissed to suit your agenda once again). Coaching stock needed shunting, 201s and 071s thirsty. mark IIs clapped out. I personally find the ICRs very good. Noisier? Of course, but it's not that noticeable to me and it hasn't affected passenger numbers. Most railway companies across the water and beyond have stripped back their catering as much as possible in recent years, including Virgin and my once beloved GNER and its successors. Good food on trains is like that on planes, a thing of the past. The M50 station idea is surreal to me. If you can show me a successful railway station on a motorway I will gladly read up on it. Heustons big problem is that it's too far outside the city centre. So why build something further away that's even more inconvenient? If I was a person travelling to Dublin city centre on business and was turfed out in cherry orchard I'd be livid. The opening of the Phoenix park tunnel next year to southern services to grand canal dock will be fantastic and I'd be happy to bet that it will increase travel numbers on IE. If you want people to switch from cars to the train for such journies it needs to be much faster, affordable and convenient than driving. Hence the calls for better line speeds and the calling at more city centre based stations. This in turn can get many people out of anti social, gas guzzling nonsensical vehicles unsuited to the city centre. IE is also more affordable than British train travel under the private model. Outside profitable commuter and the more established intercity routes, the idea is to provide public service for the good of the citizens of the country. Will these lines make money? No, but that's not necessarily the point Just my two cents.

An opinion that represents one of the most rational and well thought out point of view that I've read in a long time. Well done that man!