Warbonnet

Thanks everyone. Some close up pics to continue to whet the appetite!

Hi everyone, Thanks for the awesome feedback! We're very humbled by your feedback, and it was a proud day for us. Hats off to @Glenderg who put his heart and soul into the design of it. Locos are a massive project, both workload and financially, so it's great to see it pay off. We reckon they will look the part on your layouts and in your collections. 20191001_161822_1 (1).mp4 Testing has been ongoing, and so far so good. We have gone big on the internals with our friends at ESU, so as you can see here, should your A Class hit some points, or dirty track or a dead spot, it wont stop! We timed it being off the track for 9 seconds before the wheels stopped turning! All wheel drive and pick up certainly helps too, and as you can see, on the GM variants rotating axle caps will be present and regauging to 21mm nice and handy. We will be at the South Dublin Model Railway clubrooms tomorrow evening from 8:00pm with our As and Ferts so please drop by for a look and say hi. All welcome! Back to the testing! Cheers, Fran

Well folks, today is a very special landmark for us here at IRM, as we received the first pre-production prototype of our highly antcipated A Class! We've already given it a quick spin around our layout, and we are blown away by the crispness of the detail, the etched grills, the shape, and that performance! It's beautifully heavy and very, very smooth! There are some snags required such as lighting functions, roof details and fit, but overall it is most encouraging! It will take pride of place on our stand at the forthcoming South Dublin Model Railway Show this October Bank holiday weekend, so make sure you drop by for a closer look! We will soon send our feedback to China and then get some firm delivery details. In the meantime check out this video and place an order if you havent already. These beauties promise to be special! https://irishrailwaymodels.com/collectio…/a-class-locomotive

Hi everyone, Our liners have been a long time coming, but they will certainly be worth the wait! Our factory is working hard on their assembly as we speak, and after some final checks are complete they will be delivered to us just before the ferts. Our tooling delays means a production slot was missed, so they will now be with us just after the SDMRC Model Railway Exhibition 2019, reaching our shores in November. However, the Ferts wont be far behind, as will the Guinness Kegs which we will debut at the Dublin show! You can rest assured that we wont be announcing any more IRM projects so far in advance, and with rolling stock at least, putting them on pre-order as early as we did with the liners. Lesson learned by us! We have several irons in the fire, but they wont be announced till our existing decks are clear. Thanks to everyone for their patience and understanding. As for the A? We will have some very exciting news on that very soon. Watch this space.... Order your liners today: https://irishrailwaymodels.com/collections/container-liners Cheers! Fran

Hi everyone, The Hornby Magazine Awards 2019 voting is now open. We're not sure why IRM or the ploughs are not included either, but if you guys follow the British outline scene and you think our Accurascale items are worthy of a vote in OO and O wagons of the year, as well as manufacturer of the year, it would be most appreciated! You can vote here: https://hornbymagazine.keypublishing.com/2019/09/05/hornby-magazine-model-railway-awards-2019/ Models up for awards are below: OO PCAs OO Cemflos O HUO / HOP 24 Cheers! Fran

Really looking forward to getting this!

Hi everyone, Our Fertiliser wagons are now available for pre-order! As you can see, these promise to be one of our best models yet, if not the best! We are doing four packs of two wagons, with each wagon individually decorated as per the prototypes from photos and research material. The ferts are one of the most distinctive wagons to run in Ireland, and ran nationwide during their 30 year lives in service with Irish rail. Built in Inchicore, the were based on the standard 42ft underframe, these wagons entered service with Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ) in 1974 and were tasked with transporting palletised bagged fertiliser from the Nitrigin Éireann Teoranta (later Irish Fertiliser Industries) plant at Shelton Abbey, near Arklow in County Wicklow, to distribution points throughout the CIÉ/Irish Rail and Northern Ireland Railways networks. In traffic, these distinctive vehicles could be found both in dedicated block trains and attached to other ‘liner’ services. In late 2001, Irish Rail signalled its intention to withdraw from a number of unprofitable freight flows, including fertiliser traffic. This, coupled with the closure of the Shelton Abbey plant in 2002, led to their withdrawal.Throughout their operational lives, these wagons wore a basic red oxide livery and a number of the wagons retained the CIÉ roundel after the formation of Irish Rail in 1987. They are currently in production alongside our liner wagons and are due in December 2019. Prices are €100 per pack of two wagons, and as ever we are doing a great bundle deal, of €360 for all 8 wagons. Pre-order now: https://irishrailwaymodels.com/collections/cie-bogie-fertiliser-wagon

Absolutely stunning Eoin!

Hi everyone, Just a quick heads up. We have less than 50 packs of these left, and while that may sound like a lot, it isn't really. Packs A and B are sold out, and pack C and D arent far behind. So, if you have been considering these, now is the time to pounce. They have been overshadowed by a few of our other releases recently, but they are absolutely lovely models. https://irishrailwaymodels.com/collections/tara-mines Don't miss out! Cheers! Fran

Plans change. We will see where we are after the A.

Hi Popeye, It is my understanding that in later life when outshopped after overhaul they may have been, but also a lot of them got replacement doors, panels (lot of ply used) so this could end up any random colours. Be interesting to see if anyone turns one of our models out like above with weathering thrown in too!

It’s now at Downpatrick.

We are going to hold off opening the order book until we have a firm delivery date after the messing around with the liners. Once our corrections are made and production is ready to go we will, so it will be soon. We just need to sort stuff out with the factory first. Track is C&L as far as I can remember!

Happy Friday everyone! Here is some pics of the decorated Ferts as a special weekend treat! We will have these available for inspection at the Stilorgan fair this weekend along with the liner sample, as well as a limited supply of bubbles, taras and ploughs. Drop by for a look and pick some wagons up! The brake wheel position will be corrected on the production models and the fert bags will be painted the right colour too, but apart from that they're good to go after we land the liners!

no problem men, we do welcome the questions as at the end of the day, we want to get them right! Cheers! Fran

Hi iarnrod, Great photos, but I would argue that they are heavily weathered for the most part, with the one at the end in Inchicore cleanest, which indeed looks like a repaint into orange. Repaints may have got orange, but as delivered (and many were not repainted) were lighter in our experience. We white balanced that pic to get a colour representation, and as you can see at this clean part of the nearmost container is a close match for our shade. You can also see in the cleaner parts of the the container along the side that it has a lighter shade. I would say that my pic last night is taken in very bright conditions (my bad on that one). The weedspray container itself is in a poor shape paint wise and the container representing this will be a different shade on our model of that train. If you look around the door mech and handles in the below pic you can see the proper colour of these containers. They will look great weathered I agree, but this was the ex works colour going by the evidence we found. I would say ours just look a bit odd as they were under a very bright light, I brightened the pic up slightly to bring out the wagon underframe details and it was very rare you saw a clean one. If I pile them in more normal light in the office you can see they are a darker shade. (no trickery done to the below) Cheers, Fran

I blame my photography skills on that one, but the research material suggests suggest they were quite bright in colour when clean Richie dirtied one up too, uniload 10 footers seemed darker in colour than these 20fts? We’re going to have another look but we think it’s pretty close?

Decorated Liner Samples! Our 'Project 42' has been a massive undertaking, with the wagon becoming five projects in one and taking a long time to come to fruition, but we now finally on the home straight! As you can see, we received some decorated samples of the liners. There a some decoration corrections to be made, but that has already been sent to China. The coupling mechanism caused a lot of head scratching and didn't function on our first sample, so this took a lot of work to sort, including tooling changes to get right. As it was dealing with die-cast, it took a lot of work. Production has begun, and delivery is in mid-October. It's taken far longer than we would've liked, but we had to ensure that they function correctly as well as look great. Dont miss out on these babies, order yours today: https://irishrailwaymodels.com/collections/container-liners

What have we here?! It's been a long time coming, with many, many hurdles to clear, but project 42 is edging closer! We will have a full update on liner delivery dates this week, along with some previews of ferts and the opening of the order book! Keep an eye out for further updates this week and drop by to see more at the Stillorgan train and toy sale show this Sunday!

Hi Noel, it appears you have done the same on my comments, so can we conclude that you are sitting in a glass house here? Your constant sniping at me and others here and elsewhere for posting anything you disagree with has become tiresome to be honest, but we let it go and give you every chance. As other lads above have pointed out, we are having a debate about trains, nothing more. I find it quite poor that because I post something you disagree with you decide to throw my job and livelihood at me as a protest. How distasteful in the extreme. I’m so disappointed. It’s patiently obvious that I cannot have different opinions on things railway and enjoy a discussion and debate without having these threats held over me in the future. Mark 3 = Good. ICRs = Bad. Thread locked.

You can’t agree that the Mark IIIs were due refurbishment and with government money in plentiful supply at the time it made sense to buy new for longer service life of new stock in return and cheaper operating costs? You make the argument about ICRs being unsuitable for service, but if you read back what you quoted from me I didn’t say anything regarding the suitability or not of ICRs.

25-30 year old coaches with refurb, extended life expectancy of about 15 years? New rolling stock which is safer, more fuel efficient, cheaper to run and does away with shunting at either end of the journey? 30 year life. Refurbishment cos are about 65-70% of buying new, so it was a no brainer and the right decision. The Mark IIIs gave good life but their time was done. Thankfully the right decision to buy new trains was made to give IE one of the most modern fleets in Europe, and at the end of the day it’s run as a service to the public, not something to appease us gricers and enthusiasts.

Why not all 3? haha In all seriousness, we have a good few projects underway for IRM that we have not announced yet, and a good idea of what we will make for a number of years to come. We will bring out a lot of models and we will be around for a long time! We have also a lot of models announced that we have yet to deliver of course, so until we land some of them we wont be announcing much else. Then there's the re-runs of ballasts, gypsums, blue taras etc etc and Paddy's 121 too. So, lots to consider. Patience is what it's all about! And the more we sell, the more we can make of course. Cheers! Fran

The Mark IIIs have continued to run in the UK due to extensive refurbishments. The choice IE had at the time was rebuild or get new. With plenty of money floating around and cheaper operating costs, it made sense at the time to buy the ICRs instead, so that can hardly be described as 'criminally negligent'. Hindsight is a powerful thing but I can understand why a load of coaches werent left rotting in sidings for a decade during a long recession in case one day the railways got busy again. As much as I liked the mark IIIs too it is understandable why they were binned at the time.

Not guilty m’lud! Didn’t participate as felt my biased picks would reflect what we have in the pipeline and would negatively impact on it as a result. Cheers! Fran