murphaph

China (and everyone else) buys US government debt in the form of Treasury Bills. The US has historically had to pay very low interest rates on this money so it can use it to fund whatever it wants, including the US DoD budget. The US is in a unique position in the world in this regard.

Nice one, flying snail ones ordered

Yup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege

I'm about at the limit of what I'm prepared to pay for models. I could not justify €300 a loco type prices. That's the message from these companies and it takes a brave CEO in the US these days to stand up to the current regime so kudos to the leading figures in our hobby having the bravery to do that. The industry depends on lower cost labour and a certain skillset. If China is "taken out", it would take them out of manufacturing so many other more important things that finding replacement manufacturing capacity for models & toys would be right down the bottom of the world's list of priorities. Our RTR hobby would basically be gone or be the preserve of the very wealthy and they would have to settle for a vastly reduced assortment. It's simply not possible to exclude a billion+ people from the world economy and expect things to somehow continue as before. China is not North Korea.

Exactly. These jobs are not coming to advanced economies because even at 145% tariffs a loco would still be cheaper if built in China rather than in the US or Europe. This whole thing could backfire massively the more I think about it. What would the CCP do in the event that the western world effectively stopped having products built in China? They have an army of idle workers, getting more and more agitated. They could let them overthrow the government (unlikely) or they could give them something to make. The CCP would have little to lose if it started using all that labour to produce weapons. Throwing a huge spanner in the works is such a huge mistake with so many potential unintended consequences. Global trade has some downsides for sure, but it has a massive upside in that we all grow more dependent on each other and are less likely to start wars with each other.

Eoin are those commercially available fibre optics or did you make them up yourself?

That's true. Would be great to get final clarification from the lads though

Do we need to have a copy of an invoice to make a warranty claim in the future?

I suspect these beauties will lure a few GB modellers into our world. Maybe not a bad idea at all to start big like this rather than doing something more common as a first steam loco.

Ah so it sat in Thurles from 61 to 63? When was 800 last in steam? I'm likely going to order the dark green FS version as it's the closest to my desired era by the looks of it. As it almost certainly can't be regauged to 21mm without major alteration I will probably use it as an "ornament" on the layout some day, parked up on that proverbial siding in Inchicore. I want to buy one more as a way of supporting the project even if I can't run it.

Much appreciated. I wonder would this 800 in late CIE dark green livery + no snail not be perhaps the most popular option of it were available? It's the era with the most overlap with the diesel age and the available Murphy Models 121s and even 141s as well as the IRM A's. A lot of people will be modelling that early 60s era I think. I know I am modelling it precisely for the ability to mix steam with EMD diesels.

Which livery did 800 carry at withdrawal in 1962? The dark green flying snail one?

Brilliant. Can we get a breakdown of what years each loco wore each livery please?

support@irishrailwaymodels.com is manned. I corresponded with Andrew using that email address yesterday.

The Modeller's Den was our go to shop in town. I honestly have no memory of the other ones sadly.

Are you in Ireland?

My accurascale account shows my Grain & H-Van orders that are about to ship but I do not see my Hunslet pre-order. I guess that's still migrating over.

So my orders appear in my accurascale account (I clicked the activate account link again that was sent to me on the 28th of January as instructed in this most recent email and although the webpage opened with an "invalid token" error, I was prompted for a shopify PIN which was sent to my phone and upon entering it, was redirected to my account page on accurascale.com) but the prices are in GBP and none of my loyalty points seem to have made it across. I only have the 200 basic points for a new account. Is this still work in progress?

Do we need to take any steps ourselves or will our IRM website credentials simply work on the AS website at some stage? I got an email but the token had expired by the time I clicked on the "activate account" link.

The film and lighting confitions at the moment the picture was taken plays a significant role too though so it's hard to compare different pictures with each other.

All these years and I never realised the chevron was lined. It's a really nice touch and makes it pop.

Cracking stuff. Anyone even half sitting on the fence with a bit of an arsecheek should order one before it's too late.

€200, but you won't find them anywhere for that now.

Great. That's good to know.

So if I was to order IRM stuff from the AS website in the UK it would be delivered duty paid to me in Germany?