murphaph

There seems to be an increasing realisation even among the traditionally neutral nations of Europe that ultimately we are all in it together and our prosperity is based on the peace and security of the whole continent. The Swiss military recently deployed to Austria with Bundeswehr troops also involved in Exercise "Trias":

https://militaeraktuell.at/en/8-questions-and-answers-on-the-swiss-armed-forces-trias-exercise/

Sweden and Finland have obviously gone much further and fully joined NATO itself. It's good to practice together in any case so our IDF members can benefit from NATO best practice and I am sure we can teach them a thing or two as well.

Not my content but interesting nevertheless. Irish Defence Forces kit on a Bundeswehr train with a 60 year old Bundeswehr shunter on duty:

2 hours ago, chris said:

I'm aware of that but using GBP pricing for an announcement of an Irish model on an Irish forum and by a company called Irish Railway Models is a little tone deaf don't you think?

Fran usually creates two versions of these blog posts, one in EUR and the other in GBP. The GBP one gets posted on the AS website and places like RM Web and presumably in the mail shots where the customer is known to be UK based. It's probably a simple oversight that the EUR version wasn't posted here this one time. 

30 minutes ago, James Regan said:

Not sure where you get your information but maybe read a bit more. The Dems get more support from the ‘dirt poor’ as you arrogantly call them. 2024 results by average income group of voters below. Oh and Trump also had 69% support from those ‘Catholics’ - what a bunch of losers they are.
 

 

2023 total family income:

Under $30,000 (11%)

50%

46%

$30,000-$49,999(16%)

46%

52%

$50,000-$99,999(32%)

46%

52%

$100,000-$199,999(28%)

51%

48%

$200,000 or more(13%)

Settle down now James. It wasn't arrogance. It was factual. These people are dirt poor. I was expressing sympathy for them living in trailers that are literally falling to pieces, but still not seeing how they are about to start subsidising the ultra-wealthy by picking up the tariff tab on cheap Chinese made products, so Trump's class can pay no income tax.

You should probably give the pack numbers as folks will often be after specific running numbers that they missed out on

Trump isn't even trying to hide the actual purpose in his mind of the tariffs. He has stated many times that he intends to eliminate income taxes and to replace them with tariffs, thereby shifting the tax burden from the ultra wealthy to the low and middle income demographic. And his dirt poor supporters lap it up. 

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

4 minutes ago, BosKonay said:

Without getting political, the USA actually uses Chinese money to build -their- army. 

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.

7 minutes ago, DJ Dangerous said:

To where, though?

Keeping it largely to scale models and similar products.

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?

9 hours ago, DJ Dangerous said:

Was wondering about that, but since it’s a lifetime guarantee, and IRM / A/S products are unique, it probably wouldn’t make sense to require an invoice.

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

1 hour ago, BosKonay said:

There is no justification or need to move them. We’d suggest everyone maintains their own records and downloads any historical invoices etc before those sites are permanently shut down. 

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.

13 hours ago, Mol_PMB said:

I'm no expert on these locos, I'm just looking at photos:

Thurles 1961, no snail:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53453950801/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53468545416/

Inchicore 1963, no snail:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53505733957

Amiens St 1964, no snail:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/54251716485

 

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.

5 hours ago, fergalm1 said:

Has anyone else got a request to pay VAT from DPD for their Bullied orders ?

 

Are you in Ireland?

18 minutes ago, Horsetan said:

I've just checked into the Accurascale account. The basic details have been retained, but unfortunately my previous IRM order history is not visible, and my existing pre-order for a Park Royal coach is also not shown....unless I'm looking at completely the wrong bit or unless the Accurascale account system isn't supposed to cover that type of thing. 

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.