murphaph

Thanks chaps. A mine of information as always

Did the double decker beet wagons in use in the mid 90s use the same chassis or were the bodies welded onto a later chassis type?

These terms (flying snail and cie roundel) are used in the descriptions of the wagon packs according to IRM.

But the packs with the flying snail description would be suitable for a layout based in say 1962?

I'll be ordering the green n grey era ones. Great to see a new chassis enter the range.

Lovely setup Jack. I hope you find some new fremo friends at the show. It's a great concept.

Yep, says so in the youtube description:

Same. I always assumed H would be the fuel of the future for everything but BEV development is clearly moving at pace. There are (admittedly luxury) cars that already have the battery range of similar ICE vehicles. Batteries are becoming more energy dense, lighter, cheaper and even safer (from the point of view of fire) every year. I am pretty sure we will see BEVs with much greater range than ICEs in the coming years. The trend is really clear now. H remains a viable fuel for those buses and HGVs but even there I reckon batteries will be so good in twenty years that justifying the infrastructure maintenance costs for H will be very difficult. There is already a Tesla truck tractor unit on the market. It doesn't yet have the range but it has the power. The range will come.

Yeah I "model" 1994/1995 (though I may make an exception and allow a 1992 mail train some day!). No black or grey roofs and no Galway livery yet at that stage. The coaches were kept reasonably clean. The orange roofs were even clearly visible on the EGVs most of the time. Living dangerously for me is mixing IR and IE stock together lol.

Nah I sold them in the end and ordered the new MM ones instead

Yeah but you can't just use the existing storage and dispensing infrastructure at a filling station. An entirely new tank and dispensing system has to be added and this costs almost as much as a new traditional filling station probably (given the fact hydrogen is stored and dispensed under pressure), and petrol and diesel will be niche products in the medium term. It won't be worth maintaining the petrol and diesel side for the few remaining customers and hydrogen will be pretty niche too, as virtually all cars and light commercials will be BEV. That only leaves heavy commercial vehicles as a customer base. In Denmark recently the hydrogen filling stations all shut down or will shut down in the near future. It doesn't bode well for hydrogen as a mass-market fuel. https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/in-an-unexpected-turn-of-events-denmark-will-close-all-its-hydrogen-refueling-stations-for-vehicles/

This isn't a hydrogen fuel cell project. They are modifying the combustion engine to burn hydrogen instead of diesel. It'll definitely make loud noises of some description.

I think @Noel has experience stripping paint from resin. I have painted it, but not had to strip it. I believe I used IPA to degrease it (briefly) with no ill-effects. I would try to test a bit of whatever I was using on an inconspicuous area first. If using brake fluid as a paint stripper it will need to be a classic non-silicone type, so anything that is NOT DOT 5.

Headed down to the local railway restoration society in Ketzin an der Havel tody for their open day. Lots of badly vandalised coaches and wagons awaiting restoration. A local private (predominantly freight) railway HVLE loaned a Traxx P160 DE + driver for cab rides for the whole day, which was quite a gesture as these locomotives can generate significant income in that time. The former station at Ketzin lost its passenger service in 1966 already, though freight (primarily sugar beet on its way to the factory in the town) continued to use the tracks intil 1997. Interestingly beet trains still occasionally stable here as it provides a rare bit of "parking space" in the area. The branch is still connected and most of it still belongs to DB (previously DR), only the last couple of km belongs to the restoration society. Here a couple of snaps.

Still reckon this is some of the best road & pavement modelling I've seen. How about a few oil stains at the bus stop, or did Dublin buses not leak oil anymore by then? The overgrown roundabout is spot on.

Small world. I've been to Essex Junction several times for a previous employer.

That sounds really awesome. I hope you can find a workable solution. I would replace all my MM B4 bogies with proper width ones. I think even 16.5mm modellers would be well advised to swap them because Irish coaching stock had/has a distinctive look thanks to the wide stance of the bogies. That character is lost running on 16.5mm bogies.

The MM decoders omit the Full Throttle features that the default ESU file for this engine type have. No drive hold etc. The ESU file is better than the MM version in this regard. Horn sounds can be copied from the earlier 071 project.

Should've gone to Specsavers @DJ Dangerous lol. No crew fitted (by me at any rate and they were bought new). I have yet to crack open a 121 at all, though it will surely happen as I want cab lighting and crew fitted to mine at some stage.

I modified the ESU file to allow consist nose to nose running with all marker and headlights on the noses switched off as per the prototype. The red marker lights can also be switched off when hauling a train. If you have a Lokprogrammer this stuff is fairly trivial. As for the sound, I think the HiFi ESU files sound really good but I guess it's all a matter of taste.

On Facebook one chap is reporting that he was told that SSM has ceased selling kits altogether. I know @DJ Dangerous has been unable to reach him for a long time with a particular query.

I would agree that conversion of large and expensive ICEs to hydrogen will make sense in many cases, including in the case of diesel electric locomotives. I would be extremely surprised if the same was true for the internal combustion engines fitted to cars and light commercials. Even now very many such engines can be fitted for LPG which is cleaner and cheaper, but how many people actually have that conversion done? Not very many. But I will be pleasantly surprised if it is viable as any alternative to fossil fuels is a good one.

Indeed. I actually don't see much of a long-term use case in Ireland for hydrogen combustion engines in rail transport. I think we will use battery-electric tech with islands of overhead electrification and at termini to allow the batteries to recharge when under the wires. Ireland is a small country with an even smaller rail network. I would be surprised if this is not where we go (we are already going there with DART+), gradually extending the OHLE until eventually the batteries can be dispensed with, line by line. I see a use case for hydrogen re-engining in the vastness of the US or Australia or Russia or whatever, where OHLE is going to be very difficult to justify for a handful of freight trains a day. I suspect it is no accident that a GM/EMD was sought out as the test bed by this company. They know their markets are mostly not going to be in Europe.

The only real difference between a BEV and an ICE is the power train. The electric motor/transmission contains far less "complicated stuff" than an engine block/head/transmission. In 2019 there were no lithium iron phosphate batteries in production vehicles. These are now commonplace. We have even figured out a way to use sodium (even more abundant) as a replacement for iron. A 2019 study is already out of date to be honest. Batteries are getting lighter, cheaper, more energy dense and requiring fewer rare earth metals with every passing year. They also will very likely last to 80% after 11 years thanks largely to modern thermal regulation (for example generation 1 Nissan Leafs had no thermal regulation at all, causing the batteries to degrade much much faster than batteries in current production vehicles do). Batteries are also highly recyclable. Almost all the material inside a lead acid battery is recovered during recycling and the latest EV batteries can be recycled using similar techniques. These studies are essentially comparing the pinnacle of fossil fuel burning engines, refined for well over a century at this stage (and still only delivering max 50% or so thermal efficiency), with an emerging technology that has only just begun the same journey of refinement. Personally I am quite confident we'll see 1000km range batteries in the next five years at the latest and with 10-80% charging times that rival filling up on the forecourt. It's all academic anyway at this stage because there is no turning back now. No major mass manufacturer is persisting with internal combustion at this stage. No significant money is being spent on developing a next generation of ICEs. They have all pretty much accepted that cars and light commercials will be battery powered going forward.

Personally I see no future for hydrogen in small vehicles. They will all be battery electric. The trend is clear to see there. Even Toyota which was clinging to hydrogen is heading the BEV route. Hydrogen has a transitional role to play in HGVs I reckon, but these too will eventually be BEVs. Only stuff like shipping and perhaps aviation will rely on hydrogen long term if you ask me. Hydrogen however can be used as a replacement for natural gas in heavy industry especially and this is where I reckon most of it will end up within a generation.