murphaph

Not just the locos getting big money: https://www.ebay.ie/itm/134211663500

And they're off.... https://www.ebay.ie/itm/195316719497

No bids yet all the same. Might this one go unsold??

If bidding goes much over 400 someone will hit buy it now even at 500. Huge money. Almost 3 A classes worth.

Containerships!

Is there a fiddle yard behind the layout Paddy? I am a huge fan of the shelf layout "lightbox" concept. Your trains are the actors in a play. Brilliant stuff.

I wonder were those SuperValu sausages I ate in Tenerife shipped in one of those. Seems reasonably likely! I actually thought Containerships had gone bust long ago until visiting Tenerife where I saw loads of them. I never see them in Germany.

Just brilliant.

I'm guessing there are a lot more mouths to feed at Bachmann. It will be difficult to compete on price without structural changes to the company.

Of course not Mike, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

P4 is a lot more involved Fiacra. Your track needs to be absolutely perfect and even then, you'll probably need compensation on at least some of your stock or it will derail. If you follow Andy's MJT brass bogie suggestion, I would advise against butchering the MM bogies for their side frames because you can buy new cosmetic bogie sides from Replica Railways for like a pound a pair of something very small. Then you can always put the MM bogies back on and sell as 00 if you change era, scale, leave the hobby etc. If point work construction terrifies you then just buy the few bits you need to build a couple of them and just dive in. Only then can you really know if it's beyond your skillset (which I very much doubt). The nice thing is, sleepers are 8'6" in GB and Ireland so you can reuse any materials in EM should you decide not to go with 21mm. You could use these homemade points in your fiddle yard or whatever.

Let's just say this about bogies.... IRM produced 21mm friendly Y33 Sambre et Meuse bogies for the P42 project. They subsequently released these bogies for individual sale. There have been suggestions that IRM may well do the same for the upcoming BT bogies that will be required under the mk2's. IRM is well aware of a market for these to re-bogie the MM's Cravens and Mk2's. Even 00 modellers should consider upgrading the bogies to the proper scale width because the coaches look totally different with them fitted. They look much more "right". So it won't be just 21mm modellers that are in the market for proper scale width bogies, should IRM do the same again. I am keeping my powder dry on doing surgery on those MM bogies for the above reason The IRM and MM locos are all to my knowledge just as easy to regauge to 21mm as EM, with the slight exception of the Baby GMs which need a small bit of filling of the inside bogie faces if one wants to retain the factory wheels.

Same here on my phone (Android). Getting a 200 error from the server. I tried uploading the same pic on the Chromebook and it worked fine. I usually upload pics straight from the phone because I don't have to download them from Google photos first like on the Chromebook. They are already locally stored on the phone. Could be that Google slightly compresses them for storage and the version I uploaded from the Chromebook us slightly smaller. The one I tried uploading from the phone last night on my workbench thread was 4.0 MB.

I don't think any tools exist for Irish EM. No back to back gauges, roller gauges etc. They would need to be custom made for such an endeavour. With straight 21mm between the rails you can get most of these tools from the Scalefour society's stores, with the exception of a back to back gauge. I think they do an Irish gauge one but it's for P4 wheels so it's too wide to use for regauging typical 00 wheelsets. John Mayne made a solid brass back to back up for me and EDM models have a nice 3d printed one which I also have. These work fine for regauging RTR wheels from IRM to "full" 21mm. Sorry for diverting your thread Fiacra. It's your railway of course so whatever you decide is right at the end of the day.

Ruining a few nice containers. Some are a bit overboard but I won't be doing all of them like this. Many will just get a blast of airbrush grime.

Yeah I wouldn't rule 21mm out just yet if the alternative requires regauging the fleet anyway. If the layout is a "mixed prototype" designed to allow both Irish and British stock to run then I see the logic behind EM, but if it's purely for Irish stock and the layout isn't absolutely gigantic with lots of pointwork (plain flat bottomed track is genuinely very easy to build and quite prototypical for Ireland) then 21mm would be really worth a bit more consideration.

A very sensible step. For what it's worth, I could happily live with Accurascale branded Irish models if it helped win converts I really quite like those Accurascale boxes too.

When would the last of the ML containers have been seen, even as fallen flags?

It's bizarre isn't it. Look at all the grade separated junctions on the roads network. Must be hundreds now, some very large junctions. When I was a small kid you could count them all on your two hands. How many grade separated junctions have been added to the rail network in that time? Not very many and none on the heavy rail network that I can think of.

Makes absolute sense to extend to Bray as does extending the proposed metrolink to meet the DART at Donabate. The latter must surely be a relatively easy win across flat, fairly empty land. Would allow outer suburban and perhaps even enterprise trains to stop there, giving much more rapid access to Dublin airport (as well as DCU and the Mater). Sadly in Ireland we seem to need to build the under specified versions of things first and then upgrade them at greater expense later. This didn't apply to the inter urban roads network however. You can see where our priorities lie.

We've got a combination of former heavy rail and on street running in the current green line (from Charlemont to Sandyford it follows the old Harcourt Street alignment) and it's at capacity precisely because of the on street sections which are the bottleneck (you can't keep adding more trams because other traffic has to cross paths with them at junctions). Ideally the green line south of Charlemont will ultimately be upgraded to full metro as was originally proposed (the loading gauge allegedly allows for this without relaying the track)

Ah I see. Well I guess it comes down to suitability. It's not an accident that many cities have trams, metros and heavy rail combinations. Berlin, Munich & Hamburg to name but three German examples. The latter two are comparable in size to Dublin. Heavy rail means very large loading gauge which means very large diameter tunnels which mean expense. Trams don't have the capacity you'd want to squeeze out of an expensive tunnel of that length. So you go with a middle road of metro.

I gave the LYS-LINE one a treatment similar to the MAERSK job shown below. I'm away at the moment and can't post a pic unfortunately.

The reality here is that "centrally funded" actually means Dublin funded as Dublin taxes and the taxes of a handful of other urban areas are transferred to and used in areas where tax revenues are too low to provide public services and infrastructure. These are called social transfers and most counties in Ireland are net recipients. I have no problem with this concept as I see Ireland as one, relatively small country. I do have a problem with tax payers in areas in receipt of social transfers mistakenly believing they are funding metros in Dublin. The truth is, if taxes raised in the cities was ring fenced for spending in the cities, there would already be an extensive urban rail network in every Irish city but the interurban motorway network probably wouldn't exist and most bypasses would never have been built either. I prefer to stick together but this means that Dublin gets infrastructure appropriate to a city of its size and importance to the national economy. Arguments such as "make Google locate in small town x" are patently ridiculous. Companies locate where they want to, not where the IDA wants them to. Dublin (and the other cities) should not be deliberately strangled of critical infrastructure. A richer Dublin means a richer Ireland. Increased tax revenues from Dublin can fund infrastructure elsewhere and a rising tide can lift all boats.

It won't be third rail. That's outlawed on safety reasons. It'll be ohle. Luas is clearly operating at it's capacity and that's after a number of tram lengthening projects to bring trans up to 55m in length. They can't feasibly get any longer while sharing road space with other users. Ideally Luas green line south of Charlemont will be upgraded to full metro and flow seamlessly into the proposed metrolink there, therefore the standard gauge is definitely the correct choice. It also greatly simplifies purchasing rolling stock. The proposed metrolink is actually pretty solid. It's very similar to the Copenhagen metro, which IMO is one of the very best. Fully automated driverless trains are definitely the correct choice. You can ramp up the capacity to trains every minute if you need to with a system like that. Hopefully if this line is actually built, it will just be the first. A line running southwest to northeast would have great merit also some day and extending the proposed metrolink to interchange with the proposed DART at Donabate is almost a no brainer and an easy win across flat land. I suspect that will be one of the first extensions to be honest.