murphaph

The RO application for DART West is viewable here: https://www.dartplus.ie/en-ie/railwayorder/dartwest I find the timeline a little unambitious and I've read elsewhere that the Spencer Dock station would not be compatible with DART underground (who knows if that will ever happen though). Apart from that this will be a great project and about 30 years overdue.

Fantastic thread. Someday I want to tackle this kit in 21mm myself, once I have built up some experience.

Traffic through Kildare and Athy would be of great interest to me. I'd very much appreciate you taking a look around for anything there.

Cheers Noel. Would that information essentially be lost to history now? I think you could get away with laden ferts going from at least Shelton, Adelaide, New Ross, Cork and Foynes to almost any point on the network. Add in briquettes and possibly animal feed and Thurles and Portlaoise seem to off additional origins. I've seen one YouTube clip of a fert passing through Thomastown (presumably from New Ross?) with Longford marked as the destination. As for that Kildare pic, any ideas what could have caused at least two ferts to end up stabled there? Possibly the tail of a liner just letting other traffic pass due to the middle road being blocked?

Where might one find details of the weekly circulars advising of fert movements? IRRS archives or did this all remain company confidential?

Possibly taken off a liner to Cork for example and just parked there to be attached to a liner heading to the west maybe? They did this sort of shunting at LJ so maybe also at Kildare the odd time? I saw the pic. It's a curious one alright.

Yep, if you want to run it on DC pull out the fitted decoder and pop that blanking plate in instead.

That's the blanking plate for DC operation. There's a decoder fitted to the loco. There should be some information about the address in the box.

Have you tried politely emailing support?

It's better parked than most cars on Tenerife.

Ah ok. Maybe he could consider doing the transfers. I wouldn't recognise the differences between containers to be honest so if I had the correct detailing the actual container ribbing etc would be irrelevant to me. I'd just buy one of his undecorated ones and finish it.

@Arran any chance of a 40' Seawheel like in the above pic? Definitely regulars on Irish rail back then. Did scrap run in unit trains too or exclusively as "filler" in the liners?

Cracking pick Mark. Any idea what was spray painted on the side? What are loads in front of the scrap container?

A nice way to add significant interest to the train. I've wondered what the scrap containers looked like before. I don't think I've ever seen a good clear picture of one.

I think it behaves exactly as I described. Idle no smoke. Pulling away smoke. Cruising speed no smoke. The last minute of the video shows the same loco producing barely a whiff as she gets up to speed. The other 2 locos in the video don't show any signs of smoke at all. You'd need more complicated control of the smoke unit to achieve that behaviour. You can't simply couple it to either the loco speed or loco sound frequency. A loco at full tilt typically wouldn't produce a stream of visible smoke. Only perhaps when moving off. Too fiddly if you have to manually switch smoke generation on and off I feel.

Some were wrapped in green "shroud" plastic which could often be seen spilling out under the doors.

Bake at gas mark 5 for 1 hour.... I decided to do something with these spoil containers which are too modern for my chosen era. Maybe I will find a spot for them in a corner somewhere someday. The one at the back was the first thing I attempted to weather and it was....bad. I think I can save it though. The rest are being weathered from new condition. First I am spraying the inside as they were not yellow inside for very long at all. Rust soon took over more or less completely on the inside surfaces. When these are dry (that's actually why they were in the dehydrator) I'll apply a wash and a blast of sleeper grime. Might make the numbers look more recently patched too.

A fleet to be proud of. They all look smashing.

They are pretty cool but in reality once warmed up most diesels don't produce these huge plumes of smoke at high revs. The water vapour generation would need more complex control to be realistic, fading out as the revs increased, back in at medium revs then out again at idle. Only a cold engine would typically belch smoke throughout the rev range. Simply coupling the sound frequency to the generation rate may not work that well. The water also has to land back on the layout so that's something to bear in mind.

Looking good George. Very nice.

It would be nice if a certain manufacturer of model railways of Ireland would include different inspection date stickers or transfers in any possible upcoming range of coaches said manufacturer might be contemplating

Guys, thanks to your images I have been able to put together a small spreadsheet of the subtle differences in these vans. Might be of use to anyone modelling them in future. If I come across any new details I'll update the spreadsheet, so it's a work in progress. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zLupSzoj6kkkA9H-s7W62MpoggdXJgr8ORQXHkTA0Vs/edit?usp=sharing

I believe the "unrebuilt" Dutch vans always had the lower black band. First pic here, for example: https://steverabone.com/RailwayPhotographs/ Nice pic of an inspection marking all the same. Quite a fruitful thread this thanks to all your help guys. A million times better than asking google anyway!

Good stuff chaps. That long shot in Heuston is probably 4601 again (it has the extra louvres which I think we're unique to it) with the orange roof. It's definitely orange and goes right up. I'm convinced 4601 was originally painted with an orange roof now, at least largely orange. The roof hatches may have been black. Without an as newly painted pic from 91 we'll probably never know though. Makes no odds to me however as by 95 the orange was barely visible and only along the edges. Everything in the middle was filthy dirty black by then. I wonder were the BS and IC markings on both sides of the van or just one side.

Great pics guys. The Jonathan Allen one of 4601 really suggests the roof was originally painted orange, at least up to the ribs, to match the mk2 stock presumably. It's possible that they noticed how dirty the roofs became and switched to black for the rest. I think this is the same vehicle seen departing Athy in the pics I linked to above. The pic of 4603 really helps date those black bands as I think I can make out an inspection year of 1996. This makes the black band on that vehicle plausible for my time period I believe. A very small bit or artistic licence can make 1996 into 1995 and job done. Close enough and the black band certainly adds interest. I would probably restrict myself to 4603. The pic also shows that the white test says BS 3-96. I'm guessing this is some sort of limited brake inspection (and the calendar week it took place) whereas the IC xx-xx is the bigger inspection and its date, possibly often simultaneously performed? I don't suppose anyone has any pics of the interior of these things?