murphaph

Give it a go. You may find you are good at weathering!

Lovely stuff. Is the P&T van the same kit as the Heuston tool van?

Welcome! You should reach out to @WRENNEIRE or Chris Dyer (https://www.chrisdyerfairs.co.uk/), both have sourced out of production items for me in the past, and see if they have 018 still. In my opinion you should get A30 while it's still available and weather it or have it weathered to that filthy bleached state. I wouldn't let any loco slip through my hands if it ran in my time period and was available retail. It will never be released in a weathered state. IRM don't do factory weathering for a good reason. If you don't pick A30 up I suspect you'll be kicking yourself over it later.

In for a penny, in for a pound... Many of the Taras exhibit this "dribble pattern" down the sides. Not sure what causes it, probably overfilling around the holes near the top. I'm not done with these but I feel they are heading in the right direction. I sprayed the dust coating over the top having tried to simply apply a wash. It pooled in all the wrong places and didn't look right at all. That's the good thing about weathering with enamels...you can just wipe it all off an hour later and start again. Acrylics aren't as forgiving.

It seems to be a file size problem @BosKonay. A pic I take on my phone is typically 3.5MB. The same pic gets saved to Google photos at around 1MB. If I download the pic from photos and attach it here (all on my phone) it works. The 3.5MB original will not work. See screenshot:

I've gone for a rustier top side this time. Found a pic of a wagon in similar condition.

I think it was a generic server error, nothing specific. I will try again tomorrow using the exact same image file I used from the laptop. Google compresses the files but the originals were all well under 8MB.

I'm not sure on the former but definitely after ca. 1995 some time. On the latter I have no clue whatsoever. Maybe @Arran would know that?

I've mustered up the courage to weather my first IRM wagon and I'm glad I did. Having studied several pics from the early to mid 90's it seems brown rusty bogies under dirty bauxite chassis were the order of the day. The later black bogies with green and blue details are definitely wrong for my chosen era anyway. I decided to remove the kinematic coupling before spraying but I don't think I'll do that again. Too fiddly putting it back together. I ended up using a pair of sharp cocktail sticks to manipulate the tiny springs into place. Lord knows how I didn't lose them. Pics to follow. Can't upload them from my phone right now.

I'm afraid I'm getting the same 200 error on pics no larger than 4.2MB. Anyone else having this problem? Can't submit pics from my phone.

You're too kind Dave. It was nothing really and we owe you just as many if not more thanks as well for having us! Now where's that blushing emoji when you need it.....

It's a fair bit of expense to go to, producing the tooling for these and paying for their assembly, just to hand out as souvenirs, though I suppose in relation to the total contract value it's buttons. Nice touch all the same. I wonder how many of each would typically be produced. Would these be made by established model makers in China I wonder?

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.