murphaph

The best decision I made was in addition to my IR variants to secure a specimen of each of the silver and green A's to work a steam-diesel transition era layout I will someday build. I'd be raging if I'd let them slip through my fingers. I have the bookends so to speak, the earliest 4 and latest 6 A's.

As long as they don't go puff like a Hornby APT it's all good

I've also now come across another product by a company called Erdal, however their product was also discontinued and replaced by "something siomilar" though I have found some forum posts where the new stuff is being used too without any complaints and some say it even doesn't react with decal softeners: http://www.figuren.miniatures.de/erdal-glaenzer.html It's in German but google will translate it for you I guess. Allegedly it's now in a yellow bottle and the manufacturer is called Emsal: https://www.modellboard.net/index.php?topic=4056.30 I'll probably give this a try too as I can pick it up locally it seems. Edit: Allegedly the Lidl floor shine is comparable to the SC Johnson products, at least according to some German modelling forums. Costs even less too. It's a seasonal product in Germany it seems, released in late spring and autumn each year. It's not in the regular assortment here. It looks like this outside Germany:

I was hoping to pick up the "current version of Klear" because it's cheap really, rather than buying a product specifically made for modelling to be honest. George I'm not sure the stuff I've ordered will be the same. I suspect it might be an "EU version", milky in consistency to discourage accidental ingestion. Might still be worth a try though as it should turn clear in use as it's supposed to be a clear gloss floor polish too, not leave some milky sheen. Darius thanks for the video. I had already watched it earlier today in fact. The guy said it's not available in the UK and he had to buy it from the US.

I've ordered a bottle of this stuff from the Netherlands. I think it might be the same. That's what it's called in the US these days anyway: https://www.vitadvice.de/pledge-pledge-zusaetzliches-schutzholz-750-ml-750.html

I keep meaning to try this stuff out but SC Johnson seems to love changing the name and possibly the recipe of this stuff at regular intervals. I've also heard the stuff that works as a modelling aid (for me it would mostly be to gloss areas to apply transfers to) is only available in the US these days but I am hoping that's not the case. I believe this is the current packaging that works for US modellers: https://www.amazon.de/JOHNSON-WAX-Floor-Care-27-oz/dp/B000ARPH4C Note the €42 delivery charge from the US and then probably customs on top. Thanks but no thanks Amazon. It's not available in Germany at all it seems but if it's available in Ireland I could pick some up on a visit. Cheers for any info.

Jim already got back to me and provided an invoice. He's an absolute pleasure to deal with.

Oh great, I've mailed Jim about a copy to Germany. Thanks for the heads up!

Are you running RocRail on a Raspberry Sean? I thought you were running the RocRail server on your PC.

H0 accessories can be used to good effect on a 00 scale layout to add fake depth to a scene. You can place the vehicle behind a short wall to improve the deception.

I really like the dirt wiped from the datum plate effect. How are you achieving that? I've read that enamels are more forgiving for this sort of job than acrylics as you have time to wipe the area with a bit of turps whereas acrylics dry almost instantly.

In the Lokprogrammer there's an option to alter the frequency of the prime mover on a given decoder using the same sound file. I read somewhere that it's for cases like this where running in consists produces weird sounds unless you do that.

Ah ok, interesting.

Interesting but I experienced what I thought was phasing when running two 121s in consist with the same sound file. The sound almost vanished completely at times. It was very odd. They probably did start at exactly the same time as they were set up as a consist however.

I think Loughrea had an electric storage heater, plugged in at night at the Terminus to charge it up.

I also asked on Facebook but I'll ask here too... What is the silver coloured plug/socket arrangement on the buffer beam?

See, I told you I was ignorant When did the C's get those Maybach engines? Presumably post-end of scheduled steam on CIE?

Maybe this is common knowledge and I'm just ignorant but B233 and B234 apparently ran in multiple with baby GMs. These are the Maybach engined A's. Could be interesting for anyone modelling that era. A kind soul posted a pic of this up on Facebook. I'd never heard of it before. Looks very cool to me.

I think a lot of people use 1 sound decoder when double heading just to keep the costs down. I guess 2 would be better but ESU in fairness realised that the cost would be prohibitive for many, especially US modellers where you could have 4 or 5 locos in consist. The sound decoders would double the cost of your locos over there in most cases. If you do run two locos in consist with sound decoders or bluetooth sound, the sound files should be slightly modified so that the prime mover frequencies are not identical. You get weird phasing if they are both the exact same. If I had to choose between cheap sound and Rocrail (which supports hardware offering the opendcc bidib protocol, which is more important to me than sound) I would choose Rocrail but I'm optimistic the NextGen stuff will be further developed. It's "European" in origin and is reasonably likely to see requests to better integrate it with Rocrail, JMRI being more popular in Anglo-Saxon countries, especially North America. You can see that with bidib support in Rocrail. Funnily enough I just went looking and bidib support is being added to JMRI but it's only available in a development branch, it hasn't been merged with the main branch yet: https://forum.opendcc.de/viewtopic.php?t=6879 (sorry it's all in German) I think I'll wait until it's stable and included in JMRI before I bother with it though. Nice to have an alternative to Rocrail some day though.

Interesting Sean. I guess that makes sense as the LP is designed to work in tandem with the LS (for example in a double header setup). It's good to know it works though. I'm hoping NextGen is further developed and possibly integrated into Rocrail though the dependency on dlls makes that unlikely I reckon. I don't think Rob Versluis (not sure on the spelling) would be too keen on the Windows reliance for any part of Rocrail.

Lol, reminds me of my pal back when I lived in Berlin. We had a party and he got well oiled. Took the train to Potsdam instead of Potsdamer Platz.

I've never associated the two places as having the same name, despite knowing of both of them. Isn't that strange?!

It sure does, though a toothbrush is still required after an overnight soaking. It might fall off if left for longer. Interestingly the plastic was a close approximation to the final colour in both cases, but the models were still sprayed rather than just relying on the coloured plastic. I wonder what the rationale was for selecting a "very close to the final colour" plastic, only to spray over it anyway. My guess is that after QA, the colour wasn't close enough perhaps and a decision was taken to spray the base colour rather than rely on the plastic itself. Who knows. I found it curious anyway.

086 has been joined by 088, also ex-ST. Both models were stripped down to bare plastic after an initial attempt to feather the edges of the paint lines before priming was less than satisfactory. You could still see a shadow under a vertical light source and as these models may well be lit from above I wasn't happy with that and after experimenting on 086 above, 088 went into the dip to remove the primer and factory paint underneath and also bring it back to bare plastic. Stripping was done in 99.99% IPA. Afterwards rinsed in soapy water and then sprayed off with distilled water through the airbrush, just to be sure everything was neutralised. Probably overkill but these aren't my locos oh and the mould lines around the cabs were sanded out while I was at it. After drying overnight, the primer was applied from a rattle can (buffer shanks were masked up first). I had one can of Vallejo Hobby Paint left and decided this would be a suitable application as I wouldn't have too much waste and detail is maintained due to the finer pigments compared to automotive sprays, allegedly. I already decided not to buy any more aerosol paints, including primers, simply because you waste so much as you have to keep 20cm away from the subject and most of the spray goes to waste like that. I guess I could have depressurised the can and decanted the contents off for use in an airbrush but I'm too lazy for all that so I sprayed it from the can. A couple of hours later I began applying the final colours, working from light to dark. The colours were matched as closely as possible to my MM0112. The yellow is Vallejo 71.135 Chrome Yellow from the Air range. The red is RAL 3013 Tomato Red from Oesling Modellbau. Both paints are water based acrylics. The yellow warning panel as well as the buffer bosses will be reverse masked before the blue is applied. The centre grab irons on the cabs were removed to make it easier for the masking tape to sit flat. I will have to make up custom masks, approximating the curve radius of the corners.

Not for sale as far as I know lol.