murphaph

Another work of art in the making! Why does the flywheel need tapering Eoin? Just so it fits inside the body?

I enquired about this with my German house insurer and was told (in writing) that a collection is a "normal" part of the contents of a house and did not need to be declared separately. I would strongly recommend everyone to maintain a spreadsheet with everything in their collection, including what it is, when it was bought, from whom and for how much. It's easy to forget stuff.

It might be worth a try but I wouldn't expect too much from adding filters simply because these model train "bass" speakers aren't comparable to a woofer etc. in your home audio setup. The travel of the speaker diaphragm is what determines its frequency response. The more travel, the lower the frequency, the more the bass. To get more travel, the speaker cone needs to get bigger. But these speakers are hemmed in by our models so in reality they are at best all mid-range/tweeters speakers or even pure tweeters. The other thing to note is that for some folks, me included, the sound should not be overpowering. If you have a few sound equipped locos running simultaneously you may well not want to hear the one on the other side of the room to where you are standing. It's not realistic to me to be able to hear a loco that is a scale 2 miles away at almost the same volume as the one I'm right beside. I want the sound to fade in as a loco approaches and fade out as it moves away from me. But this part is entirely subjective. If you want huge volume from your locos all the time that's fine too. Mounting a bare speaker is always going to be a bad idea as the sound waves coming from each face of the diaphragm are 180 degrees out of phase (ie when the diaphragm moves forward and creates a positive pressure wave towards your ear, an equal in amplitude negative pressure wave is created from the rear face of the diaphragm and this pressure wave follows very closely behind the first one, largely cancelling out the total sound. That's why speakers have enclosures, to capture that negative pressure wave. They work very poorly without one. A speaker mounted tightly to the inside of the model body however is effectively mounted in an enclosure, though almost certainly not a very good one as they should have some relation to the speaker size which I forget now.

Nice seeing the PKP stuff. I've taken the Berlin-Warszawa-Express a couple of times now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin-Warszawa-Express

Even the €235 was the cheapest I've seen one for a while. They are getting that and more in sterling.

It's the DC Kits one Noel. I distinctly remembered reading your posts about that so I washed them in Isopropyl alcohol and gave the primer coat a good scratch with a toothpick when it was dry to make sure it had taken properly before I started masking etc so I'm sure you saved me from making that mistake as I doubt I would have considered it. Probably would have given them a quick wipe to degrease them but I wouldn't have completely submerged and really washed them. Need to do the transfers next, when I get a chance. Busy digging holes outside this week lol: I would recommend using a grey primer on these resin models. It's kind of hard to see where you have primed when the primer is almost the same colour as the bare resin, which was the case with these. I used white and it was a bit of a pain.

I had a change of heart in the end and sprayed them black with the sides

Yeah I'm gonna weather these too at some stage The grey is actually quite dark, but it's lit up very brightly in the spray booth in the above pic.

Hi Jonathan, yeah I've seen other models painted black but I have seen a pic in a book where the roof looks dark grey, definitely not the same black as the sides and ends anyway. It may be that the black just faded over time to this grey look, in which case it's ok as I'm not modelling these vans new, but already several years old with faded, sun bleached roofs.

I went with the Revell granite grey number 69 on the roofs of the rebuilt Dutch vans. I doubt anyone would have a code for the "correct" shade and this looks ok to me. Just the black to do now

Does anyone have a colour code for the roof of the rebuilt EGV's? On page 90 of Irish Railway Rambler the pic clearly shows that the roof is a fairly dark grey colour on 4602 at least. I'm at that stage now. Eyeballing it I'm reasonably happy with Revell 69 granite grey which I have here by chance but in the unlikely event of anyone having a RAL code that code would be appreciated.

Possibly fell off the back of the loading bay in the factory they were made in.

I'm already looking forward to the rerun of the A's in a few years. I'll buy the same liveries again in the new running numbers. They are that nice a model.

So I'm happy enough with the Ford Cargos. The transfers seem to have a little yellowing of the carrier film, probably due to age, but in reality from more than a couple of feet away it's not noticeable.

Personally I am actually quite happy with the frequency of releases from IRM. It gives the old wallet a chance to recover. I suppose this is related to how much of each release you're going to buy. If, like me, you will take at least one of everything in your era of interest (or more as many do), then a release means at least several hundred € if not into the thousands and a breather between releases is probably required if your life isn't to be cut short in your sleep by the one laying next to you I fear that if IRM released too often, people would be forced into choosing between items they want. You can see these sorts of comments about UK outline releases on RMWeb.

Good stuff. Just checked my order and Book Depository still says it's awaiting publication

I might give that a go with the newspapers. Not a bad idea at all. Yeah those EGVs were bought like that, not scratch built or anything. I'm sure IRM will announce them in RTR the moment these are done lol. The road vehicles will have an Irish accent applied to them. I'll say no more for now.

First projects for the new and improved spray booth... I've switched to undercoating with the airbrush because the finish is just better and using water based acrylics there's no smell. I can only say good things about the Oesling acrylics. Just using deionised water as a thinner though he says tap water is also fine but our water is very hard here. A gallon of deionised water costs like €3. Just keeps spraying with no tip dry.

Here's a pic of 112 carrying a builder's plate I guess:

I can ask him if he would consider doing the panels as a transfer Robert. If anyone has a pic of the text under the 071 brake it would be great if it's the same plate.

Hi all, I'm in contact with Steve at Railtec at the moment about producing new transfers for the 111s. The current sheet is out of production and was missing some details anyway so Steve is going to kindly update the artwork. I've been able to provide him with suitable images of the Murphy Models 111s but there are three plates on these locos it seems, the builder's plate, which is probably the generic GM one and can be found online, the FUEL one, which is probably doable without an actual photo but there's also that instruction plate under the handbrake wheel. Does anyone have a pic of that, preferably including the wheel itself for scale? Cheers

I am pretty sure I've passed through that without actually realising it.

Yeah that's the Large Acrylic Collider there George

Hey Popeye, yeah it shouldn't be physically possible because the system is a simple "create a vacuum and draw air in through trickle vents" so the grey box contains a large fan that vents air directly out through the wall and in doing so creates a constant vacuum in the three other ducts. The system runs 24/7 so there should be no opportunity for anything unwanted to make its way the "wrong way" up the ducts into the the living spaces. The spray booth obviously has a filter to catch paint over spray. When I took the booth apart there appeared to be no contamination beyond the filter in the fan area so I'm pretty confident no actual paint pigments will even get into the ducting. I like being able to paint inside as I have full control over the environment, lighting, dust, temperature, humidity etc.

Small update. Still no model making so don't get too excited... I got sick of sticking the vent pipe from my spray booth out the window and it wasn't working very well anyway as a gust of wind would just blow the fumes back into the basement. I've now plumbed into the house mechanical ventilation system. I fitted shut off valves to the house extraction ducts so I can maximise the draw when I am painting, if I need to. I'll try it without reducing the ventilation of the house first. Maybe it's enough of a draw at least for acrylics. I added some new ducting which had to be punched through the wall from utility room to my hobby room. The other big advantage is that I don't have the noise of the high rpm inbuilt fan in the spray booth. It was loud. Coupled with a good size compressor tank it should be a fairly calming environment in future. Bit of patching up to do around the hole but that will all disappear under the layout someday anyway.