murphaph

I'm wondering could I make parallel cuts into the upper third or half of the hardboard or 2mm MDF to allow an overlapping bend and then apply filler and smooth down. I think the "infinite sky" effect is worth a lot of effort to be honest.

Me too. It looks like exactly the kind of book I'll need. Top tip.

That's a very nice idea. In my particular use case I'd need to source one with a radius of about 1m (because my hidden spiral track determines the minimum radius of the back scene as the spiral is to be behind the back scene). I may try to see can I round those curves with a smaller radius. I think the short wheel base and bogie stock would be fine with a slightly shorter wheelbase but I would some day like to run an 800 class. I'm sure such things are made for other purposes like play grounds and whatnot. I'll have to keep my eyes open.

Seems to have broken around that time so.

This guy ended up giving up on the corners when he faced the same problem : https://markpaulson.wordpress.com/2012/10/20/curving-the-sky/

I'm trying to work out an elegant way to have an infinite, curving sky in a shelf "shadow box" layout, but the corners of the room are problematic in my mind, as the curve would need to be in two axes, and hardboard etc. simply won't bend like that. The curves in the corners of my room will be fairly large radius, like 3' or so, but not so large that you'd be able to add a curve in the second axis. There's only so much work you can ask filler to do lol.

Yeah something is not working as it was for me too. I got the last email alert on the 7th of December for a PM from George. Broithe, your recent PM to me resulted in no email however. I just saw it by chance I guess.

You can also directly ask the seller what they will charge for shipping outside the GSP. Many will quote you a price but you're on your own with customs duties of course. I bought my last 141 in these circumstances. I pushed the boat out as it was the only outstanding tippex baby not in my possession. Otherwise I have avoided UK eBay sadly.

It's an interesting topic. I grew up looking out my bedroom window at the Dublin mountains. In reality from more than few miles away, they are not in sharp focus. They're blurry more often than not. The light refracts as it passes through different air densities, creating a blur, rather than clearly defined features. A back scene representing a distant range of hills mountains should therefore have this blurry quality. Most Irish themed layouts should be like this imo. Unless you're modelling Bray Head or something.

I like the pale blue sky with wispy clouds approach. I've been watching a few YouTube clips on how to airbrush clouds. It looks easy (he said).

I think the more popular A's are probably already worth more than new, insofar as what something is worth is what someone is willing to pay for it. I think he'll have to wait a while for £375 though. That's three and a half times what he paid for it about the same number of weeks ago probably! I wouldn't wait to get any A's left if you are even half thinking about getting one. You'll kick yourself later. If you don't need it, you'll get your money back selling on I'm sure.

I think it's the wrong shade of excellent . Seriously though, you shouldn't make a comment like that without further describing the alleged fault in detail. That's unfair, like lobbing a hand grenade into the thread and walking away. If something is genuinely off we know the guys would have it fixed if at all possible. They'd much rather catch a genuine problem now than produce something sub optimal later.

I think the OP wants more than 6 wagons and rather than buying duplicates in the F-H range, would prefer to pick up some or all of the A-E range. I would suggest some renumbering of the F-H range wagons if nobody offers some A-E wagons for sale. I very rarely see these wagons advertised anywhere.

Yeah it's only really going to be of interest to UK based modellers thanks to the big B. Meanwhile 112 is up at €415 before shipping. Think one went for more a few months back though: https://www.ebay.ie/itm/115143451606

I was wondering when the first A46 might appear on eBay and for how much. I think this is it: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/154758738098 225GBP the guy is looking for if any of you missed it. Dear compared to retail but I suspect they will only get dearer.

Did a pic of the Cawoods containers on Irish Rail ever materialise?

A thing of beauty so it is! Congratulations. You're just going from strength to strength with every release.

Ah so the pulp van went empty to the factory and laden back to the loading bank? I saw several references to it in the latest book Jonathan but I wasn't exactly sure how it worked.

Any pics of those Cawoods wagons/containers running in Ireland? I didn't know that happened. Where did they run from/to?

Will do, but the track plans will effectively be copying the prototype of the early 90's. I will have to make one major concession to practicality: The branch to the Athy cement factory will pass over the Barrow bridge and run directly into the factory sidings, rather than via the headshunt (stub of Wolfhill branch) that is/was there in reality. There are/were two parallel sidings in the factory with a headshunt to release a loco so it's not that much of a cheat. I just don't have the room to do it exactly like the real layout, so instead of propelling the bubbles into the factory they will be hauled in, the loco will be released in the headshunt, run around and haul the bubbles back out to return to KIldare to again run around and head back to Castlemungret. The rest of the track plans should be as near as identical to the prototype locations as possible. The goal is to automate all the trains to run to a real timetable, with a bit of manual intervention required at Kildare, Athy cement and occasionally Portarlington (sometimes Curragh racecourse specials ran on to Portarlington to reverse if Kildare was blocked and there were some regular freight workings like the coal and oil that ran Limerick-Ballina via Portarlington while the WRC was closed for prolonged periods). The shelves will be arrange "logically", that is the more northerly reaches of the prototype will be higher up. Curragh-KIldare will be the top shelf as the trains come down from "Dublin" staging, then head off onto the spiral for a while, before re-emerging onto the Monasterevan-Portarlington shelf, then head to the spiral again and down to "Provincial" staging, bypassing the Cherryville-Athy shelf (lowest visible level). Trains to Waterford will obviously use the spiral to bypass the Monasterevan-Portarlington shelf. I wanted a few things from my layout, including at least some semaphore signalling and a level crossing. The Athy/cement factory route offers me both. There's a lot of track to build so I am making a conscious decision not to model towns, only the stations. In reality all these stations were on the edges of their host towns thankfully. Most of my trackage will be through open countryside. This should be achievable. I'm playing with the idea of fading the shelf lighting in and out so that only the shelf with an active train on it is illuminated, the other two being dark. There will be no ambient room lighting. It will be following the "theatre" approach as proposed by Rice in his shelf layouts book, where the shelf is the stage, the trains are the actors, coming on doing their scene, then exiting the stage. It's not going to be a rapidly progressing build either. It's going to take years rather than months. That's fine with me. I am in no rush It's cheap and it works very well on those Lima coaches. It must be the mineral type, not the silicone based stuff. That won't do anything. Everyone seems to have their own favourite stripper but I don't think there's a one-for-all because paint formulations are different. I have also used isopropyl alcohol on these coaches with good effect.

That was the original idea but Robert Roche made the think it over with a comment he made. The advantage of having each section (say Curragh to Kildare, Monasterevan to Portarlington, Cherryville Jcn to Athy as three distinct shelves and being linked by hidden nolix/around the room helix is that the time taken to move from say Kildare to Athy can be somewhat realistic as trains can be queued on the spiral and only reappear after a decent amount of time has passed. The other problem with a continuous grade is that you need anywhere that there will be shunting/uncoupling to be dead flat, or the rolling stock will run away downhill as soon as the loco is uncoupled. As I want to run prototypically long trains, these flat areas would be quite long and then the continuous grade needs to be steeper to compensate, but I want to keep it well below a 2% grade, preferably more like 1.5%. I should have the length around the room to keep to that and get from one level to the next in one lap of the room. When I do start building, the spiral and staging areas will be built first and extensively tested before anything goes in front of them. If the concept is flawed I should find out before building the whole thing. If the spiral works then the flat stuff will be relatively trivial, I hope.

Not modelling per se but my future layout home is finally getting cleared out. I've painted everything white. The floor will be tiled in something cheap and cheerful. Don't need Italian marble in here (we don't have Italian marble anywhere, just in case that's not clear lol) The layout will, as I mentioned previously, be of the multi deck shelf type. I believe a room this shape and size will lend itself well to this concept. I will use the room itself as the outer boundary of a "helix" (sometimes referred to as a nolix or around the room spiral) to allow trains move from staging (top and bottom shelves) to the (hopefully) 3 scenic shelves and back. It will function therefore as a very long point to point layout, with trains originating at either upper or lower staging, passing through each scenic shelf in turn before terminating off scene in the opposite staging area. The layout will attempt to depict a decent chunk of the Dublin to Cork mainline around Kildare. I'm fortunate that the room is in the basement part of the house and is heated (underfloor heating was specified to ensure no rads got in the way). I am most likely going to teach myself to weld and build the frame out of steel, with rigid insulation board as the subbase. So little or no timber will feature. I have seen this approach used on a couple of US layouts. I'm aiming for long sweeping runs of mainline with prototypically long trains, with one station per shelf so trains enter the scene, do their bit and leave. I like looking at trains running, more than shunting. I will have a bit of reversing to do at Kildare and some shunting at the Athy cement factory but not much. The room is 10' 2" wide and just about 30' long. I had considered a peninsula but realistically I don't think I have the width in 21mm to do that and I want some circulation space to remain anyway. I might put a small modelling bench in the centre of the room. Why paint the walls when they will not be visible at the end? I will someday have to try to find a lost spring or something in behind the backscene I'm sure, so I want everything in there as bright as possible, especially the staging areas. From the other end:

I'd also be concerned that sales of the EGV's and diners individually would be very difficult to predict. A lot of chaps might buy those to complete Lima rakes. Selling them in what are essentially complete rakes must make it easier to predict the numbers required. I definitely prefer this triple pack "problem" than the alternative problem which is what we have with the Cravens... namely no high quality RTR GSV at all. I think we should all be able to do deals here. I will be in the market for a couple of standards to renumber as I have the space to run full length specials but the 9 coaches in the bumblebee livery isn't "enough" so I would be in the market for a couple more. If someone has a typical layout in the box room and 9 coaches would look ridiculous, I could take a couple of standards off their hands. Everyone's a winner. I'm sure suitable buyers and sellers can meet each other in the classifieds right here

Don't call them toys They are "adult collector's items" Noel! I prefer to keep mine and let them pay for my funeral if the hopefully not so young lad isn't interested at that stage! I only hope the missus doesn't suffer a heart attack herself when she finds out how much money was hanging on the wall all those years....

Yeah I saw that but I wasn't expecting anyone to stick a bid in so soon but there are two people interested. I would be surprised if it finishes at that given the very early interest. I managed to pick up a new condition 112 last year thank God, otherwise I'd never get one. I could never justify that sort of moolah on a single loco. The seller will be pleased.