murphaph

Ah ok, phew. I was expecting a deluge of cardboard lol. You can disregard my mail then

Is it going to be the default practice to send all items singly from now on with DHL Express or is it just a one off for the A's? How will the forthcoming Taras be shipped, for example?

Mail sent! Thanks for the heads up.

German stuff should not go near a customs check. I can't imagine given how overwhelmed they appear to be with GB stuff that they would do anything except wave all EU stuff through. Welcome to the forum JB. Perhaps there is alternative stay alive product from an EU manufacturer? I mean stay alives aren't anything particularly special.

Only right too if they can't levy the taxes then they should just deliver the parcels tax free. It's their problem to get their house in order.

Exactly. Keep it simple and ship the product. Adding in more variables would just slow down the process for all.

By the way the "use any decoder but don't connect the motor" certainly doesn't apply to ESU decoders and several other types. They use a back emf pulse from the motor to acknowledge the programming commands. That's why locos creep during programming. Perhaps the DCC concepts comments were limited to their decoders which I have no experience of but it shouldn't be assumed that this is valid for all makes. To use a loco decoder as a function only decoder an appropriate resistor may be substituted but it needs to be beefy enough current wise not to burn out. Otherwise if you want to reprogram the decoder a motor needs to be connected across the terminals. Simple stay alives can also mess with programming by "swallowing" the command pulses rather than them reaching the decoder itself so watch for that. How do I know this? I tried using a loco decoder to control the lights in the dummy car of the Bachmann 2700 set. I was scratching my head for a while wondering why I couldn't program it once installed but it was programmable on the ESU test bench.... because the motor is connected on the test bench. You live and learn.

I don't think any decoder without a healthy stay alive will help as the wagon type will always tend to lose contact with the track momentarily and this will mostly be determined by the quality of the track.

Please pass on our appreciation for their work too

That's really interesting about the relative market sizes. I'm actually surprised the Irish market is worth that much. I would also have thought the UK and German markets were much closer in size than that. When can we expect the Akkuraskale Kriegslok then?

I guess Heljan probably had the same "problem" with the small Danish market and decided to make stuff from another market to cross subsidise. So the British modelling enthusiast gains a great company out of a dearth of RTR Irish modelling stuff down the years. There's some delicious irony in that. I bet the "larger UK manufacturers" wish they'd provided a few half decent bits and pieces to us in Ireland down the years now lol. As others have rightly said, this award is thoroughly deserved not just because the models are of the best RTR quality, but because of the whole openness and communication on forums like this. If I'm honest I was not surprised to hear that Accurascale won MotY. It'll be interesting to see which market you lads tackle next

If anyone is actually looking for Peco track, Modellbahnunion sells their products: https://www.modellbahnunion.com/e-vendo.php?SessionId=&a=search&SearchStr=code+75&Start=24

That must be DHL Express then (the courier arm of DHL, which competes in the same space as FedEx and UPS). Normal DHL wouldn't get there that quickly.

These delivery companies are products of decades of mergers and takeovers. I think a brand that is good and reliable in one country can be awful in another.

Is it DHL or DHL Express?

Oh no more GLS to Germany? I found them excellent the last couple of times. Stuff got here really fast from Dublin. I don't think I've ever received a parcel sent by DHL from Ireland so that'll be something new.

Looks like a job lot of communion chalices has arrived In all seriousness, it's a pretty big moment for you lads having your first customer locos arrive. Congratulations. The big boys across the water better watch out.

I'm guessing the fact the IRM lads chose to release the very early variant A's means that somewhere down the line they will release suitable rolling stock. The Accurascale announcement yesterday should certainly reassure modellers of (much) earlier eras that the lads have an interest in producing (very) early stock and the fact that stock from the 1880s ran for an incredible 80 years makes it a commercially sensible proposition I guess. All in good time and all that.

That's utter garbage. There has to be a fallback for this. Has An Post always just returned stuff to sender where the paperwork wasn't completely in order or is this just since Brexit swamped them?

I'd love to know whose responsibility it is to decide what duties to apply on a parcel that comes in with no or insufficient paperwork then.

Yeah great to see it. Hopefully much more to come. I wonder might we even see intermodal trailers being brought down to Rosslare as thanks to Brexit a lot more trailers are going unaccompanied anyway. Why not send them unaccompanied from a railhead instead of driving them down from the four provinces to the south east tip of the country. Now that would be a fine sight.

Yep. It is just too risky wasting time on GB retailers at the moment unless they stock a particular item you just can't get in the EU. This definitely happens in our hobby unfortunately but for generic stuff there's always an alternative. Maybe it'll improve as everyone gets used to the new barriers to trade and as more Irish people look elsewhere it should reduce the amount of stuff coming in from GB. Also the more freight the likes of DHL, DPD and GLS move between Ireland and the continent, the cheaper it should become. I've bought loads of stuff from other EU countries and it always arrived.

Cat well and truly thrown among the pigeons lol. After the NIR mk2b/c announcement I have decided it's better not to speculate as I will probably be way off.

We're all slightly mad aren't we lol.

Good idea for many in the northern third of the republic alright! How long can you leave parcels waiting for collection in an Argos?