murphaph

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?

For generic stuff like craft supplies it makes little sense to gamble with a UK supplier these days and a lot of sense investing some time trying to find a reliable supplier in Ireland or failing that somewhere else in the EU. I can recommend https://www.architekturbedarf.de/versand as a satisfied customer. Shipping to Ireland is a flat €30 it seems so you'd want to get a decent order together to make it worthwhile. The good thing with hobby supplies like this is that you can always find more stuff that you will eventually need to make up a decent order. I am generally easily able to hit an €80 order to get the free shipping inside Germany, just by ordering a second of this or that.

I guess on the mk2's however the buck eye coupling would be closer to the Kadee knuckle coupler than any other functional coupler.

Herzlich willkommen im Forum Andreas! Lovely work. Looking forward to seeing more

@Noel don't you fit Kadees to all your stock? Maybe you can help F4f with that question too. Nice to have you on the forum F4f

This article explains that the HS and TARIC codes are similar but different. The TARIC includes the HS code but also has a further set of digits (2 to 4) and this seems to be the problem in An Post's system. TARIC is an EU thing. HS is pretty much a global standard now. https://www.ecommerce-nation.com/you-dont-know-what-a-taric-code-is-everything-you-need-to-know-about-this-tariff-code/ I guess the user interface or the API An Post uses is simply not fit for purpose and instead of automatically padding out the HS code to the TARIC code by adding some zeros, it just spits out an error message. I bet that the software in use in other countries doesn't have this problem and can handle "simple" HS codes with no user interaction required so it's not prone to error. I didn't know any of this beyond the simple HS code before but An Post and their software supplier should have and maybe they should have. Parcels simply should not be sent back because they "only" have an 8 digit HS code. That's all they need to be classified for customs and if they are gifts they shouldn't even require that. I suspect that before Brexit and the changes to the EU rules, An Post staff in these mails centres had an awful lot less to do because anything coming from GB never went near customs checks and stuff under €22 was waved through (and we know how much stuff was under-declared, especially coming in from China). They are now swamped and every single parcel from GB has to be processed, regardless of value. They probably had to hire a lot of new people and they probably don't all know their way around their seemingly fragile software.

I know it sounds cliched but really the media need to be involved. The likes of Pat Kenny on Newstalk would surely be interested in doing a piece on this in the run up to xmas. There will be tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of gifts arriving into Ireland from outside the EU soon and the vast majority will have no HS codes as they are not required on non-commercial parcels and those that do will almost certainly be of the common or garden 8 digit variety. Are An Post going to basically send all these parcels back??

I think JM mentioned that the An Post system requests a 10 digit TARIC code (looking for the so called TARIC sub-heading perhaps?) despite HS codes generally being 8 digits long, so it throws a silly error if the code is missing some padding/leading zeros or something. The An Post system genuinely seems to be broken or at best extremely fragile and error prone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TARIC_code Here's our own favourite product: https://www.tariffnumber.com/2021/95030030 I would (and so would any normal human) fill in 95030030 when asked for the TARIC/HS code. That's the number on Hattons parcels too and the number that I've had on stuff from Switzerland. But from what JM was saying the An Post system requires 10 digits to be entered so seems to be looking for stuff that is not normally included. I have not seen the need for the TARIC sub headings on any parcels I have received. I've only ever seen the 8 digit HS code. In any case, there needs to be a fallback as exists elsewhere, so that parcels aren't returned to the other side of the world for missing paperwork. In fact the German customs do indeed assign a TARIC code by inspecting the item if it comes with no paperwork (rare that there is no paperwork at all to help tell them what it is they are looking at I guess). The magazines thing is just bizarre.

The trunk service offered by Hattons is very attractive to an awful lot of customers who buy (or would buy) a lot of smaller bits and pieces. I wish more retailers would offer it. Does Marks sell any second hand stuff online or is it only in the bricks and mortar store?

Taric codes aren't required for gifts coming into the EU either. Disgraceful stuff but at least you are getting more information. Much more pressure needs to be brought to bear on them from above.