murphaph

Centre door filled with milliput superfine and sanded. I just used the glazing as a base for the filler. The gangway doors I had to cut out as they were firmly glued in place. I couldn't get the corridor connections off so just masked carefully around them. They'll stay black anyway. I'll remove the masking before the final coats of matt varnish. AFAIK the fawn colour on the Bachmann FK is an error and they were red in reality even with BR. The centre door is noticeably proud of the rest of the coach side, especially lower on the tumblehome. This can be seen in the pics where sanding shows the areas immediately adjacent aren't being touched by the sanding block initially. With a bit of patience however the door bulge is sanded away flush to the coach side. A first coat of primer applied after degreasing.

Does anyone know what glue Bachmann used on these mk2a's? Was it CA or a plastic weld? They overdid it on my BR FKs all around the glazing. I'd like to remove it of it's CA.

Great stuff John. Nice clean webshop there. I'd also be in the market for a couple of the flying snail brake vans and some of the other wagons which are available to preorder. A question which I'll ask here rather than by PM as I reckon I won't be the only one wondering this... Can the more patient among us order several different items and wait until everything is available before shipping as a single package to save on shipping costs?

As I'm largely blocked on further progress on the Limas due to not hearing anything back from Shawplan, I will turn my attention to the Bachmann mk2a's for now. These are the pair with the plated over centre doors. First step is to remove the wire door handle sand back the mouldings around the door frame. I think it's better to do this before filling the window and step because it's much easier to see when I am flush with the coach side as paint starts coming off.

It looks light green to me lol.

Indeed, just following the point rodding is interesting in its own right! Are working semaphores planned LC?

Which of the IRM A Class liveries could have been seen at the same time as the last of the steam engines were still plying their trade?

Thx for the tip David. I've just ordered a copy to have for whenever I try a bit of weathering. Sounds like a good reference, though I won't start spraying enamels any time soon! I hope I can just use acrylics instead. There are some acrylic weathering sets specifically for model railways from Vallejo and Lifecolor and possibly more.

First attempt at DIY transfer stripes. Created on some free SVG graphic tool on a Chromebook and shrunk down to scale then printed out on decal paper with an inkjet printer. Seen here after receiving clear coat of varnish to protect the water based ink when in the water bath: Test coach stripped and resprayed in just the "grey" (I've ordered something a touch darker) and blue: And with one stripe cut out using a scalpel and steel rule: I reckon I'm on the right track with this method. It's dirt cheap (costs basically nothing) and will be a lot less effort than masking the colours individually. I need to get a slightly cleaner cut though I am pretty happy with this I have to say. I made no attempt to get the correct shade of yellow here and the black printer cartridge seems to need a slight alignment but from 2' away that's not visible. Now that I know the method will work for me I can refine it a bit. The stripes are 0.8mm/1.6mm thick.

Beautiful work.

What's the buffer to buffer length of the model A?

What years did A39r run on the mainline in the depicted livery?

It'll definitely affect something from say c-rail or Peter's Spares where the light weight usually meant they were assumed to be worth very little so would be waved through (here in Germany anyway) whereas now every parcel will be subject to customs

I was pleasantly surprised to find this shop. I can't speak from experience of using them yet as I've just placed my first order but I'll report back if and when the stuff appears. https://www.zinnfigur.com/en/Paints-Tools/ They are primarily a toy soldiers and military modelling kits place but what impresses me is the very large range of acrylic paints from several manufacturers like Vallejo, AK, AMMO, Lifecolor etc. and also that they (unusually for Germany) have the complete range of Deluxe Materials items like Glue n Glaze, Rocket Card glue etc. and loads of Tamiya stuff. Plenty of tools also available, including bending aids for etched kits and things like that. Shipping to Ireland starts at €10 up to 4kg: GB shipping is a flat €15, presumably because of the extra customs formalities. https://www.zinnfigur.com/en/Shipping-and-Charges/ Minimum orders of €25 to keep costs down they say. I have no connection to the shop and I'm not yet a satisfied customer but I hope to be. If not I can go in there and read them the riot act as they are only half an hour away lol.

Thanks a lot for your efforts David. The roof coloured guttering is certainly the easiest to reproduce. Might do one or two of them with grey gutters for a bit of variety though

I'm going to try those vinyl stripes anyway. They might work ok with a coat of varnish over the top of everything. I've also ordered a single set of the Railtec ones to see if they are worth the money. I do highly rate the Railtec stuff. The transfers I used up thread on the IR mk2b's are all Railtec. I've also ordered a selection of thin masking tapes from Jammy Dog so I have three possible ways to skin this particular cat. It seems like NIR also modified the corporate livery in some respects. I have pictures of the roofs in a medium gloss grey as well as a matt black. Was there any pattern to this or was it random? I've also seen the window frames unpainted and painted around the outside. Same question. The cantrail is also painted the same light grey as the tumblehome, unless it's a first or diner, in which case it follows the yellow/red convention. Correct? I believe the gutters were painted the same light grey and it wrapped around the end of the coach, unlike the cantrail stripe. Most pics show the gutters very dirty, almost black, but I do believe they were painted grey initially. Could someone confirm? The Lima mk2b coach roof has a little ridge to represent the gutter which could be painted I suppose.

Thanks for all the pointers guys. I think those vinyl stripes are surely worth a punt at that price. My only concern from the pics is that the white stripe looks very thin relative to the black. From looking at coach pics I reckon the white stripes were half the height of the black and yellow stripes. I reckon the white were 2" and the black and yellow were 4" but that's just by looking at them relative to the grab handles and comparing to the 3" lining used by IR. I suppose in the end they just need to pass the 2' rule though.

Thx iarnrod yeah I'm aware of them but they aren't cheap. They cost twice as much as the donor coach lol. I will be looking to do a couple of rakes if these in time so that adds up. Nevertheless I'll order one pair to see if I can justify the expense and to see if I have the skills to apply such a long transfer in a straight line!

I really like this. The blue carriage cleaning depot or whatever it is screams Heuston. It would be well worth weathering the rails as David suggests.

A first attempt at a colour test of the NIR corporate livery: I paid little attention to the masking hence the bleed in places. I'm happy enough except for the lower grey band. It should be a touch darker than the Vallejo insignia white I've used here. I didn't bother with the bottom black band and I can see the stripes are all a bit too thick. I've ordered alternative masking tapes for this. If anyone knows the actual thickness of the stripes that would be great.

I've seen a pic or video somewhere of two rebuilt Dutch vans topping and tailing a long mk2z-c rake. I think it was probably a special. I had always just assumed the whole train was electrically connected when running in this configuration but of course they could just have been running split like when the tpo mk1 egvs ran with the mk2ds.

I stumbled across a couple of interesting pics of the 1991 Foynes Phoenix railtour. The pics show that the above coaches formed a rake hauled by 170. The coaches were all air braked so compatible in that regard but what about the electrical systems? The pics show an NIR EGV at one end of the train and an IR rebuilt Dutch van EGV at the other end. Was the Dutch van there just to provide extra power to the whole rake because of its length or were the electrical systems incompatible, requiring two separate EGVs for each part of the train? https://images.app.goo.gl/Jrwkm7AsNBvDKSr49

I humbly suggest an open top double decker bus parade (resprayed into a more appropriate Italia 90 era two-tone green of course) winding its way from Dublin Port to College Green with the first examples taken out of the container and held aloft by the IRM team up front, being showered in Champagne by the crowds below. Too much? Ok, then replace the Champagne with cans of Dutch Gold

Even the far cab on this side of that photo was still in IR livery. It's a real pity it never ran in service like that. It would make a great model. The amazing thing is that even after seeing that hideous paint scheme full size, the management ordered it for the 201s anyway. They would have looked a million times better in tippex.

Shades of Monasterevin for me. Love it.