murphaph

It's been hit and miss for me too from my phone the past few days.

I'm a patient man

I think VAT is a misnomer here. If I import something to Germany from outside the EU VAT area and it gets stopped, I pay Einfuhrumsatzsteuer (import sales tax) rather than Mehrwertsteuer (literally value added tax). The rates between the two are identical but they are legally two different taxes and the import sales tax applies to used goods too. As these things are harmonised across the EU, I suspect the import tax in Ireland is also not strictly speaking a value added tax, but exactly that, an import tax which mirrors the rate of VAT. Basically the new rules are to clamp down on your Chinese eBay seller sending small stuff VAT free and there being a fair chance of it slipping through the cracks in the overburdened system and no tax whatsoever being paid on it.

Awesome. Any pics of the packaging?

Thx David. I tried them in the thread above and the results are really quite good I think and there is no clean up but they are expensive over time and I end up wasting most of the paint in overspray as if I get anywhere close to the model the paint will run (maybe my technique is just poor and with practice I could have less waste), even with the low pressure caps I fitted. I was also going to have a guilty conscience about all those empty rattle cans when I already had a workshop compressor sitting there. It's a decent enough 50L model so I can prime the air tank then shut the compressor off so it isn't running all the time and when primed up to 10bar I can spray for quite a while before it drops below 20psi. I "invested" in a cheap digital manometer so I can hopefully reproduce the pressure accurately. I have to say it was pretty cool to be able to just barely pull the trigger back and paint into corners with the airbrush nozzle just a few mm away from the surface. You can't see anything coming out but the surface starts to slowly change colour. It's going to be like when I first learned to drive a digger, scooping the bucket and moving the arm at the same time to create a smooth transition. Eventually muscle memory takes over I guess and the finger just moves itself, I hope! I can see myself combining the two. I will definitely use rattle cans for the undercoat at least. George told me how he sprays everything but the black window band with rattle cans. The black being done with the airbrush. I think this may be a happy compromise as the black is where the bulk of the detail is and around the windows one wants to avoid too much paint build up as fitting the flushglaze can be problematic as is. Maybe I'll try this hybrid approach on the next one, though I'm keen to keep practicing with the airbrush for now. I'm still very much finding my feet.

I'm not seeing where eBay should be adding VAT on for a sale between two private parties across the Irish border. In the table they provide the last row states that they will not be collecting VAT for sales inside the EU and this is the crux of the matter: NI is not in the EU but it is in the EU's VAT area so the intra-EU rules should apply: Inside EU*, Any value, Inside EU*, No Also note these changes only take effect from the 1st of July according to that page. I suspect eBay are actually (incorrectly) applying UK law in this case as the UK went ahead with all these online VAT changes in January already (the changes were agreed at EU level while the UK was still a member state and the UK went ahead and implemented them as originally planned whereas the EU decided to delay their implementation due to the Covid and Brexit problems for 6 months). I still think eBay is wrong here because NI is in the EU's VAT area and should be treated as such by both the EU and UK. That's the whole point of the protocol, to maintain the all island economy as laid out in the Good Friday Agreement. As we all know with places like the Canaries, being inside the EU itself doesn't mean being inside the EU's VAT area and vice versa. The eBay page is a bit wishy washy there. They should be using the term "EU VAT area", rather than "EU" I think. The Canaries are in the EU but outside the EU VAT area. NI is outside the EU but inside the EU VAT area. There are a handful of other examples of being inside the EU but outside its VAT and customs area, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Büsingen_am_Hochrhein

Thx a lot chaps. Ken, funnily enough I arrived at around 20psi as a comfortable level. I did find myself getting a bit impatient with the small amount of paint coming out.

So I've fired up my airbrush for the first time ever. What can I say....I need more practice but I'm hopeful this is the way to go. Having read a bit online beforehand I knew I wanted to go straight to a double action brush and that I wanted to use acrylics, despite them being trickier according to some accounts I've read. Thankfully I seem to have avoided most all of the technical problems that seem to beset many people trying acrylics, especially Vallejo ones. I am using the air range but I still have to thin it. The end result of the first colour spray is just ok and I'm sure I'll eventually repaint it. I'm going to proceed though so I get practice with all the required colours. Practice makes perfect and all that

Excellent Declan. Fair play to you.

That's exactly what I would have thought if two private sellers sell something in the EU Vat area, be it cross border or otherwise. There's no vat because the seller is not vat registered and is not obliged to be. If eBay is going to apply vat on all private sales then I think they will lose an awful lot of users.

That sounds wrong what eBay have done. After so much publicity surrounding the protocol, you'd think eBay would be aware of NI's special status. https://www.revenue.ie/en/customs-traders-and-agents/brexit/information-for-businesses-trading-with-ni/vat-trade-with-ni-after-transition/index.aspx#:~:text=Northern Ireland continues to be,not apply to Northern Ireland.

I've started preparing the next coach to be a mk2c with the oblong sealed toilet windows. I believe most of the IR ones were of this type. The plan is to cut out the glazing bars and vent, then cut the upper third of the frame out before filing the sides down and refitting, thus producing a shorter but still oblong window where the lower edge of the top of the frame lines up with the upper edge of the door droplight. The gap at the top being filled with plasticard (a little proud, so I can file it flush with top edge when it's all set)

Actually that's the best idea to use the Bachmann as a template as even if it's slightly wrong it'll be left as is and it's really more important that the Lima conversions match up rather than anything else.

Much appreciated but I appear to have stumbled across the info I need for now: http://www.barrowmoremrg.co.uk/BRBDocuments/CS/Book_No_200_EK_web.pdf The dimensions are absent but it's clear to see what the vents line up with and as long as I am consistent in my own fleet that's all that matters. While poking about in there I realised that my mk2d style AC windows are the wrong shape, d'oh! They weren't square in reality on the mk2c. I had no perfectly side on pics and always assumed they had used the square AC window that became standard in the subsequent mk2 models. This was an incorrect assumption it seems. The window was in fact slightly but noticeably rectangular and unfortunately it was shorter than the mk2b rectangular windows, so just cutting the glazing bars out won't be enough. I knew something wasn't adding up but I was blaming inaccuracies in the Lima model. I will have to both cut out the glazing bars and then cut out the upper half of the toilet windows, file a bit off and then put back in, replacing the missing material above with plasticard as I did before. There's no point in making cut n shut windows from the mk2e coach now. It's just more work as there's more filling and sanding that way. Ah well, you live and learn

ok but €700 is a bit much lol: https://www.amazon.com/British-Rail-Mark-Coaches-InterCity/dp/1898432481

It's really odd that they tend to leave them off. The Lima mk2e is a good deal better than their mk2b but they still didn't add the bumpers despite clearly updating the tooling in that area (if not the whole coach). A question for the mk2b experts: I know that the FK's had 14 equally spaced scalloped dome vents in a straight line but does anyone have rough dimensions for where they should begin, ie how far in from the end of the coach? I'd really like to buy "the" mk2 book but they are like €100 or something.

I'm kind of jumping between things but here's the latest on my Lima mk2b -> mk2c conversion "proof of concept" lol. The concept I'm trying to prove is whether or not I have the skills rather than whether or not the conversion is possible, which it surely is After a lot of filling and sanding I ended up cutting the right hand toilet window back out and binning it. It just looked crap really. I then installed the cut n shut window I'd made, taking more time not to botch the filler part. In fact I did not use filler, having read that normal super glue applied to cracks can act as a good filler in such situations I tried that with more success this time. I still had to sand a good bit but it came ok this time. As it was a cut n shut I had to fabricate my own vent out of plasticard which was my first time doing anything like that. The left hand window was salvageable using super glue to fill the remaining gaps. I also ordered 40 thou evergreen scenics half round stock to make up the door bump stops while I was at it and then undercoated the lot. The mk2e flushglaze fits even worse than the mk2b stuff at least the toilet windows so quite a lot has to be filed out of those toilet windows to allow a loose fit.

Personally I prefer sellers in the UK to deduct the vat (if they are vat registered) and ship it with a handwritten label. I've found stuff will often sneak through customs here if it's a smaller, lighter package especially. The volumes of parcels are so huge still that a lot gets waved through.

That was the plan for Germany too. Do the parcels have some marking on them to say delivered duty paid? I haven't bought anything from them for a while but I see reports on the German forum I'm on about vat being charged. Hattons refunds the vat but it's a hassle for everyone. I'd almost prefer them to deduct the UK vat but their German turnover is seemingly too high and they are obliged to charge vat at the checkout.

Hattons keep sending stuff to Germany without the proper duty paid paperwork so customs charge vat on the lot. Do they do it properly for Ireland?

So that's what those compensators do. I never realised they convert a push to a pull motion and vice versa. Cracking work as always.

They're all great. The more pics the better!

Thx for the shapeways tip. I was wondering where to pick up the roe vac vents.

I thought that was the case too but on page 40 of Michael McMahon's Irish Railway Rambler there's a pic of a freshly painted 4104 getting it's IR vinyl decals in Inchicore in 1990 and the window frames are definitely painted completely black. I wonder was this a one off but it serves as "evidence" for me that black window frames in an IR livery happened lol. Lovely job. I have the two Bachmann mk2a's in a box as well waiting for the time to block up that door and respray. Did you make the mk2d roof hatch yourself or buy the one from Southern Pride?

Yeah I think I will give them a try at least, perhaps one on or two "extra special" coaches. They are really nice. I have a load of flushglaze to use up though so I won't be abandoning it completely lol. I wanted to try dying the PVA glue black when I fit the next batch. I think it might help a bit with the look of the flushglaze, which to be fair from 2 feet away is perfectly acceptable for layout use. Are you talking about packs of the Shawplan etches as well Robert?