murphaph

Yeah it looks great. Noel, did you respray the whole thing or just add the white lines and weather it? In real life it looks like they often added the lining and left the coach in service for years sometimes. There are lots of photos of rakes where the odd coach is obviously just ST golden brown with white lines rather than orange.

Looking for a 1994 or preferably a 1995 Working timetable (IE) if anyone is willing to part with one for a reasonable amount (€15 or so plus postage would be fine). Cheers! I'm in Germany but it can be posted to Dublin as well if it's easier. Cheers, Phil

Probably not but I bet the seller did

Ah ok I thought you were using DCC. The DC blanking plug is inserted in the DCC socket I take it? I suspect you'll find it's just a couple of broken solder joints at the pickups to be honest. It's far more likely to be that than a defective component on the PCB and testing continuity from front left to rear left and front right to rear right wheels will quickly tell you without even taking the loco apart

No, but you can just use 4 tiny balls of black tack to fix containers to the flats as an alternative. Holds firm but can be removed with a gentle tug.

Do you have continuity from the pickups to the PCB? You can quickly check continuity between the front and rear left and right wheels respectively. You should have continuity between wheels on the same side (I can't remember if both wheels on each bogie have pickups but definitely both bogies have at least one set of pickups. This will quickly establish if a wire has broken inside loco between pickup and PCB. You may have already eliminated this when you "jumped the terminals" (it's not clear exactly what you jumped). If you have continuity from wheels to PCB terminals and the decoder works in another loco and you have continuity from the PCB terminals to the motor, then yeah the PCB is defective but there's hardly anything on it to break. The little transistors if present (will be marked Q1, Q2 etc.) have nothing to do with motor control, those will be for function outputs. The capacitors or inductors that may be present in the motor control circuity can actually be removed if using DCC only. The output of the motor pins can be bridged directly to the terminals on the motor. In older locos people usually strip all the capacitors and inductors out when converting to DCC. But I think it's actually unlikely any of these have failed. A dry solder joint is the most likely cause of failure of the PCB, especially the surface mounted 21pin socket that is subject to mechanical stress when the decoder is inserted and removed. A quick touch of the soldering iron on every joint is what I'd do first after checking for basic continuity. If the loco is completely dead (ie headlights and marker lights also dead) then I'd be amazed if the problem isn't the continuity between pickups and PCB or at the 21pin socket. I've had both pickup wires break at the bogie end on MM locos so it happens. You should be able to troubleshoot this without any test track or rolling road if you have a multimeter.

I don't have a schematic but there's very little on those boards to go wrong and if you are comfortable soldering you will almost certainly be able to repair it. Have you tried just reflowing all the solder joints? There's a very good chance there's a dry joint and before you start trying to debug it you would be done reflowing the joints in 2 minutes. What is the exact symptom of failure? Is it completely dead or just some functions aren't working? Even without a circuit diagram you will be able to check continuity from the MTC21 socket to most of the various components. You can find a pinout diagram like this: https://images.app.goo.gl/RcW1oMsB1i1nEVf18 And then check for continuity from the pins to things like the pickups/wheels (there will probably be capacitors between the motor and 21MTC pin (on the Bachmann board) so you shouldn't expect DC continuity from socket to motor as the capacitor "blocks".

I've never built a loco kit but I guess on "one offs" the likelihood of later needing to remove a decoder is minimal, unless it fails. It's maybe just my OCD. I just like a clean interface between decoder and the permanent wiring of the loco. It also allows a person to whip the decoder out and put in a DC blanking plate to allow the loco to run (natively) on DC (at a friend's or in a club layout for example). Edit: it also allows an easy upgrade. I will probably initially equip a lot of my locos with lokpilots due to the sheer cost of sound decoders. As and when funds are available, I can upgrade the locos to loksounds and cascade the lokpilots down to coach lighting duties, without having to get the soldering iron out.

I guess this is the product he talks about: http://www.esu.eu/en/products/loksound/loksound-5-dcc-direct-with-integrated-powerpack/ Personally I don't like hardwired decoders like this as you are committing to leave the expensive sound decoder installed in that particular loco "forever". No swapping loksounds with lokpilots as your fleet changes or whatever. It's also a pain to replace the decoder should it fail and you have to program it on a programming track or rolling road (I like to remove my decoders and programme the programming board (ESU Prüfstand)) I'm any case it looks like it's a north American model and will not be readily available here (though you'll probably be able to find it somewhere if it meets your needs) Obviously the product might well suit your needs or they wouldn't be selling them so please don't be put off by what I say. Most of this is personal preference.

Another thread revival, sorry! Does anybody know where these tanktainers (Harp, Satzenbrau) would have been going to or from? I am assuming it was bulk product being sent somewhere to be bottled or put in kegs perhaps? Were similar containers ever seen around Kilkenny (Smithwicks)?

These are brass kits, requiring soldering together Shane.

Cheers John, then you can put me down for one also so

John, Is the weed spray van this one?

Yeah they are brilliant. Several interesting movements caught on camera. The Athy pictures showing what appears to be the delayed up Bell liner reversing into the Ballylinan branch siding to make way for the crossing of the two scheduled passenger services is really super. Probably a rare occurrence as the liner should have been approaching Heuston already at that stage.

And I guess the kadee is actually as close to prototypical looking as you'll get on the mk3, with the drop head buckeye couplers used on the intermediate couplings.

Any background to it at all Billycan? It doesn't look "official" to me. If it was I would expect both company names to appear in full, not just IE's. But I'm probably completely wrong and it's part of a pair of something.

This one is a cracker:

Lol I asked the same question last week btb. It's in the questions and answers forum.

The 121 packaging looked good in theory but locos were to free to actually move about. I also had a loco sitting back at an angle. The standard IRM sandwich packaging has done well for me so far.

I think a few folk are trying to offload their Lima mk3s at the moment. They'll be far less desirable once MM releases the updated ones.

I'm watching that one out of morbid curiosity. I'm not sure the high prices being paid for diesels at the moment is going to translate to even higher prices for rarer steam models. It sounds logical but most modellers of Irish outline are modelling diesel, certainly the RTR modellers anyway. The guys who model steam are probably used to building kits for half the price of the reserve, so can't see anybody hitting the buy it now button at over a grand in €.

Cheers Warb, yeah it's deffo Athy I reckon, protecting the crossover from the loop to the mainline in the DOWN direction. Useful info for me. Thx

Is that a concrete post? It almost looks concrete anyway.

Can the 201's 710 engine fit inside an 071 without major surgery? It can't be that much bigger, they are both 12 cylinder engines. I'd prefer to see the 071s soldier on in that was a viable option. Though the way those EMD engines are built, the engine block is really just a frame for holding the wear parts, which can be replaced individually, so not even sure there is any point in such a donation programme.

Interesting thoughts John. I did not know that Asahi used two different "nasty chemicals" which were transported by rail. Perhaps the different tanks contained the different chemicals? Probably unlikely as they are not coupled together. I think the simpler explanation that the original fleet became insufficient as production increased makes sense. I wonder does anyone have a photograph of the later type. I've only ever seen ones of the first variant. At 3.07 the taller type can be seen more clearly in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM6kiSeddFg&ab_channel=GerryConmy I know that Foynes-Claremorris traffic was diverted via Portarlington in the 1992 WT. I have no other WTs to consult unfortunately (if anyone is selling a 1995 one I'd be interested by the way). Do you think the fuel oil would have come in to North Wall instead of Foynes or would it have travelled to North Wall from Foynes, to be added to the Asahi Liner? From the oil tanker positioning in the middle of the rake it would seem it left North Wall like this, rather than being added at Kildare, would that seem reasonable? Were the containers also going to Asahi specifically or was this general goods traffic to Ballina freight yard? In the cab ride video in the other direction also on Gerry Comny's youtube channel, there appears to be a similar catch point on the UP side between Kildare and Monasterevan somewhere. Edit: Looking at the above video it seems there were two "new variants"! The 2nd and last tanks are both different to each other and different to the "originals"!