murphaph

It would be nice if folks could post any alternative EU sources for materials etc. For example I bought stuff (finnboard, plastikard) from https://www.architekturbedarf.de/versand They list Ireland lower down. Shipping is a flat €30 though so I'm guessing you'd want a nice big order to make it viable.

I think the meets (US railroad speak, crossing trains here maybe?) are a particularly interesting part of the railway. Trains definitely had to wait to cross each other at Athy and following on from the decision to go back to the hidden spiral as suggested by Robert, it opened up the possibility of modelling a slightly different area. I am now honing in on the idea of: Top shelf around the room: Curragh Mainline to immediately south of Kildare station. Offers possibility of stopping NIR specials to the Curragh, running on to Kildare to run around. middle shelf around the room: Monasterevin to Portarlington. Monasterevin has really nice model railway friendly scenery. Raised on an embankment, the track crosses water three times in a mile. Portarlington offers more crossing trains as the single line to Galway and the west diverges. Also offers realistic parking of ballast trains! Bottom shelf: Kilberry siding to Athy (Tegral). Adjacent to Kilberry is the BnM works. Possible narrow gauge modelling opportunity. BnM railway came very close to mainline here. Nice industrial scene directly adjacent to railway in any case. Athy station offers passing trains and Tegral siding offers bridge over Barrow and nice industrial canal quayside, perfect for a shelf layout. These are the more interesting areas to model and because a long hidden spiral connects them, a realistic delay can be introduced between each scenic area so a realistic timetable (natural or in a fast clock) can be executed. I don't think I'll ever be really taxed by the shunting movements. It's just Tegral and Kildare. Tegral could easily be automated but I want to retain some shunting.

Do logs also go by rail to the other Coillte plant in Clonmel at all? I had no idea they were being processed in Waterford. I always assumed that the logs were for export. Interesting.

You can feel the art deco (if that's what it is!) off it already. Lovely.

Hattons are the only UK shop I order off and for one reason: their trunk service. Saves a fortune on postage costs.

My comment about the impact of Brexit on postal deliveries was intended to be purely factual, not to convey an opinion about it either way. I do have my own feelings about it but this is the only forum I contribute to where the matter hasn't become highly divisive and I am glad about that and I'd like it to stay that way It's impossible not to discuss the practicalities of it however as we are all used to ordering stuff from all over. I have a parcel waiting for my down the (German) post office with vat to pay and I have a bad feeling it's from Hattons. I know about another guy in Germany that got stung for vat by the customs even though Hattons are supposed to be vat registered here and delivering duty paid. I expect Hattons will refund me the double vat as they did him but it's needless hassle (in his case they forgot the "delivered duty paid" sticker they said)

The EU changes to vat on parcels from outside the union were delayed until mid 2021 because if Brexit. The UK decided to go ahead with these changes in January already as originally planned when a member state but these changes currently only affect those in the UK, not anyone in Ireland (unless selling into the UK below £150 in value) The negative effects we are currently experiencing on postal deliveries to Ireland are purely down to the UK leaving the single market and customs union in January.

I love the backscenes. Really great depth.

Exactly. Addresspal is much more about being able to order a particular item at all rather than for the cheaper shipping. Certainly for me that was mostly the use case (in my case Parcelwizard). Now it's just way dearer as the delivery charge itself is almost twice the price and double vat. In my case the items then need to be consolidated by the mother and shipped to me in Germany. I haven't used a redirect service yet since brexit but I suspect I will for that niche item.

I guess there's a little bit more to it than just scaling up the 00 tooling cad work as presumably some of the smallest parts are slightly overscale in 00 due to manufacturing limitations whereas they could be scale in 0 gauge. But I could be talking nonsense.

I'm a realist and don't really expect we'll see any increase in railfreight but one has to also note that even given the "hostile environment" of IE (sadly including the management, unions and staff in the past at least), the DoT and successive governments, there are still liner trains operating in Ireland. If that doesn't prove that there's potential there I don't know what does! Imagine if you weren't relying on IE but a private operator to get your load to the port on time and reliably. As brexit continues to force a realignment of supply chains, the island is becoming a single unit economically with shipping bypassing GB and increasing massively through the south east, you'd imagine railfreight from Waterford and Rosslare to railheads across the country would be about as viable as it's been in many years. Instead of 20 drivers taking 20 lorries from Derry or Galway to Rosslare or Waterford, one or two drivers can bring those loads to a railhead to be taken in bulk to Rosslare or Waterford. The island isn't that small really, especially if a large proportion of your freight is now being funnelled through one corner of it and when the proportion of unaccompanied trailers crossing the sea is increasing.

Railfreight could rise from the ashes with the concentration of freight movements now happening in the southeast of the island. It won't happen as long as IE is being relied upon to deliver it however. Without open access to the infrastructure (which should stay in state hands like the road network) to private railfreight companies, there will be no renaissance in railfreight.

I remember reading somewhere that Tara mines traffic went via Foynes for a time. Was this at the very start after the mine had opened? When was that? What wagons were used? Cheers all.

Where did you get it? Homemade? I see nothing like that in Modelling Irish Railways:

My fast clock will be digital and computer controlled

I absolutely love looking through my working timetable trying to "play detective" and imagine what went where by piecing the bits together. Trying to run my railway close to a real working timetable is the end goal. I will build in a bit of "plausible fantasy" to increase rolling stock possibilities (for example in my time period the Cahir viaduct has already collapsed and beet traffic is to be routed via Kildare to Mallow) I will run a fast clock so I can have a train more or less always visible on the layout.

So I'm intentionally leaving the centre of the room free for a possible n gauge (probably US themed) switching layout, should I ever bore of the Irish Midlands or want to allow guests, but I'm not expecting to any time soon and I get a lot of enjoyment out of the computer automation stuff, which gives a lot of room to try new things out, even though the rolling stock stays Irish. I am aiming to build the layout so that I can, without too much lack of realism run it with older stock some day. I understand the gauge is not a problem for most but it really makes a difference to me. It has to be 21mm. It can be done. Quite a few of those American basement empires on YouTube are all handbuilt track. Many of those guys chose that path because they simply couldn't afford to buy ready made stuff when they started. To my mind a 3 shelf layout say a foot and a half deep is something I'll still be able to operate well into old age. I've seen (sadly) a few YouTube layouts where the guy can't crawl under things anymore and the layouts are to be taken apart. I like long runs of open countryside as well where prototypical length trains can stretch their legs.

Cheers John, Yeah it's definitely fairly ambitious especially in 21mm but I'm up for it. I am now more strongly leaning towards 3 independent shelves all on the flat with the spiral being hidden behind the backscenes. The plan for staging for the provincial stations is to continue the spiral down a layer and have another complete shelf slightly off the ground full of sidings long enough for a complete train (probably two different lengths of sidings for "short" and "long" trains) The plan for Dublin staging is the same but up top, continue the spiral out to a top shelf at about my head height and fan out into a shelf full of sidings all around the room. It will operate end to end like the prototype. Carriages and wagons will typically not be turned. The loco will be released and leave the rake to be picked up by itself or another loco later. The fact some trains would end up being turned due to the stop in Kilkenny will have a blind eye turned to it. Anything that visits Kilkenny in my layout always visits Kilkenny, so would be turned around again before passing back through Athy. I will provide a short wye in one of the corners of both the provincial (lowest level) storage and Dublin (highest level) to allow single 121s and possibly some day steam engines to be turned at each end of the run. I will of course "recycle" stock where possible. I can't fit it afford not to. I will use the hidden spiral to reposition rakes mostly back to Dublin as my layout represents stations much closer to Dublin than the provincial termini so I will need to simulate a wave of ex-Dublin trains in the morning/evening rather than an even back and forth. I will also, as previously mentioned use the hidden spiral to reposition obviously incorrect freight wagons where the load is visible. Gypsum and fertiliser are the only two I can think of off hand but the odd ballast train too probably assuming they depart Lisduff laden and return there empty, but they won't be computer controlled workings anyway. The hidden spiral will require pointwork but my plan would be to have all points in the scenic break by the door so they aren't hidden behind the backscenes. The only thing behind the backscenes should be plain straight or fairly generously curved track. I have been wondering would a check rail be at all sensible in the curves. Any thoughts on that? I want the hidden track, especially the spiral to be very reliable. John I am familiar with both those layouts and they are really great. Also really like Jack Burgess' YV Railroad which is also multi deck, end to end. When it comes to the actual track in place at the time I'm going to allow myself some leeway and pretend that a lot of the modernisation works hadn't yet happened. There will be a lot of FB rail on wooden sleepers (directly soldered) in my world and I will probably reduce CTC's influence so everything south of Cherryville is semaphores.

Thanks a lot for the tips folks. Much appreciated. Josefstadt, I'm going to be building it all in 21mm so no off the shelf trackwork available unfortunately. The track in the off scene areas will be minimalist however, with very wide sleeper spacing.

My very first common crossing vee. A 1:7 made of Code 75 bullhead rail. Vee filing jigs from the P4 society. DCC concepts flux and 145 degree detailing solder. I'm still waiting for my PCB sleepers to arrive. I'm not sure if I'm filing the nose blunt enough as described by Rice in his pragmatic PCB book. Probably some trial and error required. The plan is to start "mass producing" points to a standard pattern to be used in the off scene areas of my planned layout. The basement room it's destined to go into is currently my workshop and will remain so until the garage is built. Building points in the meantime allows me to make use of that time. I will require a lot of points for my staging areas. Although bullhead soldered directly to PCB looks a bit wrong, here it doesn't matter as it won't be seen in operation and bullhead appears a little easier to make points out of than FB (no need to file the foot of the switch blades off at the taper).

I'm a real fan of layouts that model a real section of a prototype railway. I love watching layout tour videos where the guy explains what used to happen where on the prototype. Maybe it's a lack of imagination however!

What you said about journey time struck a chord with me Robert. I'm back considering the 2/3 independent and flat levels connected by around the room spiral (nolix) hidden behind the scenery rather than making the visible area itself the spiral. The huge advantage of the hidden spiral being that I could stack trains in there long enough to make the journey time from Athy on the lowest level to Kildare on the middle or highest level realistic. I could even reduce speed way down to reduce ghost noise emanating from the layout, just like I intend doing in the proper staging areas. The whole mainline will be computer controlled anyway so I will know if a train has become stuck somewhere and Rocrail won't allow any rear endings. It will be one of these two approaches. A typical helix is out of the question given how much floor area and room volume it would consume.

Yeah does anyone know the highest price ever paid for a MM loco? There was this one for €416 a few days back: https://m.ebay.ie/itm/Murphys-Models-NIR-Irish-class-111-No113-Belfast-and-County-Down-Ltd-Edition/124563627657#vi__app-cvip-panel That must be a contender but I heard of a kind of mania around the Lima 201s during the Celtic Tiger where all bets were off on price.

Or fortunately when you look at the price people are prepared to pay already! I'm glad I'm not looking for one anyway. I'm blessed I got back into the hobby when I did and nabbed all the 071s I need. Just in the nick of time to be honest.

Thanks Robert. The first idea I had was similar to what you suggested in fact, distinct decks connected by helix and then I thought about doing it exactly like your suggested way but the concern I had and still have was/is primarily about access in the case of a derailment. If I hide a level connecting track behind the backscenes I will have to make sure the backscenes can be easily removed to rescue a derailment anywhere. I'm not sure how practical that is. I also realised that if I do it this way I would be forced to provide a double track link to trains can go down a level and up a level simultaneously. I can't make trains wait to go off scene to transit between levels. It was at this stage that I came upon the idea of simply making the visible layout do the climbing (I had never knowingly seen an example of a layout like this but after some googling found a couple of examples, but really not many). I am hoping to have nice backscenes that curve up and over the rails to an extent, providing the illusion of "real blue sky". These would really preclude hiding any trackwork behind I think. The benefit of modelling this area is that it's largely flat terrain. No hills or mountains so I believe fairly ideally suited to a shelf type layout and I believe I can get the sorts of vertical separations that Iain Rice recommends in his book on shelf layouts. I did consider a peninsula but after careful consideration I have decided against one because I would like to keep the centre of the room clear for a potential (may never happen but whatever) n gauge layout of another prototype. I will have to live with a good deal of compression of the Cherryville to Athy section, but Newbridge to Cherryville Junction is a fairly short distance in real life so I will not have to compress distances here too much.