murphaph

Yeah I found it strange to imagine that they would have been sure that they'd need ballast every week. Still if anyone has any more details about other timetabled workings elsewhere or in other years I'd love to hear about them. Or about this working. Interestingly the timetable entry is "real". That is it's not a "path" in the WT which they could easily have made it (like the best trains were). Possibly just an oversight? Maybe it did always run but sometimes only took a small quantity?

Looking at my 1992 WT it strikes me that I can only find a single pair of explicitly timetabled ballast workings. One empty train departed Athlone 07.25, arrived Portarlington 08.29, departed Portarlington 08.41, arrived Lisduff (quarry) at 09.35. The return laden working departing 11.15 and arriving in Athlone at 13.55. Is this the only timetabled working of a ballast train or have I just missed others? Why was this particular working timetabled? Did it always run? Was the train unloaded in Athlone or just stabled there for use elsewhere on the network? Cheers!

What did I miss?? I've been flat out.

There's nothing wrong with fair criticism either. Like if the models were poor runners or whatever then you could rightly complain loudly after handing over almost 200 quid for one but these little cosmetic details across a fleet of locos that were virtually all unique in some way due to the various modifications that took place would simply make almost any model economically nonviable if you were to be overly strict about being prototypical. You can have a wide variety of running numbers and liveries with little details that don't reflect the prototype OR you can have one or two liveries and running numbers that are exactly right. I know what I'll take.

How much did you pay for the body only if you don't mind me asking?

Beautiful looking models. Do people really think the big RTR players don't have to make compromises on details to make a model viable in the different variants? I'll take the IR model with the wrong marker lamps and silver headlight enclosure rather than no IR models at all!

Danke dir Walter

Little bit of early 2000's action with sound recently added on the test oval.

Is this MM0171 or something else?

Ah I see. Well that explains that. Luckily I'm not looking for that one! Anybody got any explanation for 143 and 187 or have I just been a bit unlucky and they're not rarer than the others?

Yeah but is it not in IR livery in Downpatrick?

Any particular reason for that?

Which of the baby GMs are the rarest? I'm missing two of the tippex ones (only era I'm interested in really), 143 and 187. Are these any rarer than the other seven tippex babies?

Can't say that without thinking of Ferrero Rocher lol. Fran as the Ambassador of course!

lol! Very good FL. Cheers Fran, I was thinking it might be something like that.

Hi IRM team, Quick question. Are the spoils really all sold out or is that a glitch in the system somewhere? Normally you guys give a good few heads ups on here as supplies of a given item start to dwindle and these were still showing "limited quantities" until they all seemed to go to sold out overnight, which in itself is unusual that all the packs are sold out simultaneously. I was going to pick some up but maybe I dawdled a bit too long while juggling the finances lol! All the best, Phil

And to give something back to the thread... If you remove the PCB as I did (because a pickup solder joint on the underside of the board had broken) you should note that the 3 little black screws holding the PCB in place are not identical. The one at the radiator end has a different thread. Very easy to miss.

So I had to remove the heatshrink as applied by Roads and Rails to their double iPhone speaker assemblies (you can surely make these cheaper yourself by the way, I was just being lazy when I ordered them): https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/254366688403 I also removed the grey blanking plate under the rooftop grille to let the sound out. The side grilles are slush with the chassis so I was sceptical as to how much sound would escape through them. I noticed when re-assembling that the cab is not really clued to the body at the correct height (radiator end). If you push the cab down tighter to the footplate the body tips up. It's not the speaker, there's enough clearance there and it happens if I reverse the body shell so the radiator grilles are at the wrong end also. Someday I'll have to prise apart the cab from body and glue it correctly. I'm perfectly happy with the sound. It's good enough anyway. These are 8 Ohm speakers but as there are two in parallel the impedance as seen by the loco is a nice 4 Ohms which I believe is the best match for the output stage of the amplifier. The file is from the ESU library, the only 8-567CR Loksound 5 Full Throttle project they have in there I think. I just replaced the horns with the ones from the 071/201. I have to take a closer look at the circuitry of the baby GM and see what can really be controlled independently and what needs rewiring. I will certainly be adding cab lighting and the ability to run without the headlights and ideally the ability to turn off the red marker lights when not running light engine as I did with the 201s. I suspect it'll be trickier here as space really is at a premium in these guys.

Fair play Stephen. Much appreciated

I'm in Germany. Will my parcels be shipped from Dublin too? Are we looking at increased postage rates to the rest of the EU? (Thanks to Brexit, No criticism of you guys. You can only do your best to work around the circumstances)

I'm not sure. I think 6s ones but they were cut down a bit by roads and rails before headshrinking them together.

Excellent. So BnT and IR are on home soil? That's great news.

Cheers. I've a few iPhone speakers here. Gonna try squeezing one of those in first rather than buying new ones.

Yeah I had no deep seated desire to go down that road and there's clearly no reason to. Cab straight off and then fingernail under the body gives enough purchase to pull it off. Squeezing the body just seems to anger it lol.

Lifesaver. First time opening one of these tonight. This is easy this way.