murphaph

Indeed Robert, for me it's c-rail all the way for the laden flats but these are ok from a distance and will someday (as I improve) end up in Limerick yard but most of these early attempts will be going the way of a certain 7 year old beside me lol.

The Yang Ming in the picture is the first I've constructed using 2mm solid card rather than corrugated cardboard. It's more difficult to cut but probably fairly unsurprisingly retains it's shape better as it doesn't compress at the ends/sides where a corrugation is missing.

Thanks for the encouragement folks. Ultimately I will need to be able to construct a reasonable likeness of actual station structures so I thought the scalescenes route would make sense. I'll try their free buildings kits out next and then move on to something more complex. I'm just using generous amounts of pritt stick type glue to stick paper to card and normal uhu (actually the not drip version, which is slightly more jelly like) to stick the card edges/corners together.

Cheers Rob. It's certainly good practice for the future. I'll experiment a bit with different card thicknesses and see how I can improve upon what I've done so far. I'm trying to look at each one and see how I could have made it better. One thing I realise I really need is an assortment of square blocks of steel or aluminium or something to help hold parts at right angles during glue curing. I'm away next week but I've found offcuts on eBay for small money and I'll order those for when I'm back at home.

So I've posted a bit about my forays into the electronic side of the hobby but in the past couple of days I've picked up the scalpel and attacked my first ever scalescenes kit. A few containers. Baby steps.

Thx for clarifying. Quite understandable, given how much more difficult it is to regauge steam locos compared to diesel.

A model of that someday and I'd be all over it.

Yes please do

Yeah I know Jonathan but having stuff from decades apart on my layout at the same time really bugs me. Maybe I have some form of OCD. By the way my copy of RttW arrived and I've started reading it. Just my sort of book. Great work.

Any other fuel trains use one I wonder??

Couple of questions: Which tanktainers where to be seen on Irish rail in the mid 90s? Any details most welcome. Were high cubes carried on the 42' flats or were they too high?

@Mayner would you be considering including an easy path to 21mm in the design?

Yeah but I plan on building a fairly large layout requiring a lot of stock as is, now multiply that by 2 or 3 and I'd be looking at divorce! I want to be able to run a real day's timetabled operations some day. That requires a lot of duplicate stock.

I'd really love an excuse to buy one of these for my planned 90s layout. I know I can't run one, prototypically anyway but parked in a siding rotting away perhaps? When was the last one scrapped?

I guess there's a lot more RTR stock (Cravens) that a preserved loco can haul on a layout right now. Perhaps as the market grows there will be stock from the late steam, early diesel age to haul.

Lovely bit of backstory to the book.

Hmm, I never heard of them having a bar in Stoneybatter before the Phibsboro one. In fact as a student I worked behind the bar in the Muddy Boot in Stoneybatter. That place was owned by Martin McGowan but the bar his family owned in Phibsboro was long established at the time he opened the one in Stoneybatter. Maybe there was another bar there they had a connection with but it was never mentioned to me.

Did these McGowans have any connection to the pub in Phibsboro of the same name?

There's video on YouTube somewhere of a JCB unloading the barytes ore off the wagons at Foynes. As the spoils are really just an updated barytes wagon and indeed the Barytes wagons were used on weekends as spoil wagons elsewhere on the network (hint hint IRM, these would have wide enough appeal I would have thought) I can't imagine the modern day unloading would look all that different. But maybe they have something better than a JCB these days though I'd imagine it's still the right job most of the time.

Anything RTR from the 1990s Rob. Missing a few baby GMs but otherwise have all the MM locos from the period and of course the IRM stuff too. My long term plan is a 90s themed Limerick-LJ layout in a 30' x 10' space in the basement. The test oval is in that room now but as I have no garage yet the room also doubles as my workshop for now. Gotta build a garage to free up the space that I need.

First of all, fair play for even considering this John! Survey done. I won't lie, the price mentioned is pretty juicy and of course I understand why it would be so, so that's not a criticism in the slightest. It would be a stretch for me personally but if I was presented with Merlin or Slieve Gullion in preserved condition I would be hard pressed not to buy. I only buy models of 1990s prototypes or stuff I can repurpose for that era. It's a rule I've made for myself to avoid financial ruin lol! I would know that such a loco would genuinely be a one off so I'd almost certainly pull the trigger. I personally would not be interested in anything that could not plausibly run in a 90s scene so it would have to be something that made it to preservation for me. Wishing you the best of luck whatever way the project goes!

Ah I didn't realise that was you Jonathan! In fact the judicious use of book illustrations, assuming the copyright holder has given their consent) can help sell those books. Thanks to Mogul I ordered a copy of Rails through the West yesterday and very much look forward to thumbing through it!

Yeah this is a fairly niche item yet it looks like selling out soon enough. It's surely a good positive sign for the future or RTR Irish models. The strongly hinted at rerun of the ballasts will see the ploughs sell out I'm sure too.

Cheers btb. I'm actually located near Berlin so getting h0 scale stuff isn't a problem but I'm only using these relatively cheap locos for test purposes. The real collection and layout will most definitely be Irish! Collection is in the attic in storage until I have cleared enough space in the hobby room to actually build the real layout in a couple of years. For now I'm making do with this sort of "research" stuff so I'm ready to just go when the time is right. I've already learned some valuable lessons from this little test setup that I will take advantage of during the big build.

One of the "trains at speed" series of YouTube videos has a fairly good shot of of an empty bulk container train passing underneath. I can't remember which one unfortunately but it's one in the teens I believe, definitely not a low number in the series.