murphaph

The picture is really fuzzy. Does anyone have a clearer one?

If it wasn't for MM & IRM I would be modelling a different country. I don't have enough hours left in my life to kit build the amount of rolling stock I will need for the layout I have in mind. The poster above who said that we now have 90% of a weed spray train rather than 0% yesterday is spot on. IRM needs time to prudently develop the market. In a few years they might have (primarily through AS) increased the foreign markets enough to come back and be able to safely do the van or whatever without betting the farm on it.

That's my question really. I don't know anything about the differences between these engines. I would guess that the 567 sound is still the most appropriate though.

Well done again lads. Lovely looking model. The "42' era of operation" is too late for me but I've ordered a set anyway. I can re-purpose the flats in a normal liner train of the day and use the loads on 20' flats, whether they be kit built or perhaps even from your good selves as RTR, hint hint It would be great if someone could identify a source for a "dangerous chemicals" transfer so I can convert one of my IRM CIE containers as the mid 90's train seemed to have two containers usually.

Exactly, EMD calls the pistons & liners "power assemblies" according to Wikipedia. I've also seen the term "power pack".

So as we know, the 141s equipped with 567 engines were upgraded with the power assemblies from the 645 engine series. So what sound is broadly closer to the upgraded prototype? An 8-567 or an 8-645? Please note I'm aware that later on several 141s received actual 645 engines. I'm specifically talking about the 567s with the 645 power packs/assemblies though. If anyone knows of a particularly suitable Loksound 4 or 5 file for these upgraded 141s I'd appreciate a pointer.

Thx Stevie. That's the one!

I just noticed an old alignment in Cork branching off the Cobh line and running parallel to Glanmire Road. Can someone tell me a bit about this short stretch? Does it predate the existing railway infrastructure around Kent?

The good thing is that the economics can change if the market expands. I hope that the lads, through Accurascale, can bring more GB based modelers "into the Irish fold". It's not impossible. When I first came to Germany you could forget about getting Cheddar cheese or Irish beef here, no chance. Now these things are available in my local supermarket as stock items, thanks to marketing of course but also thanks to these products being of good quality. Irish companies have successfully pushed into this huge market. IRM can do the same in GB (and beyond hopefully) and more power to them if they can. Even here in Germany there are a select few 00 gauge modelers with nothing but high praise for the RTR products that have come out of Ireland in the last decade or so, starting with Paddy Murphy of course and more recently IRM. That's high praise as these lads are used to high quality RTR models from the established German manufacturers. PM and the IRM lads should be very proud of themselves (but not rest on their laurels until I can walk into my local German model retailer and buy a RTR model of the most obscure CIE wagon that ever there was lol).

I'm looking to model LJ in the mid 90s. I know the station area under the control of the 2 signal boxes was a forest of semaphores (with two colour light signals on a streel half gantry or whatever is the proper name?) upon which there is a good thread on here but what about the mainline (Dub - Cork) either side of LJ? Was this colour lights under CTC around 1995? The Limerick - Waterford was all still semaphores at this stage, right?

Maybe reach out to the current owner for any drawings they might have. I'm sure they'd be delighted to see someone modelling their station.

More info here: http://dunsandlestation.blogspot.com/2004/12/history-of-dunsandle-station.html?m=1

I can't help you with your question John but best of luck with your Irish layout. I'm sure one of the resident experts here will be along to help a bit later. There was a Dunsandle (note no trailing s) Station on the Loughrea branch. Maybe that's it?

Those 8 cylinders really make themselves be heard over everything else. Cracking noise

It's too late a era and the wrong area for me but best of luck your venture and if you ever make a 2600 Class in Arrow livery I'll be all over it!

Me too. I bought two full rakes of the keg liners so I said I'd leave it with the accessories but in hindsight I'd buy a few packs.

A subminiature relay is the easiest and simplest way to do this. You are directly replacing the mechanical switch on the high side of the supply (so a simple open collector transistor circuit will not work). Those little 12v relays cost €1 or so. The relay will rarely need to switch so contact burning is of no concern. I'll just use the ESU file for the 201 for the time being but I will replace the prime mover sound later with a full throttle one from a US loco with the same engine. There's one in there. I just can't remember the name of it. I'm going to try an iPhone speaker. I ordered a few.

Funnily enough on eBay.co.uk there are empty keg cages for sale. I guess that cages like those weren't found in GB but the kegs were.

I understood the question to mean "can I have something like US locos with the left and right ditch lights alternately flashing" and this is unlikely if the 071 wiring is anything like the 201 (I haven't examined a 071 yet) because the two marker lights at each end are wired together. You would need to make changes to the wiring to allow independent control of the left and right marker lights. The Lokpilot v4 supports flashing lights but has very few outputs (6 in total without using their expander board) and on the 201 (and I assume 071) they are all allocated to the marker lights (2), headlights (2) and cab lights (2) already. Apologies if I've misunderstood the question.

It's highly unlikely if the 201 is anything to go by as the end marker lights are driven by a common function output on the decoder. You would need to be able to drive them independently to make them flash alternately. That means hardware) wiring changes and more function outputs than the MM decoder (which is a Lokpilot v4 really) has available.

Sure when I get around to the relay for the 201 I will document it. I'm working on a few other things in parallel right now though (trying to resurrect an openDCC controller that I haven't powered up in 10 years and get RocRail to interface to it to run my test oval. The controller is a bare PCB job screwed to the baseboard and took a battering during our house move a few years back). I will also need to wait until my Loksound v5 actually arrives as it needs that additional output.

So I will install a miniature relay and instead of the common return from the red LEDs going through that switch, it will be connected to either side of the n.o. terminals of the relay. The default state for these lights should be off as locos will generally not be running light engine and thus the red marker lights will be off more often than they are on so it's better to have the default state of the relay as not energised. The relay coil will be driven by aux 5 with return to the common positive of the decoder. Very simple job but adds a lot IMO. I will do all the soldering on the loco board rather than touch the decoder. The decoder should still be removable. As the proud owner of zero baby GMs I have no idea about the wiring but if I did get one I imagine I would also want the same lighting setup as on a 201 to be honest. If there are no cab lights I would probably add them.

I may as well add some information for anyone interested in the 201 electronics. The main board accepts a 21 pin MTC decoder. I suspect the majority of owners will have a Loksound 4 or Lokpilot 4 installed as these are the chips sold by MM. These chips have forward/reverse lights, auxiliary outputs 1 and 2 which are wired to the headlights front and rear on the 201 and auxiliary outputs 3 and 4 which are wired (via a pair of transistors to amplify the output because the decoder output is TTL, very low power. The NEM 660 standard requires this but I suspect it was a fake standard created by the decoder manufacturers to allow them to sell you extra hardware later on to actually use these outputs) An examination of the main board in conjunction with reading the ESU manual for the v4 revealed: -all function outputs are open collector type. That means the output is switched to the internal gnd of the chip when active. The "return" path is to a common positive pin (pin 5). This is irrelevant for incandescent bulbs but not so for LEDs for example. -the outermost groups of 4 wires lead fairly obviously to the 3 LEDs at each end of the loco, red and white marker lights and the headlight. -the red marker led return path to the common positive of the decoder passes through the aforementioned spdt switch, which simply allows the return path to be interrupted and thus prevent the LEDs from illuminating. -the two outer pairs of a group of 3 smd resistors on the main board are just the series resistors protecting the aforementioned LEDs from over current. -the two transistors (marked Q) are used to boost that TTL output from aux 3/4 to a usable level to drive something, in this case they are feeding into the two white headers and in operation on to the cab lights at either end. This means that all the available aux outputs on a Loksound 4 are exhausted already and without sacrificing one of the existing functions, nothing else can be driven by this decoder. ESU do offer an adapter board which gives physical access to the "missing" microcontroller outputs. Essentially the microcontroller on the decoder has more outputs but they are not connected to the 21 pin connector. To use them you need that ESU adapter. Neat sales trick but other decoder manufacturers were not as stingy as ESU so it seems that to compete, ESU dropped this approach with the v5 as that decoder has like 10 physical outputs. I have decided to cease purchasing V4 decoders because of this limitation. Luckily I only bought one. For that one I'll consider putting it in a ballast plough with ballasting sounds. Don't need as many outputs for the plough as a loco. The v5 is the better choice by far if you want to add even one more function (in my case I definitely want to be able to switch the red marker lights off when not running light engine and that requires another output).

Yep that's the long and short of it. Hardware changes are required for this. Manually operating the switch with a hundred quid decoder with spare outputs is not an option lol. I don't want the red lights off all the time. They look too nice for that.

So I took a closer look inside. The LEDs are hardwired together from pins 7 and 8 of the decoder, ie when pin 7 is pulled low, the white marker lights at end A go on while the red marker lights at end B go on. There is a spdt switch under the loco which allows the path from the red led (led3 according to the silkscreen) to the positive common on the decoder to be interrupted, leaving the red led off. Helpfully, not, the led silkscreen has the incorrect polarity for those 3 LEDs and it took me a while to figure that out. The cathode chamfer on the larger white LEDs is not visible unless under magnification. I trusted the silkscreen.