murphaph

I've taken a closer look at the shunting taking place in that video. It seems the train to Limerick was assembled in the siding immediately to the south of the main down line before being hauled out onto the down line, over to the up line then propelled along the up line, presumably to make use of the direct curve? Is this a correct summary of what's happening in the video above? If so, the train being shunted seems to leave the bounds of the control of Limerick Junction North signal cabin and enters an area under CTC. How was this handled from a signalling perspective?

That's very useful information. When you say LJ to Limerick local trip working, what do you mean? The bogie flats with containers clearly didn't originate at LJ. Would they have been taken off the rear of a Dublin-Cork liner, to also be included in this local working? Would the gypsum train have been a unit train all the way from kingscourt to LJ?

That gypsum train in the video was attached to a liner train. Was that also commonplace?

That's great to hear. I'm patient enough to wait . In the meantime I'm sure there will be plenty of other interesting items to add to the collection!

ILDA didn't help much either IMO but perhaps that's straying into politics. It is a crying shame how freight has virtually disappeared from the network. Can I ask for more detail on the steel trains: How did they transport the steel rod from Haulbowline to wherever it was loaded onto rails? Where did this happen? Very interesting that the Ennis road was closed in the mid 90s. My planned layout only has a very short stretch of this to be modelled, effectively a few yards after the turnout. It would be better operationally for me to send traffic via Roscrea as I will see more of it on the layout. I might model this closed period in fact. I'll have to seriously consider that option. So molasses came in from Foynes to Limerick yard as a block train, then got attached to the Limerick-Dublin liner train? How many wagons are we talking in each train? How much splitting/shunting of freight trains occured at LJ generally?

Are you talking about regular mkl GSVs or specifically the weed spray variant here? For the weed spray variant I think it may never be viable as RTR unfortunately. Nobody (or at least very few people) needs more than one of them. I would have thought though that there were rakes of MM Cravens out there waiting for their mkI GSVs. I know I need around half a dozen as the Cravens ran in such short branch formations in my planned era so even one passenger coach in the train required a GSV. It's not like the mkIId and mkIII stock where you can say a rake of 8 coaches to one EGV or whatever. I know other people also hoping for a quality RTR GSV for the MM Cravens stock. I understand that the market right now may well be too small to make financial sense (and I would hope nobody here would advocate risking the entire venture for a single model) but hope that in time as the market grows, that a regular mkI GSV would become viable. Please don't see this as me telling you lads how to run your business. You're doing a fine job as it is. I just wanted to give my perspective as a "recently returned to the hobby" type customer.

I want to correct my last post. All v5 US projects are FT enabled but that doesn't mean the 121s will be. Having said that, I believe it would be trivial to enable it if it (for some reason) wasn't enabled from the factory. I installed the EMD 12-710G3A LATE EXH T on my v5 decoder and stuck it in 208 with an iPhone 6s speaker. It is far far far better than the original MM sound. The prime mover sound is a near CD quality file on the decoder. I will use this file as my template for my 201s. Interestingly there is a EMD 12-710G3A LATE EXH T HEP for anyone considering modelling the Enterprise during the ill-fated HEP period. This is also a HiFi file, though I haven't tried it as I have no interest in HEP. ESU does not currently have HiFi files for the 8 cylinder engines but they are constantly remastering the original recordings for the v5. The v4 couldn't handle the high sampling rate so they didn't bother back then but now they have a reason to and as the Loksound Select is no more, all US model-railroaders are going to be going down the v5 path, so I expect ESU will have a vested interested in polishing these files up. There are 3 suitable 12 cylinder 710 v5 sound files, 5 suitable 12 cylinder 645 files but just one each for the 8 cylinder variants of the 567 and 645. I guess not many US railroads bothered with those smaller engines or something. I will use one of each of these as my templates for my A, 121, 141, 181 and 071 files. There's no good reason to use the v4 files as templates when using v5 decoders. The horns etc. can easily be copied to the Templates folder (best create a folder called 1-my-sounds or something, so the folder stays at the top) then you can easily replace US horns with the Irish ones when programming a new decoder.

Same here. Some weight to the box. Great job

Yeah I get that. It's just funny how a customs official will see essentially a nondescript box similar to many other nondescript boxes they will have seen while ravenous-dog like model railway enthusiasts this side of the world would sell a kidney to get them a day earlier lol. It's like my missus just sees a plastic toy and thinks I'm utterly insane for spending any money at all on them. Different strokes for different folks. Bit of a juxtaposition is all.

DESC: MODEL TRAINS. What an understatement!!!!

Thanks a lot chaps. Great info so far. How did the molasses and bagged cement go to the likes of Mullingar? Via LJ or Athenry? Any more info on the steel traffic? Years of operation, loads, routes?

Did you notice much variation within a class Noel? Would the horns have been of American design on the GMs?

The X is the "target" whatever that means. Sounds like a signal to me. Otherwise it's the red lamp on the gate I suppose: http://www.railsigns.uk/overseas/ireland3/ireland3.html

Are these just a "repeater" for the X on the gates? Are the X's the actual signal or how does it normally work?

I'm curious about the evolution, if any, in the sound of horns since dieselisation began on CIE. Have they evolved or always sounded the same? Did the horns ever sound American on the various GMs? Who supplied the horns in the A Class and GMs? Looking forward to any information you might have!

Be nice to be able to order empty flats from IRM.

From more googling it seems that ESU dropped the FT suffix on v5 project files because ALL v5 projects do indeed have FT by default through logical functions. The FT suffix was required for v4 files because FT came out during the v4 lifecycle. It was a way to identify new and upgrade v4 files but isn't necessary for v5 as it's a standard feature. This is good news. Just need to get suitable US loco and modify the horns & lights to use the Irish sounds and use this as a template rather than using a v4 MM file as a template. In time all relevant prime mover sounds will be available as v5 types. ESU really do themselves no favours in how they get the information out there. Most of what I've found has been on forums. There's an obvious disconnect between ESU GmbH and ESU LLC. A lot of information seems to slip through the cracks.

Another source of confusion here is ESU's documentation, or lack of it. It is fairly clear to me now, that (at least some) v5 LS projects do NOT implement drive hold (interchangeable with "drivehold" in ESU manuals so watch out when searching!) in the same way as v4 ones did. In the v4 projects I believe drive hold was always a sound schedule in sound slot 2. I had all sorts of strange runaway behaviour when trying to use the 12cyl 710 v5 file with the 201 on a v5 chip. I decided late last night just to blow the whole unaltered project from this loco to my v5 and it worked fine. Hmmm I thought. Upon closer inspection it's obvious that there is nothing in sound slot two, yet the decoder was responding perfectly to F9 as if drive hold was active. The other FT features were however in the sound slots as before. I looked at the function mapping and there under F9 is a logical function "drive hold". It is not a sound schedule in a sound slot. The logical function seems to be directly able to alter the frequency of playback for the prime mover in sound slot 1. There is one reference to this in the v5 manual but otherwise very little information on the internet that I can find. Perhaps my googling skills need improvement. I'll play around a bit more when I get some time. I suspect the v5 can do this but the v4 cannot, hence a project file that has all the FT sounds but relies on a logical function for the crucial drive hold feature, will not be marked as FT because on the v4 it won't work as expected. The v5 is still very new to the US I think so information on the internet is scarce and most European modellers don't seem to care for the features. Edit: Bit more info here; https://groups.io/g/Loksound/topic/full_throttle_and_v5/73288281?p=,,,20,0,0,0::recentpostdate%2Fsticky,,,20,2,120,73288281 https://groups.io/g/Loksound/topic/loksound_5_0_and_full/74538055?p=,,,20,0,0,0::recentpostdate%2Fsticky,,,20,2,80,74538055 Quote (pertaining to v5 only): "The typical default arrangement is: - Drive Hold is now a Logical Function, not a sound slot and is mapped to F9. - Run 8 is mapped to F26 with Logical Function "Shift Mode 2" and no sound slot. - Coast is mapped to F27 with Logical Function "Shift Mode 3" and no sound slot. - Manual Notching Logic is mapped to F28 with a special sound slot, typically 27."

Thanks a million John. That is a hell of a lot more than I had bargained for but there's almost no stock from that era that I don't need, it would seem! When you say 42' 9" flats, are these the same as the IRM 42' flats? The molasses came in via Foynes, right?

Hi all, As some of you may know, my long term plan is to model the LJ-Limerick line at waist height, showing hints of the WRC, Nenagh, Foynes and Castlemungret branches and the continuation of the LJ - Waterford line (all off scene but with the correct sort of traffic coming from and going to each branch/line), with the Cork-Dublin (north of LJ) mainline occupying a second level, shelf layout at eye level and using Helixes to pass through LJ on the main level before going off scene on the way to Cork. I'm trying to ascertain exactly what sort of wagons I need to be collecting over the coming years. The layout will be nominally set in 1995 but "mid 90s" is good enough. I believe in the 1990s you had at least the following movements in this area: Foynes-Ballina coal & oil (oil still carried or just coal at this stage?) Castlemungret-Waterford bulk cement in cement bubbles Kilmastulla-Castlemungret shale trains in bogie shale wagons Barytes trains from Silvermines to Foynes Gypsum from Kingscourt to Castlemungret but via LJ or Nenagh? Ammonia from Marino Point to Shelton Abbey via LJ What else? There was a container yard at Limerick. How was this served? Liner trains? to/from where? Kegs presumably came as far as Limerick but in a block train or attached to a liner train? Same for ferts? What about bagged cement out from the cement works? Any timber trains? Thanks for any and all help!

It's actually quite cheap. I paid €40 for mine. Great for this sort of task. It can be used for decoders from any manufacturer I suppose as it simply takes the place of a loco. Could be used independently of the Lokprogrammer as well if you use something like the JMRI DecoderPro probably.

You don't strictly speaking need a PCB but it saves a lot of space. I have installed decoders into older locos with no PCB/no decoder socket and it's a right pain. Each wire needs soldering and insulating etc. and then you need to squeeze the lot inside the body. A PCB is much better and costs next to nothing. They are largely generic I think. If the particular loco doesn't have function z, then nothing gets soldered to the pad. A simple PCB is actually extremely unlikely to cause any problems that you wouldn't otherwise have with a bundle of wires. Even on DC a PCB is preferable to a load of wires IMO.

Cheers Noel. Appreciate the input but I'm really committed to the DIY/learning approach on this. I will have too many locos to pay for pre-blown sound in them all, which is the end goal. I've got the Lokprogrammer and the ESU 53900 "test bench" (which I can recommend for this sort of desk work-see attached image). I just watched an ESU LLC video. Interestingly Matt Hermann states that the "Drive Hold" sound MUST be in sound slot 2. That's possibly why something wasn't working for me earlier. I'll try that later.

Cheers. I'm guessing then if the logic for the drive hold etc. is actually fully self contained within the respective "FT feature sound slot", then an alternative method would be to keep the 201 (etc.) file as is, then just add the FT sound slots, drive hold, run8, brake, coast? I assumed (obviously incorrectly) that the actual drive sound needs to be "FT compatible" but if the logic for drive hold isn't in the drive sound, then virtually any diesel loco can be given the FT features I guess? I must say I have been wondering why several ESU files are not marked FT and are missing the drive hold slot, but DO have the other FT features. In the description it always says for these files "this is a normal idle project". I assumed because of this that the drive hold feature was not simply an additional sound slot, but required modification to the actual drive sound, hence the lack of "FT" in these files descriptors.

Thx for responding. Appreciate it. Do you also delete the donor horn sounds and replace with the 201 horns?