Northroader

https://www.steamtrainsireland.com/rpsi-collection/52/504-guinness-grain-van I fancy these wouldn’t stray off the GNR, ( mind, they’d have to get to the brewery over the GSWR ) but it’s an interesting prototype.

So, early on in ‘96, once the Christmas expenses were out of the way, I sent off to Dublin for an 0 gauge kit of the one Irish loco the McGowans did. They called it a “Bat”, I couldn’t say why, as that wasn’t the first named in the class, otherwise known as a MGWR “E”, or a GSR/CIE “J26” 0-6-0T. it was the first loco I tried building, and the way it was done has coloured my approach ever since. The chassis was simplicity itself, two 1/16” brass strips for the main frames, four machined brass spacers to set it up, a set of brass axle bushes, and two plain steel strips with the pilot holes drilled in for the coupling rods. You'll see there is no compensation, and I’m of a mind that if you get all the tips of the wheel flanges touching down on a glass plate with no rocking, compensation is an extra complication. The bit of extra depth in finescale wheel flanges should be adequate enough to cover track irregularities, if the loco keeps derailing, look at your track. I added some L shaped brass strips fore and aft to give a place for the screws to attach the superstructure, but you can find spacers with a central vertical hole drilled through. The Mashima motor and gears ride on the back axle, and I made a strap to go round the motor and screw on to a spacer to support the motor. Since I built this loco my fitting skills have improved, the crankpin holes had to be drilled out oversize before it would give me free running with the coupling rods on, and larger washers were needed. The rods, of course, needed a lot of filing to go from a plain steel bar to a decent profile, and something I discovered was they do need sideways clearance allowance on the bushes for when the wheels track round a curve. With the wheels in place, I marked out and drilled for a set of Slaters plunger pickups. They’re dear, but they do give reliability when handled right. I’ve since worked out the best way to fit these is to tin the little tag first off, then assemble them as a unit away from the frame, so that you can screw the plunger nuts really tight. The motor leads, also tinned, with some spare length, are fed out through the frame holes and soldered to the tags with a quick in and out dab of the soldering iron. The pickups can then be fed through the frame holes into position. This way you’ve got the tag nuts really tight, and the soldering iron heat has had less of a chance to run down the plunger and start melting the spring into the plastic top hat bush. The superstructure was quite simple, the main platework was done with tinplate punchings, with a prerolled boiler, and with a few castings to add. It’s the only tinplate job I’ve come across, and I found it lovely to solder. Of course, I did the sequence wrong, opened the kit, got it all out, then ordered the wheels from Slaters. While I was waiting for those, all fired up, I thought I’d push on with the body. Wrong! Always get a working chassis made before you start on the top. I had to re do the front splashers to get the proper clearance when I had finally made the chassis and fitted it to the top. There were castings for smokebox door, chimney, dome, safety valve bonnet and springs. The rest of the detail I did myself, adding buffers, drawgear, vac pipes, handrails, tank fillers, sandboxes, and whistle. Did you spot there’s no brakework? nobody looks under the footplate anyway. Numbers and nameplate are homemade lashups. Well, there’s a kit from thirty years ago, these days it’s all 500 pieces out of .018” brass etched sheet. I used a can of Humbrol emerald green to handbrush it, then lining out with black and white paint, using a spring bow pen, apart form the boiler bands, which are from the HMRS LNER sheet.

The layout is looking really good, and that train just fits in nicely. Regarding the puffer, if you had a mast and Derrick in front and behind the hatch, would that help it look more like a coasting vessel? Drawing off an old IoMSP boat here, a bit larger.

The Railway Signalling Co did a lot of work for the GS&WR and the MGWR following the Regulation of the Railways Act. The Alphagaphix kit for Foynes signal box would make a nice base to work from.

A good example of two companies meeting face to face was at Cavan, with the MGWR and the GNRI. (Lifted from Arnold’s “Golden Years of the GNR, vol.2”) The MGWR was there first with their terminus, then the GNR arrived and added their own yard. As the plan stands, the GNR would need the MGWR turntable, and the MGWR would need the GNR runaround. (A case of “you scratch my back...”?) Having the two yards end to end would make for a very long model, so what if you ditched the GNR yard, and added a little bit to the MGWR station. Remove the “bridge” to island platform, and add a foot overbridge or foot crossing at the platform end, which would take care of the runaround problem, make the cattle beach line into a loop, and put an extra siding in the goods yard for mileage traffic?

Pope John Paul visited Ireland in 1979? was it, the first papal visit to Ireland, and the practice of giving a colour wash to houses was initiated as a welcoming gesture. In any case, there was very little colour outdoor washes available much before then, anyhow, the practice was justly popular and has become firmly based since then. if you’re looking at the 1900s, there was just white limewash, no other colours, and otherwise plain brick/ stone finish or cement rendering.

Well, your man said “show us yer locos”, so first a short introduction. In September, 1995, I went to the Gauge 0 guild show in Telford, and on one of the stands I met these two really charming gentlemen, as lovely people as you’d ever wish to meet. They were Ciaran and Gerry McGowan, and they were trading as Leinster Models. Their long established model shop at Phibsboro in Dublin had closed, I gather, in 1992, but they kept the model kits production going a bit longer, and I think that was the last time they came to Telford. From the bit I’ve heard the shop was the place to go in Dublin, both as a treasure house and somewhere to meet like minded people. Their kits were mainly British outline, I fancy as they sold more of these, but anyway having had a chat and a look at what they were doing, I really fancied one of their kits, and once the following Christmas outgoings were through, I sent off to their address for the one Irish one they did. (Mind, one good selling point for what they were doing was it was a decent price and good value.)

Oh dear! Edit:checking the Facebook page it just a quick shutdown for “data maintenance”. I thought for one horrible minute. ...

My wife always insists with any flower arranging that an odd number of flowers are placed in the vase, never an even number.

If you visit his site you’ll find there are sections for what he does in 4mm as well.

Recently I posted a few pictures of some of my models on the layout design thread to illustrate a point, and it struck me I really ought to get a thread started for them. I’m more of a branch line person than a main liner by inclination, and I’m very drawn to the era around 1900. The trains were nice and compact, with smart colourful paint jobs. For around the last thirty years I’ve settled on modelling in 0 scale, having previously dabbled in most of the other scales, and I find this scale is really suited to what I want. It also gives a satisfying feeling to the bulk of individual models when you pick them up, which I like. You should be able to recognise this as an Alphagraphix kit, with a chassis tacked on from brass strip and plastikard bits, and Slaters wheels, so quite cheap. No links with the firm, but they are a good starting point for this sort of thing. https://www.alphagraphixkits.co.uk The printed card is just glued on to backing card, cut out with a sharp craft knife, and the cut edges tinted. It’s also gained a “corrugated iron” roof using a Salters plastikard sheet, the GS&WR being very fond of this stuff as a building material. Where my layout falls down is in the track gauge, as it’s done using 32mm width, rather than the Irish 36 and a bit mm. gauge. These days the latter is quite easy to do, with copper clad sleepering and f/b rail, and it does give a far more realistic appearance, referring to “Arigna Town /Belmullet” and “Rosses Point” on this website. It’s just that I also use my line to run British outline models as well, changing the backscene, buildings, and rolling stock as required.

All very well, I’m just looking at the date on the calendar.

There are still some popups appearing, but not so many as before, thank goodness. There’s still a lot of weeding out needed, so it could be some time before it settles, I fancy.

Well, RMweb is back up and running on a new migration (!?) although it seems a Vale of tears before it got there. Still some things needing to be tweaked, and a whole wodge of everyone’s pictures from the last twelve months sunk with all hands.

With an “I shot JR” tee shirt.

Just room enough for a tidy layout in that second bedroom upstairs.

Track, VG...buildings,VG... but that backscene really lifts the layout up and gives you a real feeling of place. Great work.

Looking at the photo, I think the lever is working a locking bolt in the turntable, so that when the t/t is lined up with the main line and bolted, the signal ground disc attached is cleared. Once I did a model ending with a sector table, but I found with shunting, it was always best to line the table up with whichever road you’d set to at the other end of the loop, or you’d end up with something down in the pit.

Migrated to Photobucket?

If I’m honest, the service has been terrible since the last software change a couple of weeks before Christmas. I fancy it must have been a deal with free software but flooded out with adverts. Anyhow, never mind about that, here we are with a reliable, quick, uncluttered site. Take a bow, Mr. Boskanay. Now, where’s me little enjins?

Well, I did show them on my thread on RMweb, and...er, what’s that? Oh yeah, right.... So... I mustn’t clutter up a track planning thread, so watch this space, I’ll try and get something going here.

Run rounds, who needs them? (Discuss) With a layout purporting to be a micro, you get a fiddle yard feeding the main board with, say, two or three roads, which may, or may not, merge into points before exiting into the fiddle yard. All very well for wagon shunting where you keep the loco at the fiddle yard end. But, if you want to have an actual station with trains running in, there’s the problem that the arriving train ends up with its loco trapped at the dead end, and an allowance to runround the loco needs adding. Plain track with point, sector table, turntable, extra road to be added?? All taking up space, as John has shown. How about extending the line into a “pocket”? Here the main line on the station board keeps on going through a hole in the backscene and on to a loco size cassette. (14” long in 0 scale, which takes in three-axle tender engines, 4-4-0s need not apply) This can turn the loco, with much less space than a turntable, and provide accommodation. The pocket is 12” wide, so you can have odd items of rolling stock or locos lurking on cassettes as well. When the train arrives, you just detach the loco and run it into the pocket, then a second loco comes off the fiddle yard, takes over the shunting and leaves with the train. When the main line is clear, you just do a light engine movement out of the pocket and into the fiddle yard.

“Less is more” (text for today) I’ve got this thing about what I call the “Lilliput Lane” approach. They were a firm producing collectors pieces of small moulded models of picturesque buildings. Generally the architecture was boiled right down, and the detailing went to a “roses round the door” approach, to the extent that you could regard them as “twee”. They’ve gone out of business, but you can still find them. They did a few of railway stations, the main building plus a loco, which I enjoyed seeing, as to me they capture the spirit of the place very well. Translating this to an Irish setting, you can have: There’s a building, (sort of “Ballaghaderreen” in half relief) a loco, (Leinster Models kit) and the other essential, for me, a back scene. What you can see is 0 scale on an acreage of one square foot. I’m more of a builder than an operator, and I like doing 7mm modelling because of the bulk of the individual models. Now, I agree that a bit more should be added out of necessity, a couple of six wheeler coaches for the loco to pull, and a few, very few, wagons to shunt in a siding. You have a microlayout, where you can test out what you’ve built, and potter with some shunting for the odd half an hour. Just a small personal thing.

I’m glad to see Castle Rackrent is being mentioned, to my mind it is an outstanding model, very Irish in application, and yet built as an operating model railway without copying any particular place. It must have been among the first to use the now common branch line terminus to fiddle yard configuration?, as well as the kickback siding to mask the fiddle yard. Then at the time it was done, it used the correct 5’3” gauge, which would have caused real problems back then, these days you can get the right wheelsets and axles commercially, making it much simpler. Two pointers in the design, see how the backscene follows a flowing reverse curve to cross the tracks at the overbridge, the tracks taking an opposite handed curve, all too often now you see the bridge placed square across the tracks. Then there’s the turntable, good to save pointwork space, and necessary on a lot of Irish lines, but problematical in getting out of proportion to the rest of the layout with a small line and a table for tender locos.

It might be worth remembering that the Armagh disaster brought about the Regulation of Railways Act in 1889 requiring continuous brakes, block signalling, and interlocking. It would seem that such things were in minimal use before then, certainly the GNRI were found lacking, so it could be that the MGWR didn’t make much use of McK & H gear in any case, say away from main junctions. The creation of the RSCo was good timing for supply of gear, and study of old photos show their signals are preponderant, and it looks the same for the GS&WR. Then there’s the somewhat delicate issue of signal cabins. I made what I thought was a MGWR cabin, with a low pitched roof and the levers to the back of the cabin, but later I gathered this pattern was a replacement for an earlier cabin, a RSCo type with steeper pitch roof and levers to the front. During the Civil War, remote country signal boxes were a prime target for arson attacks.