leslie10646

Time that you employed a local lad as a cleaner! Coming on well, Jonathan.

Very sorry to hear of your setback, John, but pleased to hear that you have come through it with your usual fortitude. Well done the 15 year old! Thoughts and prayers that you all pull out of this with flying colours . Leslie

This, to be precise...... which was turned into: I'll footer about with it and see if I can get away with it. I think that it's too wide to use as Platform 1, which is under the eaves of the house!

To provide some St Patrick's Day Cheer for those of you assiduously off the Good (Distilled) Water for Lent, today was a "Platform Day". Meaning that I am labouring with my Island Platform for Portadown station. I wondered if I had got the length right so that it matched with Platform 4 - being Irish I did No.4 first! Yes, EXACTLY the right length BUT PRIDE COMES BEFORE A FALL...... I had broken Holman's First Law of Railway Modelling - "Measure Twice - Cut Once"! I ran a train through and it clobbered the thing - too (blank) wide! How do you knock a couple of millimetres off the width of an almost completed platform (6 feet long!) which has a frame of light softwood...... Maybe I'll use the "Saints Day Rule", take a good draught of Bushmills and try again .......

The original for me. Just get the kit made - I'll find a friend who likes building things!

Really excellent advice from Colin. How many years of practise went into @Galteemore, @David Holman @Tullygrainey @Patrick Davey's efforts, to name a few? Patrick especially soldiered on after "not quite right efforts" (I know because I sold him two of one of my kits, after he "practised" on the first one - now look at what he's doing!!!! Not for nothing do we old people say "Practise makes Perfect"!!!!

You won't believe that I'm saying this - it's a diesel after all - , but I have to agree with @Galteemore that really has a Wow Factor. It catches the essential "E Class" perfectly. A great piece of work. They were ubquitous around Dublin in the 1960s when I first visited as an enthusiast. Will you build me one, please?

Yes, that's the brake van which I do. Your name IS on two 10 ton vans! My stock is rather low pre Bangor - I WAS planning retirement - instead I'll fulfil various needs with nnew stock in the late Spring / early Summer. The orders are in. I should explain that the guy who took over Michael's business ("My Modeller") had some issues which slowed up delivery, but things look more hopeful and I may put off the evil day, if I'm spared. I've spent the last couple of days laying out proposals for two new wagons (one a short re-run) but the other quite new; plus a possible new container. Watch this space.

Now, now Ivan! Used to be sort of true. As the late "Mac" Arnold said to me on the platform at Gortalea on the first Two day tour after a three year hiatus in 1972: "Too many Englishmen on this tour - MIND YOU, IF YOU HADN'T BROUGHT THEM OVER, THE TOUR WOULD NOT HAVE RUN . It was the first year that I organised a party from England and the twenty or so of us made the difference. I did it for at least a decade, once FILLING a coach (fifty seats) on the Irish Mail. Then flying became cheaper and people did what @Mol_PMB is doing, booked it themselves! The "Big Tour" always needed "British" support - my groups had a faithful bunch of Scots and the occasional Welshman.

Ten foot Fox bogie. The diagram has been sent to you by e-mail. "Glad to be of Service" Leslie

Good luck with this, Paddy. At least you can run an 800 with a straight face as they certainly ran here!

Surely to make the thing properly Catholic, they would have been named in LATIN, so we'd have had a loco named for the current Notts Forest Manager? No wonder they're above Spurs - eh Dave B?

Ah yes, Minister, but for Chamberlain's fit of pique (in guaranteeing Poland) over the little Austrian's annexation of the rest of Czechoskavakia (itself an unnatural construct arising out of the disaster of Versailles) - there might have been no Emergency and we might have discovered if the 800s REALLY could run for miles and miles at 80mph on the Cork Mainline. (And I might have an interest in them like my unswerving adoration for all things Bulleid - whose Pacifics did just that sort of running). Unhappily, like my all-time favourites, the GNR(I)'s VS Class, they had a very short working life at the top level. So, I agree with you, if you are going to buy this museum engine, buy it as it was meant to be!

Hi WCR You're partly right, but it's a fact that I only know about half a dozen people who have seen an 800 running, otherwise it was in the museum. Expand that to our fellow (more numerous) enthusiasts on the Big Island, and the number is vanishingly small. One of the RPSI's CLASS representatives would have been even more attractive to those of us modelling Irish railways and they are even better known in the UK and Worldwide. Happily, to help fill MY glass case, Accurscale has produced other attractive locos, including, dare I admit it, their diesels and electrics. I'm off to see if a Class 92 which was on sale at a really bargain price at Basingstoke remains unsold!

Ah, yes. A locomotive which can get to Derry, Portrush, Dublin, Cork, Tralee to name a few - not restricted to the Cork main line. The choice by IRM seemed incomprehensible (I thought it was April the First!) until the penny dropped. It's after the market of rich, older Englishmen who buy locos to put in a glass case ..... I await the real promised second Irish steam loco, but with the timelines stated, I'll probably be helping Drew Donaldson to run his layout in "Another Place" before it appears. Back to building Portadown's Island Platform.