leslie10646

1 hour ago, Robert Shrives said:

Mine arrived in the Badlands of Brum today and in box suitable for 6 with a single piece of paper wrapped around the black box inside. I did on seeing box wonder if it was a "lottery" win !!    

Posting box off for recycling and happy with contents in every way , agree with George re care in removing dense foam shell and handrails but looks good on test track. 

Robert     

Ditto, my RPSI one. Took it out, looked disbelievingly at the incredible amount of detail, excellently executed. The colour looks much, much better in the flesh, than some of the photos I've seen.

Puzzled like others by the Bag 'o Bits - thanks for the explanations above, gents.

Back into the box. I've no intention of running it. When I get a suitable display case, I may put her on the wall!

The "Runner" - B121 - was ordered from Chris Dyer during a chance meeting on the Central Wales line last year. It will be put to work, never fear!

MY outer packaging will be recycled by being used to send one of my fine customers half a dozen kits!

Very, very well done Mr Murphy. Worth every minute of the wait.

6 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

There was always this dilemma with working steam: do you stay at the back to get decent photos on curves, or up front to hear the music!

Nope, on that occasion it was just to get a window seat on the milepost side!

Nowadays, given the chance, I'd go for the front and be deafened!

Hi George and thanks for that.

Nice to hear a bit of "Bulleid Chatter" - albeit muted.

They make a splendid noise when working hard on a decent train - I had an unforgettable run up the long 1 in 250 through Winchester in 1967 - 75mph uphill with 9 coaches, I was at the back and, boy, was the engine noisy!

Right, back in from dinner to celebrate the Smart Car's driver's birthday.

Yes, Lord White, we'd put the indicator on to "pretend" we were part of the convoy and then could enjoy the experience a bit longer.  Thanks, Andy for the Heads-up on the owner and details. Steam Lorries are serious vehicles and make a decent sound - if you listen to the roadside shot.

Thanks, George, and yes, I agree with you that the Kings look really good in the short-lived BR Express Loco Blue. Merchant Navies and A1s, likewise, but NOT the A4s - not a patch on the LNER Garter Blue livery.

I'm away from my logbooks, so I can't remember if I've ran a run with Sir Keith Park. There are 1 or 2 Bulleids around which I have to add to my collection - now in its high fifties (from 46 at the End of Steam). Thank ypu to those who've done up locos I was too late to get!

A, Mr G,  you're giving away your "Day Job", but that's an interesting story from Dublin.

A really God-given day.

God-given day today, so after church (at St Andrews, which suit Warb of Barrow Street) we were off to Didcot where the King (Edward II) was on it's last runs before its boiler certificate runs out. On train rides with three six wheelers - for the nice sound, by the way.

Then on the way home.....

Turn the sound up!

And chasing steam in the Smart Car ....

15mph uphill, I forgot to keep the camera running as we overtook!

Yep, between young Patrick M and I we can let you have that train by return of post. Mind you, you'll have to build my vans from the kits!

I think the one behind the loco is the 10ton variety, rather than its smaller sister.

Leslie

To add to Mike's comment about Make do 'n Mend - after WW2, the West German Bundesbahn had many six wheelers (new bodies on old wooden ones?) - nick-named "Thunderboxes" I believe. Rightly so, as they were very noisy to travel in.

That said, I was delighted to clamber into one of them on a local train on the Rheine - Emden line and be hauled at a full SEVENTY mph behind a coal-burning three-cylinder Pacific. I understand that the B&CDR six wheelers were pretty wild at sixty mph, but these were a bit more modern and I suspect the Bundesbahn track was better in 1969 than the Bangor line twenty years earlier.

9 hours ago, connollystn said:

Great locomotives - didn't a load of 37s end up in France working during the construction of one of the new high-speed train lines? That would have been an interesting sight. Wonder if they were re-liveried.

Yeees, I think so .....

So I checked - see -

https://tomcurtisrailgallery.weebly.com/lost-in-france--forty-37s-in-2000.html

Also a load of 20s earlier on, working on Chunnel work. Also see Internet for pics.

I see there's a couple of stock moves tomorrow. I must try and get up early and see what appears!

Interesting stuff, Jon. The pic of Glanmire was a real Provincial Wagons Benefit with all those CIE cattle wagons! (Cheque in post, as usual).

The shot of 193 is on the IRRS's St Pat's Day tour in  1962 (No.207 Boyne to Cork) when No.193 was really dolled up by the local staff for the event. If someone well tell me how to upload a 8Mb file, I'll post  the late Lance King's version of the same scene - IN COLOUR!

4 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

Yes - look at the buffer beam, which was RED!

If anything, some CIE locos got into even WORSE state than BR - and that is saying something.....

 

 

Yes, I believe that the CIE engines were actually worse!  The story goes that Robin (BOB) Clements footplated a 2-6-4 Tank on the Spoil Trains and when the crew commented on how rundown the engine was, he remarked later - "these fellows don't know what a bad engine is!"

Bob, you see, spent days and days on the footplates of MGWR locos , fighting to make them steam and driving them easily so that they could see ahead through the steam leaks.

Another version was that when the CIE crews first drove No.4 they were amazed to open the regulator and still be able to see in front of them .......

Ah,Phil, that's just lovely (even though it's narrow gauge!). As Garfield said, one of the neatest looking little locos built for the Irish Narrow Gauge.

Of course, it was from a line (unhappily short-lived) which looked like a "proper" railway, as it was almost unique in having double tracks.

Anyway, this is what you have to turn it into, not No.12, but 10L -

Photo at Dromod by the late Lance King, IRRS Copyright.

Good luck with it, a super piece of work.

Hi MAK Diesel

I have it third hand that one of the 37s disgraced itself the other day on a stock move and was actually rescued by a Class 47. We don't see 20s or 31s in the bit of the railway I watch from time to time. The oldest diesels we see are Class 60s on the Theale oil trains, otherwise it's 66s and the occasional 70.

Ah, and the Class 50s very occasionally work stock moves.

On 7 August (see September Modern Railways) 50049 and 50007 hauled a 769 set to Reading from Burton on Trent.

We are getting these Tri-modes on the Gatwick services which I used to use regularly when I did a bit of work at Gatwick. Alas, with Covid, I think that's history for me.

I have posted the Hoovers in an earlier very windy video on 9 December 2019.

See -

https://irishrailwaymodeller.com/topic/8131-foreign-freight/?tab=comments#comment-126440

Patrick said: Example, a passenger train  composed of a MM Craven, an Irish Freight Models laminate brake and a Park Royal all flanked by a Silver Fox tin van and heating van. No two vehicles  are alike -

Hit the nail on the head, Patrick. Nice train, by the way.

Even in late steam/early diesel days secondary trains were often the inevitable tin van, a modern bogie coach and an ancient one! To model that, you either scratch / kit build, or accept "the two foot rule coaches "available. Except you are modelling main line in sixties onwards, uniformity was NOT the order of the day in virtually any part of Ireland.

6 hours ago, popeye said:

Did you not video the freights? 

Yes, I did, although I messed up a couple of them being a bit ham-fisted at present.

I'll post a couple of the more colourful ones later.

My secretary/driver, who notes what I take was very taken by the Class 37s. I found "Cute Engine" written alongside the notes! With Accurascale doing them, it could turn out to be an expensive afternoon!

No charge for the advertising, Lads!

Since I broke my arm, my favourite place for watching trains has become Goring & Streatley - cheap-ish parking and lifts to get an old man from platform to platform!

A period of four hours today saw not one but three Class 37 movements. I missed filming the first - 37.601 hauling a Heathrow Express set away to go into store, but got a clip of her light engine returning -

Sorry it's a short snip - I'm trying to balance and shoot with a dodgy arm!

She was preceded by 37.812 in the more familiar BR Blue livery. Sadly neither making much engine noise as they zoomed along.

37.812 was heading to Reading Triangle sidings, I believe to pick up another stock move.

Eleven other 66-hauled freights and the usual Class 60-hauled oil train.

Who needs a train set?

West meets East?

As RPSI had given the link, I had a look and found it flying over territory well known to older RPSI members who hunted steam in the old East Germany - namely Chemnitz - then known as KARL MARX STADT!

Still good for steam as there's a big steam museum there based in a double roundhouse. Lots of old diesels there of B134's vintage, but RUSSIAN-built.

Knowing that, I may actually run my B134 in memory of such happy days (dodging the Stasi poilice!).

Super buildings indeed, Irishrailwayman. And very well constructed by you.

I saw their stuff at an exhibition "over here" and was open-mouthed at their quality.

You say they are going out of business, but their website says nothing of this and still offers a lot of kits and readymade buildings.

All power to your elbow with your new layout.

Fran said: I think it's best that we keep this thread on topic to the weedspray set and perhaps do wishlisting elsewhere. Thanks! (btw, the next announcement is not beet wagons!) 

Phew, Thanks, Fran, I still have a dozen or so beet kits to sell - pity they're in Co. Kildare!

Leslie

Glad to know that you are literally getting back on your feet, Patrick.

Mind you, ballasting will affect your mental health!

28 minutes ago, Old Blarney said:

McA, 

Good to know you are alive. Any comment on the "Silver Princess"?

MiLord

I was aware of this beast, but cannot add to your piece.

It doesn't appear in the index to the IRRS Journal, so I can't point people to a piece in that hallowed organ of knowledge.

Too early for the Railfans' News.

I wonder is that where The Blessed Oliver got his daft idea of unpainted coaches from?

Noel would have had fun weathering a model of it?

I'm sure Trains, Coal and Turf by Peter Rigney must have something on this, but not being where my library is, I can't confirm.

Lord Blarney, if CIE was short of coaches in the early 1950s, they might have converted them back to original use after The Emergency, so Noel could be right after all?

Boy, this Bushmiils is great stuff .......   and not a taste of turf about it

The GN had 15 ton coal wagons -

I happen to make them, of course, but not much use for CIE because I suspect that they scrapped any that they inherited - after all they had much more modern wagons.

I have toyed with the idea of doing the RCH six plank open as a kit, having previously done the four plank as a Dapol commission. The GN had lots of them. I haven't got my wagon book to hand so can't say how many.

Thanks, NIR. It took me back to 1980s Sunday Lunch Trains when you'd up to 60mph recovering from the slack at Aynho Jct - behind Scotsman, Sir Lamiel, Clan Line et al - a wonderful period for preservation steam.

Always good to see a single man drive 30 + lorry loads. " Freight is Great" to quote the musical.

20 hours ago, K801 said:

I think a current ICR or DART train set would bring a lot more newbies into the hobby 

I agree with the MAK Diesel on this, but NOT, I suspect, at £300 plus for three coaches.

Yes, that's the price of Bachmann's latest creation the Class 117 DMU.

Mind you it's pretty fancy - very nice models of units which were vile to travel in - clouds of DERV exhaust per mile. Lighting galore included, but no smoke generator!