leslie10646

This is the pre-production prototype of my next KIT - the iconic Northern Ireland Railways spoil wagon built in the mid 1960s by Cravens for the Maghermorne Spoil Contract, which ran from 1966 to 1970. They place in history is safe as the last British freight stock to be steam-hauled in regular service. Trains of twenty of these wagons, topped and tailed by Class WT 2-6-4 tanks engines ran around six times a day between Maghermorne and the shore of Belfast Lough. Their legacy is the M2 Motorway running North out of Belfast, which is built on the land reclaimed from the sea by the spoil. A few of the wagons continued to be used as ballast wagons by NIR for some years after the contract finished. This wagon will be available as a kit of around 25 parts - the chain is maybe an optional extra, as we have yet to source a suitable chain - but doesn't it set the wagon off? Note that the final kit will have the hopper as a single casting, the door side being another - unlike this prototype (you can see the joins!). I hope that you agree that my modeller, Michael Rayner of Smallbrook Studio, has surpassed himself with this superb model - I replied to the e-mail sending the photo to me last night with the single word - "WOW"! We hope to have the kit available in quantity by June, price still to be set but between £22 and £25. Obviously, I'll be taking orders at Bangor, or by e-mail, of course! Thanks for looking Leslie

Gents For what it's worth, PW stock is painted Halford's undercoat - you first heard it here! It's all a bit academic between the effects of smoke, diesel fumes, sunlight (moonlight(ing)) etc etc? Leslie

Entirely steam era and GNR(I). His books of drawings cover Classes V, VS, U, UG plus the tenders. The rolling stock books are the first of five planned. The first covers vans etc which ran on passenger trains, including horseboxes; the second six wheel coaches (ie from about 100 years ago!). Leslie

My dear David What are you congratulating us for? Nice of you, of course ..... Leslie

First the interiors of the cattle wagon. Kirley is quite right that the interior should look "used". I had mine finished "as is" so people could decide just how used they wanted them to be, hence my selling them with unstuck roofs - also useful for adding six cows? As for the washing out with lime, or even whitewashing (described as useless!) - I understand that this became illegal in the UK around 1927 - see the "other" Irish chatroom for details. I have a small gallery of photos which we used when making the GN cattle wagons and ALL the wagons in the pictures are clean, with no sign of limewash - so leave them "clean" grey on the outside! The Law was quite specific about the thorough cleaning of the interior of cattle wagons, so maybe it IS OK just to paint the interior grey (BEFORE sticking the aforementioned six 4mm cattle in!) Nelson's other wagon made me think - the Irish railways used 4 and 6 plank wagons a lot - 5 and 7 plank, as were common in England, were uncommon in Ireland. The four plank wagons aren't a big problem, but there is no RTR British six plank to repaint and I thought Nelson had hit on the solution with this Cambrian kit. Alas, no, the axleboxes are too close together, never mind that the body length may be wrong. If you don't mind this, then this kit offers a way to vary the "look" of a train of opens on an Irish layout? Leslie

IRRS archive, perhaps? Leslie

PROVINCIAL WAGONS SPOIL WAGON KIT Subject to Special Delivery working next Wednesday morning, I'll have the pre-production version of my Spoil wagon on view at Bangor on 12/13 April. Unlike the 64 parts in Kirley's version, mentioned by Glenderg above, the kit will have about 20 parts - four sides, a chassis, buffers couplings etc - not quite Airfix kit ease, but close! Leslie PS Can't resist this - with this post, I become a Senior Member! Am I the senior member at nearly 68 years? No comments from the Police Commissioner, please! Know who I mean, David?

Provincial Wagons will be on Stand 15. I'll have - KITS of all my handmade wagons for sale, plus some RTR handmade wagons and my range of Dapol repaints. New for me are - RTR GNR(I) bogie passenger vans from the GLR 3D stable and the pre-production prototype of my Spoil Wagon kit. All this plus donor coaches, for you guys who like to build your own and items from my own collection which I don't need for Portadown Jct Next door at Stand 16 is Richard McLachlan, who will be selling books of loco and rolling stock diagrams produced from information in the IRRSarchives. And showing off his considerable skills as a coach modeller. Do call around and say hallo, even if you don't buy anything! It's nice to put faces to names! Regards Leslie and Richard

Snapper has beaten me to it. I think the book you're looking for is, indeed, From CIE to IR, which has a Supertrain on Bray Head as its cover. The price the Book Depository is offering it at is very good - £8 less than one in our stock! Leslie

Kits of all my wagons AVAILABLE NOW!

 I have IN STOCK kits of every handmade wagon I have produced. That is GNR(CIE) brake van; GNR Cattle Wagon; SLNCR Cattle Wagon; GNR 9 ton van; GNR Loco Coal Wagon. Order now for immediate delivery, or reserve yours for picking up at Bangor on 12 April. Kit includes wheels, couplings and transfers. If you are modelling on 21mm gauge, we will supply without the chassis and wheels and suitably reduce the price. I have not repeated this information on every page of my website where the RTR wagon is described, as the price is pretty well the same throughout. Price £22.50 or €27.00, which includes postage. Except for the - GNR (CIE) brake van is dearer at £28 or €34 If you want several kits, I will give you a little discount, as I save on postage, etc - the kit won't go as a Large Letter which is a pain, but I can get several in a "Small Parcel". HEALTH WARNING: Until we see how well the kits sell, they come with a uniform set of instructions - namely those written for the GNR Cattle wagon, which has sold pretty well in this form. So beware, you will have to work out what is what on the other wagons - that said, most kits are just over a dozen parts! Easier than building an Airfix "Spitfire"? As is common with resin kits, you will have to clean up the castings before use - take a look at the photo of the Cattle Kit on the GNR pages of my website. http://www.provincialwagons.com/

Richie Thanks for the sanity check on the real cost of doing RTR. I was yelled down as a thief and a robber when I did the GN brake van for £40 (€47 at the time). Well - after selling over a hundred brakevans, my modeller realised that it was taking over his life and demanded a lot more! Not as attractive at a sensible price, if orders are anything to go by! Leslie

Sorry, old boy, that simply doesn't work out in practice. I agree that you would think that most guys would want, say ten bubbles, but most don't have layouts that big and they don't buy in those amounts - so you 5,000 is a dream! I produced a RTR cattle wagon, which like the bubble would have run in at least tens on specials - yet only three modellers bought anything like that size of rake. Producing an easy to make kit is probably the way forward - but I do mean easy to make, for like a couple of the guys above, I ain't into brass, resin, whitemetal, plastic etc! A good moment to mention that ALL my handmade wagons are now available as kits at about €26 Euros each (£22 to the Brits!). Good night Leslie

I've been racking my brains - I know the book you mean - by two (or three?) guys, if memory serves. I'll ask my pal who I seel with tomorrow and give you a heads-up after the weekend. Leslie

This reply for friends based in the 'other' island, but our "out of print" service may help others. It is provoked by the string on Alan's North Kerry book which you can buy from us. I am one of the founders of a British (London-based) group called The Syndicate. The Syndicate raises money for Irish Preservation, presently entirely towards the 171 Appeal, to which we have contributed about £10,000. We sell almost every Irish transport book in print and are your first port of call for out of print books (I have a garage full of such books on British Railways). Our prices are good - we have always claimed to be the John Lewis of railway bookselling! We've been at it for over forty years, have bought a coach for the RPSI, helped complete the restoration of another about two years ago - but mainly we ask for our money to go to loco preservation. We DID step off this path to send a donation to restore the SLNCR railcar at Downpatrick. Any of you who may find themselves at IRRS Meetings in London will find the book on sale on our book stand there (we share the profit with the local IRRS Area for this attendance). Or on any event attended by The Syndicate in England this year - currently Acton LT Museum Open Day this weekend (15/16); the Transport Collector's Market at Chiswick Town Hall on 22 March (a good place to find other people interested in Irish railways, as the IRRS runs it!); Bracknell, Berks 31 May. Contact me for exact details. Thanks for reading this! Leslie

Well, actually, Leslie has no idea! But, say £15,000 for tooling and then, say a fiver each to mould them? Even a thousand would be £20 a pop! I was thinking of getting "My Man" to do me a resin bubble to go on the Dapol kit, but I've been beaten to it! I've still not given up the idea of a complete kit, but I wonder if all of you who want a train of bubbles have already got them? As for the Prestwin, regrettably no-one makes them any longer, or you could get the chassis for about £7/£8 a shot, less if you buy loads. Hornby did do it and you'll find them on eBay, but was it sufficiently to scale? One photo I found was pretty ugly, compared to what the kit will make for you. But, more importantly, it was much too short - take a look on eBay. Leslie ***** Mod edit: Thread split from 'New cement bubble kit now available from D&M Models' as it had veered away from the original topic into a separate discussion.

There's no satisfying some people! You want the model to be live steam? What about the turf SMELL as well - now there's one for Gareth's chip magician!

Careful, John, the site has at least one Mandarin-speaking member! CNR makes a lot of use of the GNR's railcar livery on locos and some coaching. Behind me in the showcase is a Bachmann model of a DF11 Co-Co on Blue and Cream. Of course it's nearly invisible behind the Class QJ 2-10-2, which is enormous. Thinking of that, when the roundhouse is built, I'll photo it beside a VS!!!!!! Leslie

Hey, Ivan, That's hardly fair! CIE DID GIVE the RPSI No.186 in 1965/6, then her sister 184 and No. 461, I could go on ....... CIE in the 1960s and 70s was amazingly co-operative with the preservation movement. Anyway, WHAT would you have done with the underframes? Ireland wasn't a rich country in the 1970s, and it takes money and effort to maintain these things. Both were, and always have been, at a premium in the Irish preservation scene. Leslie (by the way, a RPSI founder member and a member of the committee throughout the 70s and 80s)

Dave, That's a very nice model and I can understand why you'd want to leave it in brass. When I had my Class AL built recently, I asked the builder to take a works photo for me (ie, as finished, but before painting). To my amazement, he asked me if I'd like it painted in grey, as per the works photos of old, which decorate so many books on locos. Etched brass locos look lovely in their before painting style - Alan's model of a NCC "Whippet" which is somewhere on this site shows just how nice! Thanks for letting us see CC1. Leslie

Well, I haven't heard the story about the frames, but I have met the guy who really designed the Turf Burner. I told his story under the title "The Third Man" to the RPSI in Belfast about five years ago. As it was only a half evening talk, but I could fill an evening with my modelling talk - all that's needed is for someone to pay my fare to Ireland! By the way, the single-ended Turf Burner shown in Ernie Shepherd's book was drawn by "My Man". Anyone for a model TB? There are quite a few Leaders around on Southern layouts over here, the only model TB I know of was, I think, on Cyril Fry's railway? Leslie

John Thanks for the link, which brought back very happy memories, of my time in Hong Kong. I noticed that the girls were all muffled up against the cold - it was probably in single figures Centigrade and as the guy on the clip says, not heating in a place which is normally cooking hot. On that tooling costs thing, David White and i were quoted £10,000 to tool up to produce a GN cattle wagon, so you can guess what Paddy, God love him, has spent! You may be entertained by the "factory" - but they used to build QJs at Datong with just as few signs of "automation". Very happy days, notching up rides behind 75 of those QJ 2-10-2s - always travelling on my own - the Chinese were lovely friendly people AND, I even got into a Christian church on Christmas Day in 1998 (there were a fair few Christmas trees around even then!). Easter Sunday in Shanghai in 2002 was one of the most moving days of my life, in a packed church, singing the same hymns as we do in any Irish church on that day. On another thread, Ivan mentioned that he didn't know that I was Provincial Wagons - now I'll let him into another secret - I was the last European Chairman of the Hong Kong Railway Society - my first four GNR locos were built in the former colony! John, thanks again for that illuminating link. Leslie

Folks I've just updated my website for the first time in a while. See - http://www.provincialwagons.com/ I am offering a variation on my 9 ton van - the same mould is used, but it will be lettered up for the SLNCR, which had several of these vans (the website points you at the evidence!), which were deemed SEVEN ton vans on that line! I have supplies in stock again of the GNR 9 ton van, the GN cattle wagon, CIE Guinness skeletons and the tubs to go on them. The other news is that I will, in future, offer all of my wagons in kit form, for around £20 - £22 (circa €26), including wheels, couplings, transfers, post paid. A bit less, if bought in bulk - one customer recently bought a dozen cattle wagon kits and saved himself a lot over the individual price. Leslie

Dave Have you used the Cobalt "levers" which look just like a signal cabin lever. I had thought of fitting up a complete cabin of them for Richhill, tp give the grandson something else to amuse him (other than the sound locos!). I'd be interested to know WHY you say that the Cobalt motors are easier to instal. Mind you, anything MUST be easier than installing normal Peco under the board - fortunately, my younger son earned his right to stay living at home by fitting them for me!!!! The new PECO kit DOES look good and while it's dear, I note that it includes the switches to control the motors - which I calculated saved about a fiver a point over Tortoise/Cobalt etc, much more if you're using Cobalts levers as well!. The proof of the pudding (pointing?) is in the eating, so when someone has tried them, will they give us a critique, please? Leslie

Ivan Thanks for sharing the photos. To give credit where due, the NIR 071 has Gareth's sound chip (Belfast Model Shop) installed and is unbelievably good, right from start-up to running down. The loco even seems to take an age to turn over and cough into life!!!! It even amused a steam man like me. Strongly recommended to those of you who want sound! The Coastal DCC chip in my Class WT is also wonderful - as it captures a lot of the sounds I associate with these engines, even though it's actually sounds from a 4MT of some kind! Leslie