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Thanks Lads-Yes I hope we can meet up tomorrow Rich, Here is a video of Tamper 751 working

Hi Lads, Due to a recent sudden family bereavement I've been off this forum for just over a month, It's great to see that the board had maintained its high standard throughout this time I intend to be at the exhibition on Saturday and hopefully put some names to faces etc, In the meantime I received the Viessmann working tamper today from Gareth in the Model shop in Belfast-(thanks Gareth), It certainly is a fantastic model,with correct start up/shutdown engine noise,excellent lighting and true to life working tamping equipment at a very slow speed, The horn sound is identical to a DART unit, Here are a selection of photos of the IE Tamper-(751) on the layout earlier-with a video to follow 751 tamping the up fast line earlier.

Wow Eamonn-excellent work,signals looking well,looking forward to seeing the finished layout Well done.

R.I.P to an absolute gentleman Joe.

Very very nice-an excellent representation of the first built 30001 series bogie wagons complete with the ride master type bogies and round buffers-a rake of those would look great behind any class of Irish loco-well done.

Very impressive-well done guys.

Evening lads, With thanks to the Wanderer,Gordon71 and Chris Playfair for the excellent photos and videos of the recently introduced Mk3 Enterprise van to service trains,I was able to recreate the set up on Tara Junction, As I don't have the Enterprise De Dietrich coaches yet....they are still under construction...I coupled my Mk3 van to my Mk4 coaches and allocated 209 loco to push the trial train around the layout....something different... Here are a few photos taken earlier...with a few videos up later... 209 and 89605. The trial train passes the autoballaster train and Supertrain Mk2s-with the IWT liner waiting for the road. 209 pushing the Enterprise van and Mk4 set past the carriage valeting plant which sees B141 on carriage washing duties and 192 as carriage pilot loco-with 160+156 on the fourth road with the night mail train.

Excellent programme of the history of the Inter-City 125-one of my favourite trains I remember getting a present of the Hornby 125 train pack that was released in 1980/81, And I'm looking forward to the re release and upgraded blue/grey livery 125 in November by Hornby, I'd like to do a nice small blue/grey British rail 1980s era layout in the future.

Still undergoing an overhaul at Inchicore,possibly back in traffic in early 2013.

Well done Des-It looks great,looking forward to getting mine.

Hi Frank, From my experiences on working the Claremorris ESSO liner trains in days gone by, It was always a requirement for those trains to have a barrier wagons front and rear, The ESSO liner had its own dedicated two axle barrier wagons-one had a 20'orange CIE container on,with the other being just a skeletal flat, Any type of flat/Guinness/bogie wagon could be used if those dedicated wagons were not available, On one occasion I remember having a spare 40' 30XXX type bogie wagon behind an 071 loco from Ballina to Claremorris and then used as a barrier for the oil train onwards to Northwall. That bogie wagon was left on the oil train for a number of weeks before being replaced by the normal two axle wagons.

Brilliant Anthony,those market lights are a big improvement on the loco, I found them to be poor on 220, The beast of Ballykay is looking great in the background also....

Excellent job there Anthony,-a beautiful livery,well done. Sorry to hear that your ill Rich,hope you have a speedy recovery.

Nice work there Gareth....look forward to more updates.

Very true Vincent In the days before H&S,that particular GAA special had only the rear four coaches on the platform at Ballina,and one of them was a steam heating van....the locos were up the line past the signal cabin, The idea was that Ballina and Foxford passengers would occupy the rear coaches and passengers from Claremorris and Ballyhaunis would occupy the front nine Cravens, The same thing applied on the return journey with passengers for Foxford and Ballina being moved up to the front of the train before arrival at both stations. Only a three piece ICR can now only operate on the branch due to the short platforms on the branch nowadays.

Excellent stuff Ritchie,just what I needed,thanks for posting.

Great work Ritchie,that Sperry wagon is spot on,well done.

Evening lads I finished the Mk2 Supertrain coaches yesterday and gave them a trial run behind locos 181+177, 181+177. I've also put together a four coach CIE mail train based on the one that used to operate between Dublin and Cork and Dublin-Galway during the 1970s-1990s, As a bit of a novelty I bought the Hornby operating mail coach and repainted it into black and tan livery along with a Bachmann TPO coach, The train has two mail coaches (2976+2977) a Cravens passenger coach (1515) and a BR type steam heating van (3177) hauled by 160+156 Passenger accommodation was also provided on some mail train e.g 05:50 Dublin-Cork,15:00 Cork -Dublin, I've also uploaded two videos to YouTube of the mail train picking up and dropping off mailbags at speed, Here are a few photos.... 160+156 haul the mail train passing the Mk2 Supertrain. The mail train stops at Central station for a crew change.

Brian is a gentleman and is very knowledgable on the American railroad scene, He has also provided some excellent articles and photos in recent IRRS journals on the history of the 121/141 locos I met Brian last week in Dublin and his advice and expert help on photography was much appreciated.

Hidden-agenda-the IRRS journal of February 2006,No.159 contains an excellent article and photos-"Past Scenes-Freight that was",on page 408 it has a rare colour photo of the Asahi liner hauled by 042 in the loop at the Hill of Down which shows the Asahi tanks in the red/silver livery, As far as I can remember that liner was used for an emergency exercise in Ballina at that time,as there are no bogie wagons next to the loco,only a two axle barrier wagon,then the chemical tanks.

A fantastic job there Eamonn-a typical daily Irish scene,I love the phone box with its interior detail and open door,well done.