Horsetan

The Ultrascale website has been offline for over a month due to webhost/server problem. It's not going to be resolved any time soon. You have to telephone David Rogers direct if you want to order anything. Sharman "B" profile wheels are almost the same overall width as the "A" profile, differing only in flange thickness and depth, and don't exceed 2.3mm. The sample B-type I have come out at 2.15mm, and I think it's possible to skim the backs of the tyres to reduce flange depth and height down to P4 profile, i.e. 2mm width. Markits are no longer available due to the death of the owner earlier this year. There had been talk of his widow trying to restart the business but I suspect that's unlikely - it was a considerable undertaking for a one-man band, and the knowledge to run it properly and develop the already extensive product range died with Mr. Arscott. The only place you'll get Romford/Markits wheels now is on eBay, and most of those will be very much secondhand, stripped from old models.

What's left of Sharman wheels are available from Phoenix Paints. Stocks are being sold to exhaustion, as the tooling is mostly worn out and Phoenix have no intention of producing more.

Seen that, but I need a double shaft one to carry a flywheel at one end.

...not a Mashima? I had a dead Mashima can (one of the more obscure long barrelled 1330 ones) recently and have been looking for a suitable coreless to replace it. The closest equivalent I can find is nearly 100 Euros!

Looks like a High Level coreless.

Darius works freestyle

A project you could dive into.

Hmm, a layout actually in a swimming pool might make a good challenge...

Great set of links - unfortunately the Flickr "irish railway archive" ones are all restricted access.

That would be grand, thanks

To misquote Father Ted: "These engines look black, but when I looked closely, they were actually very very very very very very VERY dark grey...."

That's now the only colour photo of 560 I have seen! By then the smokebox door handles had been replaced by a wheel and handle arrangement. The curious thing about the smokebox wrapper is that it has visible rivets along the leading edge, but none at the rear where it joins the boiler barrel. I have a b&w one of it on what seems to be the same railtour day, attached to a tin van, plus another later b&w of it out of service at Cork. Coincidentally 560 is the one I'm building out of the old TMD kit.

Wasn't 560 (with the enlarged cab) the last J26 in service? I've only ever seen black and white photos of it, but each photo has minor detail changes.

We had a James Galway LP for years. Bought the thing at Woolworths. £4.99.

All this paint discussion reminds me of:

You don't have to go straight in, but approach from the side - the tool would be cranked like a dentist's mirror.

Maybe having fixed magnet positions isn't the solution. How about a magnet mounted on a handheld spade-type device that you slip under the couplings only when you need it?

Brian is brilliantly mad. He has worked in P4 and P87, but decided that Märklin's MiniClub Z-gauge was much too rough, so he came up with Proto-220. That's finescale Z, with correct clearances through pointwork and wheels turned down to correct width and flanges. He brought a demo P220 board to one show years ago, and all the pointwork worked flawlessly. This was in the days when my eyes could still focus on things that small. Completely mad.

Heljan did do some work for Hattons including, as it happens, the Beyer Garratt. You only need one motor in most engines, but the question is what type? Coreless motors - which are only now finding their way into RTR products - are more efficient but they do have to be matched to the job. You can't just stick any old coreless in there and expect it to take the abuse.

Will you be installing any signalling at all?

Saddle tank design is distinctive - is it a Neilson?

They outlasted the equivalent Great Eastern E4/T26 2-4-0s by about 4 years.

There's some very interesting footage in that website, including film of the County Donegal around the time of closure. I'd never seen film of the shunting tractor Phoenix moving until now....

They seem to have been widespread. There's at least one photo of a 650 taking the road to Ballina at Manulla Junction, when the station buildings still existed.

Signal spectacle plate design looks remarkably close to the type used by the Caledonian Railway, probably produced by Stevens & Co.