Horsetan

There's also the more recent Zimbabwean and Argentinian approaches to printing more money....

Here's a method for building points using FB rail

That's useful to know..... How many in that pack?

Not just me, so. I've only ever used .jpg or .jpeg format files for uploading to the Forum, same as everyone else.

Still loads more 30ft track bases to be used up....

Thing that grabs me is that it's a lot of money to be paying for something that's (deliberately) designed to be wrong.... They're not even cheap enough to cut-and-shut with other things in the hope of getting closer to what's actually wanted.

...these are all photos uploaded to the Forum or Forum albums directly. I don't use third party hosts.

Makes me wonder if pictures uploaded are in fact some kind of online mirage....

Try my SSM GSR 800 thread - even the first post is peppered with "broken" image icons....

What I've noticed is that a lot of my past photos have disappeared from posts or threads I've written on. The more recent photos are visible, but even they disappear after a while, and all I get are the "broken image" icons.... it's a bit bizarre.

Here's a side view. Doesn't look bad at all. Saves many hours of going at it with gauges and multiple packs of PECO Pandrol clips individually glued down on ABS sleepers.... I'd go as far as to say that, if you want to portray that slight air of neglect that used to hang around Irish secondary/branch line permanent way, the 3D printed bases are already much of the way there - the sleepers even have visible cracks at the end and look somewhat past their best! What would really finish it would be FB rail in phosphor bronze which has always been useful for representing corroded or rarely used rail.

If I had to nit-pick, there are a random few clips which are very loose as you feed the rail through. Whether that helps gauge-widening on curves, I don't know.....yet. That said, this is an ideal contribution to getting something running. I've loads of track bases left over, so I reckon we're going to need a lot more FB rail....

Code 75 is probably more representative of the Irish network before the modern era of concrete sleepers and continuously welded rail, for which Code 82 would be perfect.

Yesterday at Scaleforum, I managed to obtain a couple of lengths of Code 82 FB. Some minutes after getting it home, we had our first demo length of 21mm. This used just a fraction - just 8 panels - of the track bases supplied. I think we are cooking on gas.

Of course, in the days of steam, when there was sufficient manpower to keep vegetation mostly clear of the permanent way, leaves seem to have been less of a problem....

Irish solutions for Irish problems.

I think it is quite apparent that Irish design philosophy was somewhat different, with a wider loading gauge to play with. In musical comedy terms, it's like comparing The Rutles with The Beatles: the two bands sound similar but, when you examine the music closely, they turn out to be actually very different.

I'm not sure when the SL&NC started to fall into arrears of maintenance in relation to condition of the rails, but most of the photos I've seen suggest they were running on some quite ropey metals...

Were such records actually kept in the first place? Or was the change of use just done ad-hoc?

The improvised use of a square board for what is ostensibly a main arm certainly suggests sighting purposes. Definitely one for those who worked in CIE's S&T department. How many improvised signals like these were there on the network? Interesting that the white bar is missing from the red "arm", so was it actually for a shunt move? I wouldn't have thought that S&T was so short of equipment that they couldn't find a spare shunting disc in the stores, though....

Alan Gibson/AGW say (in their catalogue) that the tyre wear could be anything up to 2½ inches before new tyres were necessary.

You'd have to find some way of widening the footplate between the frames and letting in some splashers, but the good news is that the boiler and cab assembly doesn't really need to be touched other than maybe to add a tablet catcher on the cabside, and maybe to add (if modelling later CIE condition): - extra pipe runs - rivets to the smokebox - a new door and handles, plus eight door "dogs" with opening handles to replace the original six. Sounds more like A Dios le Pido. Spanish practices?

As things stand, I wouldn't try it. Not on a Rapido.

Well, not quite. The preproduction photos suggests that there's still a problem with the depth of the footplate drop, especially in front - Rapido seem to have used the shallow "N" one, thus repeating the mistake that DJH made on their new-build "U" kit. It would look wrong on a Woolwich K1a as well. The "U" and K1a had a very deep and noticeable drop from footplate down to bufferbeam - it has rarely if ever been modelled correctly, mainly because modellers assumed it was the same as the original N/K1. The K1a used the same chassis wheelbase as the K1, 7'3" x 8'3", unlike the "U" which is 6 inches shorter between driving and trailing axles. The other thing is that Rapido don't really cater for the finescale gauges. Clearances have tended to be insufficient and Rapido engineering has been quite unlike everyone else's - it's almost as if they'd deliberately designed them not to be tampered with. People have already had considerable problems trying to convert from OO to P4, and there would be even bigger problems going to 21mm, especially with the extra 2mm between the visible frames to be grafted in. I have a Rapido USATC S160 on order for end of next year, and I'm expecting it to be a nightmare P4 conversion.

This almost reads like Roddy Doyle's writing style, particularly the conversations at the bar in his books "Two Pints" and "Two More Pints"