Horsetan

It has been a journey - an essentially "simple"-looking 4-4-0 actually has quite a lot of parts crammed into it!

No need: ye use the same checkrail gauge available for "standard" P4. If the Stores has none in stock, use a 0.68mm spark plug feeler gauge as a substitute. If ye want it "dead scale", use 0.58mm. 21mm is just so much more convincing than "OO" for Irish 5'3", whereas "OO" is almost right for South African / Japanese 3'6"!!! "EM" is almost correct if doing Irish broad guage in "HO"/3.5mm scale. Some of the Australian finescale modellers who follow the Victorian Railways 5'3" in "HO" have gone beyond "EM" and have pushed out to 18.37mm gauge.

Looks like a standard 16-inch LMS/BR buffer. Not necessarily rare, particularly if you are in the preservation industry.

Märklin have always been quite idiosyncratic - still sticking to the 3-rail/stud-contact 16vAC system long after almost everyone else had abandoned it for 12vDC 2-rail. If you've ever been lucky enough to visit Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, almost all of the lengthy railway systems there are Märklin-based, so they must be doing something right. Very robust engines - think equivalent of HD/Wrenn, but to somewhat finer, more-detailed standards. They still insist on using quite coarse flanges on their wheels, though - possibly the only thing that detracts from the models produced today (mind you, Roco and Fleischmann aren't necessarily better in this department either). The commemorative edition of "01" pacific 01 150 is interesting. This was one of the engines severely damaged in the 2005 Nuremburg Museum fire, and was extensively repaired in Meiningen before being put back into service a couple of years back. 23 105 has also been cosmetically restored. I'm not sure how far advanced work on the other engines is, e.g. 45 010

Some more water has passed under the oul bridge. As I now do two jobs during the week, as well as helping to look after a Thoroughbred racehorse at weekends, modelling time has been severely cut down, but I haven't been totally idle. Richard McLachlan of the IRRS has stumbled across some clearer motion drawings for the "S" - these are marked Dundalk drawing no.s 202N and 203N. He initially thought that they dated from the time when the "S" and "S2" were rebuilt in 1938, but the markings clearly show they were done at the end of 1925. With some of the known dimensions, I managed to reduce one down to 4mm scale, and the resultant copy is tiny but still just about legible! The drawings also confirm that the distance between the frames is 4ft 8ins, so my original Maplin jig-spacer width of 16mm is almost there, though I am wondering if a few washers might help pad things out. There are still a couple more drawings that I need - mostly of the cylinder block (103S and 105S), which is where things get interesting because the SSM kit smokebox frame partly extends downwards into the space where the piston valves of the inside cylinders should be! I did manage to buy Martin Finney's inside motion kit for the LSWR T9, and was mighty pleased to find that the crossheads are almost exactly the right "+" cross-section for the "S", the matching slidebars and piston rod glands are adaptable, whilst the motion bracket looks like it could be split and widened to fit between the frames of the "S". I can use the cranks from the GW 1854/2721 inside motion kit as these are near-identical in shape to those on the "S". This leaves the connecting rods themselves; it's 6ft 6ins (26mm in 4mm scale) between the centre of the "little end" and the centre of the "big end", so whether I adapt the rods from the GW or LSWR loco is not that important - the plain fact is that both types will need modifying! At the moment the only scratchbuilt parts would appear to be the rockers and their brackets, as well as the back-end of the cylinder block. A bit of work has been done on the cab - mainly the front overlay and the rear splasher tops: It is important not to have any of it lopsided - all of the various holes and slots must line up with those on the inner cab structure, so it's out with the hairgrips again: I found it was better to tack-solder the overlay in place before trying to form the splasher tops.

Doing a double-motor bogie used to be the cheap way of getting a British outline diesel to actually do some work - I tried it in a Hornby "Hymek", and have parts to do a double-motored ex-Lima Class 40. The idea does work quite well.

Coreless motors do need a little circuit protection. It may be the circuit failing which led to one motor failing. Is there any way of getting access to the affected motor? Will it respond to a 9v battery across the terminals?

Can those fellas organise a piss-up in a brewery?

Some classic passing of the oul buck going on there.

I am sorry for your loss. I hope she has found peace.

I look forward to dioramas portraying Irish Republican actions on the railway up to 1921. Or maybe we're not ready to replicate that type of thing....

Part of the point of being a Pope is there can be only One.

Either way, it'll cost

Is he not Pope Fran nowadays?

Do ye not have an Outernet as well?