Horsetan

If anything, that quality should be gravitating towards a more accurate gauge....

Nowadays, I think they call that a "side-hustle"....

....which may also mean that "a nation once again" is likely to be a very long, long way away.

The other undercurrent that I detected years ago, and it's not just in railways, is that in Ireland there's no problem supporting something, but not if people have to pay for it.

....I mean, 'tis not like the British walk blindly into things they don't quite understand....

It's a lot more interesting than watching the England football team playing.

Clones shed is brilliant, as if a flying saucer had landed. At least it still exists, even if it's not publicly accessible, unlike Portadown.

As it happens, the Germans did plan to build a 2-6-8-0 Mallet. This was to have been built by Borsig of Berlin, and would have been the DRG's class 53⁰. There is conflicting information as to whether construction ever went ahead; a couple of sources claim Borsig got as far as building the bare frames. Whatever the truth of the matter, Märklin produced a model of the Class 53 in the 1970s, and continued producing it, on and off, over the following decades. It's quite a sight.

Should be possible to motorise that....

More feralism.

I do hope yer man has adequate insurance cover....

From some of the modern day Irish network photos, it tends to appear that the ballast coverage is so thorough that you can't see the sleepers anymore.

That is a start.

I'd particularly welcome any GAs of the 3345 gallon "large" tender (possibly ex 400 class) that no.186 has

Has anyone had parcels nicked off their doorstep?

I had another look at this and wondered how they might look in company with the new IRM standard beet wagon. Or would they fit on the IRM triangulated wagon chassis?

Mmm.....VS class tender....

I'm only surprised that this method isn't currently used at various seaside places.....

Fairly standard for the Indian railway network. Safety record is patchy at best, and this incident is already beginning to sound like some kind of signalling failure - e.g. failure by goods driver to read signal indications, or mistaken clearance for the goods train to proceed when line blocked.

Fake "twoos"

The wheels are a bit of a challenge, as the correct diameter just isn't available - nobody makes a 5'1" wheel, and even when Sharman was still in business he didn't have an appropriate pattern - and the nearest equivalent recommended by Des is a slightly larger diameter. Most of the time, this isn't a problem unless the wheel centre makes the whole thing look bigger than it actually is. EDIT: the instructions mention on page 2 the source of MJT hornblocks as still being in Croydon. This is somewhat out of date, as the MJT range was taken over by Dart Castings years ago. Des knows about this, and is updating the instruction sheets accordingly.

J15 kit has arrived. And now for the trivial matter of wheels ....

Y'know, going off-topic here, I've often thought that historians covering the whole 1933-1945 thing might have missed a subtlety. In 1938, we all learnt that Anschluss generally meant Germany merging with and absorbing Austria. Given the way that the small Austrian fella had climbed to power over the German population, I've long wondered if Anschluss was actually Austria cementing its power over Germany, especially when you consider that Austrians have tended to have that streak of nastiness that even Germans find unsettling.

Did yer wan have Irish ancestry?