Horsetan

Living statue?

I seem to recall that RPSI also lost both surviving GNR(I) K15 coaches. Or is there still one left?

...I did not realise that the RPSI lost so many Bredins due to arson.

I did wonder whether Irish preservation sees more arson attacks than anywhere else.

....I smell a rat. A big fat rat. Who smell's a bit fishy too. A fishrat.

I'd put that in the bin; it may be decomposing.

I'll probably use this one a lot...

I'm with ye there.

Is there a "facepalm" smiley? I've a feeling I'm going to be needing that one.....

Modelling the Irish scene has historically presented a challenge, particularly if you're doing it in Ireland. It is only in the last 15-20 years that things have become easier in terms of stock, kits and all the rest. For that we have the Internet to thank - it's that much easier to order what you're after, and information about what's available is more accessible.

I remember first coming to Dublin back in 1988, during an unemployment peak, and only ever seeing one model shop (Murphy's) in the whole place. It sold British-outline stock; I don't remember seeing anything in CIE/IE/IR livery there at the time. My parents took me around much of Ireland that year, and I never saw another model shop. The economic situation back then focussed people's minds on emigration, not modelling.

I think TMD kits (now SSM) existed back then, but actually getting hold of any was a challenge. They were not very well publicised in Britain, if at all.

Today, things are that much better materially, thanks to the Celtic Tiger, even if it did have a propensity to prowl around on quicksand. The very fact that this Forum exists to showcase what's being done demonstrates how much Irish modelling has developed out of almost nothing.

You lot are still only youngsters wait till you hit your 40's:(((

I'm just after turning 41. I've been in model railways in one form or another since the age of 5; dead-scale Scalefour since 1990, but modelling 5'3" (21mm gauge) only started this year. Just after realising that if/when I finish this "S" class, I'll have no 21mm gauge track to run it on

Since I no longer have youthful good looks, I resorted to radical plastic surgery and now look like this:

Wonder if that could be converted to 21mm gauge.....hmmm.......

It's great to see the new updates Ivan, and it's nice to see you back

'tis all about getting the time for it. In reference to what you wrote about the younger modellers losing these skills to build - well, in the same way, there are skills that I would have loved to have learnt, such as being able to use a lathe and turn my own fittings or make my own wheels.

But there are a good few capable young engine builders out there - do a search for Tom Mallard, who I think is at least seven years younger than me, but builds engines with the maturity and self-assuredness of someone who has spent a lifetime in the craft. And he charges accordingly - I think he'd be around two grand-plus(that's sterling, not Euro) if you wanted him to build something like no.800 Maedhbh for you. I call him "Stella Artois", because he's reassuringly expensive.

.... waiting to get stuck into this bottle of Glen fiddich.....

I'm just after having some Talisker at teatime, even though I'm more of a Jameson's man meself.

The takeover is underway but, as some people predicted, it's taking C&L a lot longer to merge the Exactoscale stock into C&L's existing systems. They thought they'd be up and running by the first week of November but that's gone by the board now due to staff shortages, etc.

Click here

I think it will be the New Year before you'll be able to order anything.

The "S" class has a very Edwardian wrapround roof, and these are a total swine to form cleanly, as brass and nickel-silver will distort in all sorts of unexpected ways. SSM/TMD try to make the job easier by making the roof eaves half-etched, but there is so little material above the cabside's curved cut-out that the whole lot will deform.

The instructions say that you should bend the top of the cabsides, using a 2mm rod to get the right sort of curve. This isn't quite as easy as it looks:

I tried to attain a clean curve by using a steel rule at the back:

....but the grade of brass in this old kit was a bit mad, and I found the task difficult to control properly. The following photo shows the extent of the problem:

As you can see, the offside roof eave is almost there, but the nearside shows signs of distortion, and it will need more work with the 2mm drill former to correct. At this point, I felt a bit like that episode where Father Ted is contemplating his "repair" work on the dent in the car that the Diocese gave for the raffle to raise funds to fix the Parochial House roof.......

"Ye know, ye're too much of a perfectionist, Ted...."

Looking forward to this build its nice to see a step by step guide

I call it the Eejit Guide to Building - 'cos when you read it, you can avoid the mistakes this eejit made

Returning to the instruction sheet, Parts P18 (nearside and offside cabsides/splashers) are now removed form the fret:

The insides of the cabsides have horizontal etched lines. These act as guides for the cab front assembly, and what you do is run the "legs" of it along the etch lines:

...whilst simultaneously making sure the cab front is flush with the leading edge of the cabside:

Setting this all up was sheer hell, but hairgrips - if arranged the right way - have enough tension to keep things together to allow you to start soldering:

Once again, only run the minimum amount of solder that you think you can get away with:

....before repeating the process with the offside cabside:

Now is the time to balance your cab and splashers on the footplate, just to see how things are looking:

The instructions do mention that you should now fit half-etched sandbox filler caps (Part P49) into the half-etched holes in the footplate, and footsteps P34a, P34b and P34c. This is up to you. I chose not to add these details yet as I wanted to make sure I had the main structure looking right.

Therefore the next job for me was part P21, the cab front inner frame:

The legs of this are folded at right-angles - I use my mini-vice to hold it and the steel ruler to do the actual job of bending:

This task should be as simple as hiding your assets....

....outside the jurisdiction of the Republic:

I also took a look at part P24, which is the cab floor (including the inner splasher sides for the trailing driving wheels):

The etch lines on it are a bit weak, and could be usefully widened with the apex of a triangular needle file:

....and that helps you achieve a cleaner 90-degree / right-angle bend:

OK so, here we are again after getting distracted by work. "Work is the curse of the drinking classes" (Oscar Wilde).

The next job on the instruction sheet is relatively simple, involving part P37 (the buffer beam inner frame)

and P41 (the beam overlay):

What the instructions don't tell you is that part P37 has to be folded according to the etch lines at each end of it:

This followed by P41, the overlay which needs to be soldered over it:

Remember that the square buffer bases must be at the lower edge of the overlay, not the upper! You only need to flow the very minimum of solder, because the next job is to fix the completed buffer beam to the footplate you made earlier. It takes time to make sure you've got it all in line, and the back edge of the buffer beam "sandwich" must butt up against the front edge of the footplate valancing:

Again, only the minimum of solder should be flowed into the join - and it's best to run it from the inside (or behind the beam) so that you don't get solder going all over the rivet detail:

These shunt discs are a minefield. I think CIE tended to use more of the square-faced ones.

If I tilt my head clockwise, the shape and appearance of the red and blue lenses on the circular disc appear similar to the design used on the Great Western Railway / BR (Western Region)

I think we'll have a go at the cab and cab interior next - this is specifically aimed at 21mm gauge builders, and the diagram shows that it has a lot of parts!

I presume those are SSM's GS&WR/GSR/CIE signals - lovely things

.....some excellent advice there regarding the Kadee couplers, very much appreciated thanks. It's good to get some first hand accounts of how these things work. Have done a little Google research on the subject. Unfortunately a lot relates to American stock. Body mounting the couplers as opposed to boggie mounting. They don't have much trouble negotiating bends because EVERYTHING is bigger in the States/Canada....

Unlike British and Irish stock, US / Canadian stock has no buffers - all buffing and coupling forces are directed through the buckeye / knuckle couplings themselves, and there is no "buffer locking" on tight curves.

....Build a time machine and travel back to 1954 and there was a nice choice of CBSCR, DSER, GSWR & MGWR types. Take a trip to Kerry have a word with Jackie Healy-Reays Grandfather to have a word with Dev about setting up the Kigarvan Flyer as a Tourist Train complete with native "Kerry Bogie" on the Kenmare Branch

....and some interesting work on ex-Coey "K3" no.356, the ......mental Turf Burning Locomotive.

Well, if the oul report is right, then the extent of the drug taking and concealment was certainly of heroic proportions......

Just after another burst of work this evening. I did say I would start assembling the footplate (and the cab later) to give me an idea of how much space I would have for the chassis and its suspension system. OK so:

The instructions direct that the footplate (part P11) is sawn out of the body fret:

I did not remove the centre section (with the nameplates on) as I wanted the footplate to stay as rigid as possible.

The instructions now dictate that the valances (part P8 x2) are removed from the chassis fret:

It helps if you have a small vice to trap parts for soldering and filing jobs. I'm removing the traces of tabs from a valance here:

....and we end up with nearside and offside valances ready to go on the underside of the footplate:

These valances must each be fitted 0.5mm from the edge of the footplate, so we use the digital calipers to help mark the positions at each end of the footplate underside:

Front:

Rear:

Next stage is to bend down the rear drawbar at the rear of the footplate. There's a half-etch line for this, which you must have at the inside of the fold, and it's a simple 90-degree bend:

....and there ye go:

The actual positioning of the valances in the right place, ready for soldering, was the part I really loathed. Remember that the original design of this kit is nearly three decades old, so there are no tabs-and-slots, or etched guidelines; you must use the marks you made earlier at each end, plus a couple of hairclips, to keep the valances in line and at 90 degrees to the underside:

The potential nightmare is having the hairclips let go and the valances falling off during soldering. I had to be gentle when brushing flux along the join, and then being very quick with the soldering iron (I use a 25w Antex for most work) to tack solder at strategic points, a bit like the oul "spot welding":

If it stays upright, I can then flow the joint so that the solder spreads along it. You don't need a lot of solder, and I only flowed it in three areas:

The second valance is soldered in the same manner, so we now have this:

Use your vice to hold the very edge of the footplate - there's not a lot to grip there!! - so that you can now fold the semi-circular coupling rod splashers into an upright position. I'm using a flat file to do this, but you can use a steel ruler as well:

This is why I did not put any solder by the coupling rod splashers as I wanted them to be easier to bend up. I think we will leave it here for tonight:

....We really do need to appreciate just how utterly broke this country was back then.....

Exactly, compared to how broke it is now. In virtually every sense, Ireland is materially better-off in today's hard times. When I compare how both Dublin and Clare were in 1988 to what they were when I returned for 1998-2003, the contrast could not be greater.

And more importantly, since the late 1980s, the dead hands of Church and State (in each other's pockets) has been lifted; thanks to greater information, we are more willing to question every move that is (or was) made.

Collins Barracks (and anywhere else within the National Museum umbrella) was ruled out because they don't give a f**k about transport heritage.

I suppose that rules out Kilmainham Jail

The curator is on record (more than once) as saying transport heritage is 'adequately served' by the likes of the RPSI and the National Transport Museum. It's a disgrace that a person in that position has no problem leaving it up to voluntary groups alone to save what they can for posterity...

....which more or less sums up my view that "official" Ireland has generally been unsentimental about its railway heritage - there is not the tradition which gathered pace in Britain in the 1960s, and there was not the money to go round at the time. With steam ending in 1963 in the Republic, and CIE having other priorities, there wasn't a hope that much would be saved. If there had been, we'd have seen a few more of the narrow gauge systems restored, or previously uneconomic lines such as Achill or Clifden being reborn.

There isn't quite the same railway modelling tradition either - that has arguably only grown since the 1980s as Ireland's economy strengthened. Before that, Fry and Donaldson were effectively ploughing lone furrows.

It seems to be the fashion - sometimes with good reason - to bring down celebrities. See what's happening over here with the late Jimmy Savile - much easier to make out he was some sort of perverted weirdo when the man's in his grave.

It's true what they say: you should never meet your heroes; you'll only be disappointed.

Ridiculous. The whole affair is just pitiful.

The same could be said of the truncated Tralee & Dingle just to the south of you. Lack of cash, lack of enthusiasm, lack of co-ordination.

Still, if EVER it gets resurrected, I would prefer to see it in a city centre location. Collins Barracks, Heuston Station, Templebar...wherever.

Given Dublin city centre commercial rent levels, even in a recession, that could be a costly exercise. I'm not sure TCD would want it on their patch either.

Is there spare space at Leopardstown Racecourse (which would give the course some year-round income when there's no racing on), or Liffey Valley Shopping Centre (drop the kids to see the railway whilst you go shopping?)

If this one includes his trip on the CDR Railcar on the Foyle Valley Railway, the latter is also effectively defunct as well......