Horsetan

The Irish public will generally only get involved if someone else is paying for it. It was ever thus - just look at all the various proposals for building Irish branch lines; the mere mention of having to fork out for it was enough to see interest melt away from most.... I'd say the more immediate concern is a reliable source of fuel for all the steam locomotive fleet, as eco-mental concerns have deliberately made domestic coal unavailable. Current experiments with eco fuels suggest miniature and narrow gauge engines can run (expensively) on it, but standard gauge not so much...

If you're happy to work with P4 standards, then all relevant trackmaking gauges for Irish 21mm are available from Scalefour Society Stores. Code 82 FB is currently available from S4 Stores, the EMGS Stores, and C&L. Code 75 FB is only produced by PECO; I haven't seen anyone else offer it.

There's the PlugTrack function as well, so you could print your own 21mm if you're not too fussed about having the correct 1-in-20 rail inclination

Hopefully that means used Hornby 50s will be flogged cheap on eBay - I need a spares donor for my pair of P4 conversions

Amazingly, they had a couple of packs of ballast hoppers, so I bought one, having missed out on the original release.....

Still no secrets

Garda Siochana seem unable to keep hold of it, underfunded and understaffed as they are. Meanwhile, over in Turd World Britain, 'tis Feral Central here....!

The best thing the Euromillions rollover winner could do is emigrate, mostly for his or her own safety. When Dolores Macnamara won £115m (a record sum at the time), not only was her name leaked incredibly quickly, but credible threats were made to kidnap her son in the hope of extracting a large slice of the win. There's no secrets in Ireland, except maybe where crimes have been committed. Also, we've always had a noticeable feral element in society - never more so than now.

Horses walk in a specific way, so the correct order in which each hoof contacts the ground still needs to be reproduced. And if you want the model horse to trot, that's a whole different arrangement.

I think it will take developments in nanotechnology to filter through to modelling before we can have moving figures, working horses and other animals, bicycles, etc.

I wonder if 68633 or no.87 might become a future variant....?

That would make them unavailable to thè general public. Not necessarily a good idea - remember what happened to the Phoenix range of coach kits when they were taken over by the SRG a couple of decades ago. They were so disorganised that the kits were never really available again, and the range is now dead.

Also the only one offering etches for the NCC "W" and "WT"

If you paid in advance for two etches, surely the transaction should be completed, regardless of whether control has now passed to whichever society it is? I don't know if I should see if that Diagram U autotrailer is (still) available.

No updates to his website, so it looks like he may still be trading.

What tube are you using as axle sleeves?

I think they were all built with just the double horizontal handrails. At some point, they were all equipped with two vertical and two right-angled frames on the smokebox doors. These were meant solely for the purpose of mounting ceremonial shields, most notably for the tour of the Papal Nuncio and other Vatican officials, when the engines bore shields carrying the Vatican flag and emblems. There are photographs of all three 800s lined up on shed at Cork carrying these shields. Subsequently, photos of 801 and 802 in their subsequent years of service show them still carrying these mounting frames; it may be safe to say that, during their CIE period, they were never removed until the engines were finally cut-up. When 800 herself was set aside at Thurles, photos show that the frames had been removed from her smokebox door, and she thus had reverted to the original setup of the double horizontal door rails. I don't remember IRM specifically stating which of their 800 class models will have mounting frames as standard, or whether the frames will be provided as separate parts for you to fit, but I think it may be surmised that 801 and 802 in late CIE livery will have them.

I'm only surprised that the adjustable headcode lighting hasn't previously been tried as a retrofit kit for Hornby and other kit-based Light Pacifics. With DCC (and RC) technology now sufficiently tiny, headcodes you can change for the various Southern routes should be a selling point.

I don't think ITG have anywhere else that can store them. Their place in Carrick-on-Suir is oversubscribed as it is. The semi-wrecked stock makes a suitably intimidating backdrop for films; you may have seen the somewhat violent Calm With Horses

If you look at the seller's other items, virtually all of it is way overpriced. He's notorious for it. Seller's name is Greg Diffen - I seem to recall he was born in Australia and emigrated here many many years ago. Australians are famously hard-nosed capitalists - see Macquarie Bank which drained all the money out of Thames Water over the course of seven years' ownership of the utility, and also loaded it with massive debt which has now grown to such a degree that Thames Water is effectively insolvent. His eBay ID "gostude" is derived from his other hobby which is collecting Studebaker cars - at one point he was a very big noise in the Studebaker Owners Club UK. It is entirely possible that the price gouging on model railway items is to help pay for his Studebaker habit. This is Mr. Diffen

Errm...yeah....nah.

Probably more towards the end of the year.

Sid Stubbs wrote a particularly fascinating article in MRJ (no.42, I think) on how worm gears could be made reversible, by increasing the pitch angle and number of starts, effectively turning them into crossed helicals. Unfortunately I discovered him too late, but crossed helical gearboxes are available to this day from Slaters and other specialists. They are very efficient transmissions.

The smokebox door hinges are on the wrong side of the door ring.... ....and the outside motion looks pretty half-hearted as well.

An excellent landing is one where they can re-use the plane....