Horsetan

Why do I detect an element of wishful thinking in respect of what they think IR should do? Why do people assume the Chinese will be the universal panacea to all (self-inflicted) economic ills? What makes others think that IR would simply turn over an entire route for 10 Euro?

In that case, you might want to be sending Allen an e-mail to ask if he'll be there.

"Look at them there. The Chinese. A great bunch o' lads....."

It will be if they put in a full-size NEM coupler.

Slightly unfortunate if pronounced the European way

Brian Solomon has this photo of a bracket signal Note the difference in the size of the red spectacle - the subsidiary arm has a much smaller "red", and a correspondingly longer "green" segment; there used to be examples of this all over the system, including one on the Quay end of the Westport "up" platform. My question is when was that variation was first introduced? Was it a GSR pattern, or a CIE design? Also, are there any photos of the current IR LED colour light signal heads?

I had a pint yesterday

His Shows page doesn't have anything listed after 27th October 2012 - I wonder if that means a "no"?

The thickness of each mainframe is 0.5mm, so the homemade spacers will need to be at least 16mm wide. Further time has been spent using CLAG principles for setting up the continuous spring-beam suspension: For an in-depth guide to how the principles work, click here. This being a four-coupled chassis, I'm using the symmetrical 2-axle setup.

There, that's better, so!

Ultrascale and AGW both make the correct 6ft driving wheels (LMS Black 5-type), and pony / bogie wheels are freely available from both. Note that the driving wheel rims are bevelled, whereas the bogie and pony wheels are not.

It will be worth more than the stuff NAMA took on

The saga of the Olumpic alien mascots is an object lesson in why ye should never accept a consultancy's opinion of what children are supposed to like, still less pay them massive fees for coming up with the equivalent of UHT milk - lasts ages, "but there's no demand for that 'cos it's s***".

Completed cutting the second driving axle just before leaving for work this morning, so I now have both driving wheelsets test-mounted and gauged to 19.85mm back-to-back. Was a bit unhandy with the piercing saw on the second set, so there are a few scratches on the tyre faces I think L-shaped spacers from n/s or brass provide more support than the square ones. What I could do with is more frame depth in the area of the driving wheels, particularly over the hornblocks, to provide a bit more strength to the topline of the frames. I know the original design which persists to this day was the most expedient way of catering for most builders, which is fine and would have worked well for the many people who bought and built these kits over the course of two decades-plus; I just wanted to see if I could develop it a bit further. I am looking at assembling the footplate/ cabsides / valances as the kit stipulates, and then assembling and test-fitting the cab interior (which the instructions say is for 21mm gauge anyway - grand ). Putting these sub-assemblies together will hopefully show me how much room I've got for the chassis, and whether I can add material to strengthen the latter whilst I install the CSB suspension system. The bogie also looks as though it can tolerate a change in assembly.

They still frequent eBay. Many of them pay top dollar for sh*te!

That was mental!

That may just be what it has become. The website is equally moribund - it hasn't been touched for over four years. Lack of money doesn't help either.

A role filled these days by the Rubberbandits, but with a lot more swearing. I mean, you wouldn't hear that type of language from a docker!

There are loads of screw-in brass spacers in the kit I acquired, but they all measure 11.1mm wide. I'm not quite sure what other purpose they could be used for - possibly reinforcing the insides of corners, maybe? Let me cut my own first. If I get into real trouble, I might have to come back to you.

This:

OK so, this morning I scribed horizontal lines through the driving axle centres: Generally mark on the inside of the chassis frames, not the outsides which would be visible to the public. The whole point of doing the lines is to have a visible guide to where the axles should rest once the suspension system has been introduced: I will need to scribe yet more lines to take account of where the leaf springs will run, and where the fulcrum points should be (midway between the driving axles, for example). Since this particular kit was produced before Ireland changed over to the Euro, I had expected bits to be missing. In fact the only things that were absent were dedicated wider spacers for 21mm gauge builders. Not sure if "Weshty" / Des has been able to supply wider ones since taking over the SSM range, but they certainly wouldn't go amiss. For my part, I'm making my own. The first major part is the upper rubbing plate which sits above the bogie, which you see here at the top left corner of the fret: As designed, it's for 16.5mm gauge only. I need to make a wider replica of it, keeping the same overall length and fold lines for now. In order to end up with an overall chassis width of 17 to 17.5mm wide, the estimate is that the spacers should be at least 16.7mm wide.