Flying Snail

crikey .... that was a holiday to remember. Thanks very much for sharing, and I hope the treatment continues to go well.

According to this there were a couple of specials out of Westport (one had a connection from Ballina), another special from Sligo, and .........<checks notes>.... Dundalk. https://www.dublinpublictransport.ie/blog/irish-rail-adds-extra-trains-for-all-ireland-football-final

Didn't realise tractors had graduated to top link services but hey ... Massey is classy but if she ain't blue, she won't do!

I have the first edition of Iain Rice's Cameo Layouts book, are there many changes in the new expanded version?

I would expect there would be copyright issues (Irish and UK copyright law i think is pretty similar), whether or not the copyright holder is prepared to do anything is a different matter. If you want to avoid copyright issues, you could reference the Irish stuff - issue, page nos, author and title etc. so that people can go source the article themselves.

Part 2: I went and purchased two more pre-owned Cravens this week from the main Rails of Sheffield website. This time the ex. VAT value of the goods was below the €150 customs threshold. UK VAT was paid at point of purchase, as before and so was a £3.15 customs duties fee (I presume this is the €3 plus some sort of handling charges) ... and then that was it. The two carraiges were delivered to Dublin without any further customs charges or handling charges being applied by An Post. Something to note, the €150 customs charge threshold is calculated in the ex. VAT value of the goods before Rails added in UK VAT. Edit: Also I should note, the £3.15 customs duties fee was applied just once.

Agreed - it really makes these much easier to find in future.

I'd say, given that the painted sample has had a spin around New Junction, it’s safe to assume the model is currently being reviewed, or has been very recently, and that we can expect an update once they have some feedback from that process. To be fair, they’re very good at letting us know once they have news to share. I take the project status page with a large pinch of salt until the model actually moves into the “In Transit” stage. So many issues can crop up during the tooling and production stages that those deadlines are aspirational at best. That’s just the nature of the beast. Accurascale have a great crew of project managers, but there’s only so much they can do if a factory makes a mistake or if the FIFA Peace Prize laureate decides very strongly to make international trade and shipping rather more interesting than it needs to be.

Thats very restrictive - you should revert back to them to tell them why you can't sign the permission form.

well Richard does work at Accurascale ....

It did spell Guinness correctly, so that’s a point in its favour .... or should that be a pint? AI is improving at a rapid rate, but it’s not there yet. I think, like a good pint of the black stuff, it needs a little longer to settle. ...

To be fair, commerlad, Clare is a major holiday destination with good transport links. From Dublin it's only a few hours on the motorway, and Shannon Airport brings in visitors from across Britain, Europe and North America. From an Irish perspective, it's a little odd seeing all those references to "the mainland" - for many of us, Ireland is the mainland! That said, I think your post does highlight what is probably the more fundamental issue: scale. The Republic has around 5.5 million people compared with roughly 68 million in the UK. Even if you include Northern Ireland, the all-island market is still much smaller. That means a much smaller pool of enthusiasts, volunteers and skilled people to keep heritage railways running, and fewer local visitors making repeat trips throughout the season. Heritage railways don't survive on overseas tourists alone; they depend on local support year after year, people like yourself making regular day trips to their local railways. Tourism certainly helps (Clare attracts huge numbers of visitors) but tourism and heritage railways aren't quite the same thing. A tourist might visit the Cliffs of Moher once, whereas a preserved railway needs a loyal base of repeat visitors, members and volunteers, alongside tourists, to justify the ongoing costs of maintaining locomotives, rolling stock and infrastructure. Ultimately, I think that's the fundamental challenge. Heritage railways need substantial capital, continuous maintenance and, above all, a large and active community of volunteers and repeat visitors. With a much smaller population to draw on, Ireland simply has a smaller base from which to sustain projects like these over the long term.

... picked up a couple of Cravens to mix in with my Park Royals. We'll see what customs charges are involved in the next few days So, the three pre-owned Cravens arrived to my home in Dublin this morning. I ordered from the main Rails of Sheffield website, not their eBay store and they were sent via Royal Mail and An Post. VAT was paid at point of purchase, and that was it - they were delivered without any customs charges or handling charges. Couple of things to note: There were three items of the same type in one parcel, so for the customs declaration they were declared as 1 x model railway goods with a value of £208. This is allowed under the rules and as the package value was greater than €150, the new €3 charge did not apply anyway. Also model railway goods have 0% customs duty. As VAT had already been applied, there was no customs related processing required and no charges were applied by An Post. I bought from the Rails main website not the eBay store, and they may or may not be applying different processes on eBay for international customers - I don't know. But what I do know from having used Rails main website extensively since the demise of Hattons is that Rails have made themselves aware of the customs rules, and (like accurascale) they have processes in place to ensure that charges are correctly applied (and minimised for EU customers).

I think it would be hard to find a better combination of research into the prototype coupled with design and build of the model. There's some attention to detail here!

Rigorous, scientific method - I like it . I hope that it wasn't the result of frustration with the trouble you encountered. Hopefully you'll be able to work it out with the help of Rob and others here