LNERW1

Pure brilliant, a proper ghost train story. I'm loving all the railway ghost stories going around at the moment. Chris Eden-Green's video (up yesterday I think) was great too, if anyone is now hankering for more railway related spookiness.

Wow, that was quick! So quick I've only gotten round to detailing the end of this car and adding thicker walls. considering this is only my second time ever using the software I think I'm doing ok.

Given my recent T gauge kick I've been looking at printing Irish bodyshells for T Gauge chassis, however the biggest roadblock to that is an unfortunate lack of .stl files. So, in a frantic craze to satisfy my latest hyperfixation, I decided to learn TinkerCAD. Luckily for me it turns out the software is incredibly beginner friendly and I've already produced this pile of shite: Luckily the tabs I had open when i took the screenshot dont reveal too much about my psyche, but my taskbar may somewhat give a bit away! As for the name, TinkerCAD auto-names projects. Here's the STL if anyone's interested, even for a look round: TgaugeCoachTest1.stl (this won't fit on any chassis btw as the walls are a whole 1mm thick and on the inside of the space they should be using) And here is the plain shell of tonight's attempt- crafted to the soothing soundtrack of @DonegalDad's stream! Same deal with the auto-name. I might actually try see if this can feasibly be printed (when it's detailed up of course)

My thought with sharing track through the Docklands is that it’s a fairly developed area, and even more is planned (the most exciting IMO is Waterfront South Central as it’ll have a 167m skyscraper, although an ugly one unfortunately), so it would be a good idea to increase frequency to that of the majority of the Red line. Same with all the new Glass Bottle development; maybe the two could interline from Connolly round to Pearse? Apart from being useful it could be helpful in setting a precedent of duplicating certain sections of the DART by way of interchanging with two different stations along the line- this could be immensely helpful for disruptions on both systems. Say for example an over tall lorry has hit a bridge between Tara St and Pearse, those wanting to get between the two still can by rail, by travelling back up to Connolly, and around the quays and Irishtown via the LUAS, or, if the Tom Clarke Bridge is damaged, anyone wanting to get from Irishtown to The Point can go the long way round via DART. That’s not a particularly important aspect of a potential line but I do think it’s a necessary consideration.

Oh yeah of course but would the motors I posted above be of use? They're incredibly compact but still pack a bit of power and can run quite slowly, especially the one with gearbox.

Would any of the Tgauge.com motors be of use in HOf?

Yeah it's pretty wild alright Here's the motors available under "spares": <4.5v Motor With Gearbox 3Vdc Motor Updated 3Vdc Motor

Yeah, the biggest problem is indeed how finicky reliability can be. I think this is probably a big reason many T gauge layouts mainly involve trains travelling at full speed, as well as the fact that it is much better accomodated in the scale. It would probably be feasible to make a layout where trains simply stop at a station, but shunting in T gauge is basically off the table. There is no way to reliably uncouple the buckeye couplings (very similar to N gauge Rapido type, but much smaller), except perhaps poking a fine flathead screwdriver through the coupling. There is of course also the question of reliable slow running, however, given this footage of a Tgauge.com class 08 it appears to not be a problem, at least when it comes to maintaining a consistent slow speed. Now of course reliability issues may indeed be more of an issue given the sheer tininess of the scale, I'm not entirely sure it's an unavoidable problem. I do appreciate the reasoned approach to the issues you have though.

Following on from my experimental T Gauge- Benefits and Restrictions thread in Letting Off Steam, I thought I'd bring up the possibility, "up the top" of the forum, of serious T gauge modelling. The only company in the rolling stock market currently is Tgauge.com, although recently a few 3d printing and laser cutting companies have offered T gauge buildings and accessories, notably Buggleskelly Station very recently to coincide with his T gauge layout build series. I have compiled a list of products from Tgauge.com that can be used to represent IÉ, CIÉ and NIR models, here: Document 12-1.pdf, although I would recommend reading the most recent post in the initial thread for explanation of the methodology and recommendations. The scenic possibilities of such a scale are evident, but one thing not often mentioned is the possibility for operations as might be seen on a large OO/HO or N gauge layout. Having talked to several people about FREMO layouts at the SDMRC show over the weekend, it occurs to me the operational interest of a huge layout representing a large section or even the entirety of a railway line is not insignificant, but would be difficult to achieve even in fairly space-efficient scales such as N or OO/HO. With T gauge, a 20m layout for example could represent 9km of railway line at 1:450 scale. Now, 20m isn't exactly short but could feasibly fit at an exhibition, especially if curved over on itself. And with that you introduce the possibility of even longer layouts, with a potential 100m layout, which could be bent around itself to easily fit in many exhibition spaces, representing 45km- almost the distance from Heuston to Newbridge, or Connolly to just short of Laytown (almost to Drogheda for those unfamiliar with the Belfast line). That is a simply insane length of railway to model, and if it were in T gauge, one could model a 200m wide area with an 18in wide baseboard. Now, this is of course still a lot of space, so, if you don't have a whole school hall to work with, an average model railway baseboard can still fit a lot on it in T scale. For example, with the baseboards I am currently using for my fairly small 00 branch line terminus layout Ardree Quay I could, with a bit of clever re-aligning of the existing baseboards,, model the entirety of Heuston. The entire station, from the LUAS stop all the way to the bridge over the station throat, and across from the old Platform 1 to the entrance to the Phoenix Park Tunnel. I could even replicate basically all the stock running into the station as 22000s, 201s and MKIVs are all listed in my above guide and could easily be recreated by modifying Tgauge.com products. T gauge has huge (pun intended) potential for modelling and I am seriously considering a project in this scale. In fact, I do have a plan to incorporate it into an upcoming school project, so watch this space. To summarise, I think T gauge is a really exciting scale with plenty of potential and utility which I urge others to look into.

Alright, here is a compiled list of IÉ, CIÉ and NIR car lengths from the 60s to today. Keep in mind this is just stuff that originated with these companies and not inherited stuff, so all locos bought by CIÉ are listed under CIÉ, including those that were later used by IÉ (although 8100s are listed under IÉ as I would consider them more important to IÉ than CIÉ modellers) I have used a system to denote unpowered and powered vehicles that is explained in the document. Keep in mind a motorised chassis is not available for several CIÉ and NIR locos so I have listed unpowered chassis or wagons that are a more accurate length and correct wheel arrangement, and can be modified to represent these locos. Hopefully this covers the majority of stock one would want to model. If I've missed something you would like to model, here is the link to Tgauge.com, see if you can find a suitable chassis. Keep in mind 1 metre is 2.2mm in T scale, and 1 foot is about 0.7mm, and the length of each product in mm is listed when you click on "specifications". Document 12-1.pdf The above PDF should be readable by iOS, Android, Windows and MacOS users. If this helps someone get into T gauge, I will be very glad of it. I might consider making a small T gauge micro layout to draw attention to this.

Thank you very much. I'm lucky to have already had great help from several people in IÉ and have all the car lengths down to the millimetre, but speaking of FOI requests, I did find this list of every item of Translink NIR stock as of September 2023 in my quest to find 3000 and 4000 car lengths. NIR Rail Fleet.pdf Hopefully some Northern modellers or enthusiasts might find this of use.

A couple more comparisons since Tgauge.com have released a few new products, namely SKU 027 and 027-6ax, 16 metre chassis and it's 6-axle variant which are only a scale 45cm off from the A class' 15.55m length, precisely a millimetre too long, which I think we can agree is a reasonable compromise even at this scale. There is also the 36' caboose, SKU 090-R (red), 090-Bl (blue, sold out as of October 2025), and 090-B (brown). 36' works out to about 11m. This is, unusually for a T gauge chassis, slighty too short to be used as a dummy chassis for a baby GM (13m chassis) or C class (12m chassis). However, it is again a more reasonable compromise, especially compared to the former closest of 18.5m, although I personally would consider just using the available spare bogies combined with a custom chassis to make a dummy unit of one of these. And a unit I did not initially account for: 8100 class- 20m motorised chassis (SKU 040) and 20 metre coach (SKU 025) The 90000 (DART+) units do not have car lengths available but their sibling X'trapolis 2.0 units (currently being delivered to Metro Trains Melbourne) are listed as having 24.4m Mc cars (Motor Carriage i believe) and 23.6m Tp and M (Trailer Passenger and Motor I believe), meaning the "Mc" cars could be represented by SKU 023-B and the "Tp" and "M" cars by SKU 029 (unpowered) and 049-B and -C(powered) 23m coaches. I believe this length is fairly consistent across Xtraps as the Xtrapolis 100 also had similar car lengths. Anyway, hope this all helps. I've put out a call for help with car lengths of other units elsewhere on this forum, and can pester some "friends" (they dont like me) who work in IÉ and hopefully will have some numbers shortly. EDIT: said "friends" in IÉ have provided said data and I am currently compiling it, and will post a .pdf with the updated list soon.

As part of my T Gauge- Benefits and Restrictions thread, I have been providing Tgauge.com products that can be modified to represent IÉ, IR and CIÉ vehicles. While creating said thread, I have hit a roadblock when researching several units, partcularly modern IÉ ones. I have used Wikipedia as a source for car lengths (yes I know it's unreliable especially for Irish railways but it's a basic fact that's difficult to mess up, but also difficult to find elsewhere), however it does not list them for several units, namely the 2600, 27xx, 2800, 8200 and 85xx units. Although I'm currently only cataloguing options for the IÉ fleet, car lengths are also unavailable for NIR 3000s and 4000s, and De Dietrich sets. Any help would be hugely appreciated.

As has happened many times, I have found myself with a dysfunctional system and burned it all to the ground to start anew. This time round, I picked Limerick as my starting city. I have to say I am very happy with the city's network I have provided and would consider it complete, rare in my many projects. However, as is evidenced by the many lines, some still blueprints, emanating from the city, the network itself is far from complete. Here is a view of the network, built (in grey) and, effectively, granted planning (in blue) At this point it would be possible to run various intercity services around my network, but I am in the middle of a building mania at the moment and will probably be expanding the physical network before running services on it. You may notice that of all the cities, Dublin is very much a spaghetti bowl of lines. Here's a close up to try make it a bit clearer: The biggest additions you may notice in the city itself are a loop around the city centre akin to that in Melbourne, and an express line through (or rather under) the city's northern suburbs for Belfast, and later Derry-bound intercity services. Out to the west you will also see another express line, this time avoiding the Adamstown-Portarlington section of the Cork line. This is also visible in the broader network map. Hopefully this well exemplifies my obsession with potential, future and past railways, if that has not already been sufficiently demonstrated.

My fat fingers are even more surprised than me! You hardly used an Apple Pencil or stylus or something, or was it just zooming in and being very careful and patient? As im quite young by this forum’s standards, when I was in primary school in Dublin a classmate’s dad was working on LUAS XC. After it was completed he mentioned to my own dad that their resources were being moved towards the Irishtown route. If both it and Lucan were built it would be simply idiotic not to connect them. It does raise the question of where would Lucan terminate. I think probably best to have it interline through the Docklands as far as Connolly. As westbound trams almost never terminate at Connolly the eastern leg of the triangle there is often forgotten, but would mean very little infrastructure work would be required to allow this. Possibly the best way to do this in terms of frequency would be to have half of Lucan trams terminate in a new, east-facing bay at The Point and the other half continue to Connolly, as happens with Red Line trams now. This would also bring frequencies through the docklands to the same level as the rest of the Red Line, helpful for a potential Spencer Dock station. I would try illustrate this as well as you, but unfortunately am on my phone at the moment, so cannot use my preferred medium, NIMBYrails. Hopefully the way I have explained it makes sense. Edit: sorry, should have clarified that as part of this the entire Irishtown route would be part of the Lucan line.