LNERW1

When I woke up this morning, I liked birds. They are impressive creatures and make a lovely sound in the morning, and had never done anything to get on my bad side. A few minutes ago, I was sitting at a table in my back garden, soldering together the track pieces that made up the goods shed road. I was getting a little bit frustrated. I had only managed to solder 6 track joints, they were all messy and only 3 were holding. It was becoming apparent that I didn't know what I was doing. However, I was still enjoying it and was listening to a good podcast, so I decided to keep going. I was about to touch the tip of the soldering iron to the solder when a sound emanated from a spot about two inches from my hand. It was a mixture between a plop and a splat and came, more precisely, from the area between the loop and shed road I today scraped clean of clay. I looked up and saw a yellow-white sludge with a few black-brown nuclei sitting smack bang in the middle of my layout. I no longer like birds.

I think I’m going to try running over the clay with a lot of wet fingers. It’s a technique I’ve seen used often and it seems to work well.

I do have older stock with coarser wheelsets so I prefer to use a 10c coin. Rolls along nicely too.

Progress report. Just a quick one really. The railway room has been rescued from a suffocating layer of random debris and Ardree Quay has risen. No work has actually been done but the next project is to improve the track- soldering the track joints, painting rail sides, completing ballasting and re-doing the inset rails and quay surface in DAS clay. This is a fairly defined and straightforward task, and can be done with materials and tools I already have to hand, so hopefully I can do a little bit of this in the coming weeks, maybe as a way to decompress after school.

It’s an estimate not a deadline. I think…

Most of my housemates (well technically family but housemates sounds cooler) are in Galway at the moment so I don’t have any additional manpower to exploit. This unfortunately means I have to wait until later to start clearing up, but rest assured the debris removal process will begin within the next 36 hours. Or maybe days. No, let’s go with hours.

VERY BIG MAYBE INCOMING! The Easter holidays have furnished me with half a month of absolutely nothing to do and, honestly, I have done nothing. So, if my complete lack of dedication, work ethic or positive attitude to anything manages to not get in the way of tidying up my railway room and getting the layout going again, there might be a bit of progress here. Now I realise my layout is not exactly the star of the forum but I feel a bit hypocritical starting so many playground spats on a model railway forum without having a (currently running) model railway. So, over Easter Ardree Quay- if I don't fall into a coma from inactivity- will be pulled out of the deep piles of rubble, steel, books, Lego, files, unwanted ornaments and stationery currently piled several feet high in my railway room and have some scenic work done over Easter (insert hilarious and original comparison to Jesus rising from the dead because nobody's ever done that before). Again, massive maybe but please do hound me to complete this as only peer pressure on a model railway forum can make me do anything. Hugs and kisses, LNERW1

Looks even better in person- what a pleasure to see the layout and to meet the brilliant @Tullygrainey. Not a bad word to say about either.

It's just going to Tyrone.

I will be. Looks like a lovely layout to see in person and I'd be thrilled to meet the mastermind behind it, as well as many other brilliant projects.

On the fence about going but now I definitely want to. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.

Looks wonderful. I’d love to have a layout like that. You really should be proud of that.

No problem. I was out of line and disrespectful, and you were right to be disappointed. Thanks for being so forgiving, I do really appreciate it as I look up to you as a great modeller and hugely intelligent person. I wasn’t happy that my apology covered everything, and some people came back a bit snarky so I assumed I had come across wrong. I want to be as mature as possible about any disagreement I have and leave my intentions and regrets perfectly clear, and prevent further bad blood. All the best, LNERW1.

I’m sorry, but this thread has gone out of hand and so to avoid starting any arguments by attempting to clarify matters, as seems to happen here all too often, I will only say that I would like to: 1: Apologise for abusing this forum and wasting the time of several members,especially @Mol_PMB recently. 2: Apologise for the sloppy response to being called out on such yesterday 3: Apologise for instances before wherein I have not delivered on a deadline or promised project and so caused number 1 to occur 4: Invite any and all members who believe I am out of line for any of my behaviour to PM me informing me of their disapproval and explaining how they believe I can avoid this inappropriate behaviour in future. I still hold interest in Bord na Móna and so will still be sharing any findings I come across here regarding the history of peat railways both here and worldwide, and any others similarly interested are welcome, but not expected or obliged to. This interest means I still hold value in the information shared here. Please do not reply to this post except by PM and only express your opinion publicly through the react button in the corner of the post. Please do not allow this to become any sort of drama that overshadows any of the extremely helpful, insightful and intelligent discussion on this forum. Thank you. All the best, LNERW1. Edit: I should clarify I don’t appreciate the somewhat provocative tone of some of the replies to yesterday’s post. If I can be called out on what phrases I use, I can call out others. PM me if you feel I am wrong, otherwise do not post anything else regarding this in this thread, thank you.

I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to be so rude, I've just become quite sick of the project as it's been hovering over my head for months and I've had so much going on it's been a bit inconvenient to do it, and at this point I'm more worried about just getting it done than having it be accurate, whereas when I started out I was attempting to make it accurate. I really am so sorry for doing that and I apologise if you feel I've wasted your time. I think you're brilliant, very intelligent and very reliable, and a really helpful guy, so I hate to disappoint. My stomach actually dropped when I saw your post. Again, I genuinely am sorry and can only offer that. Once more, it is basically just a race to complete it at this point and I'm trying to find every reason to justify cutting corners so I can finish it. Please don't see this as laziness, it's just that I am now under time pressure as I haven't been able to do it until now, and as the quality was never particularly important to the person checking the box that it was done, the only thing keeping the quality up was my choice to make it good. At this point that's taken a back seat and I am rushing now. Please don't be offended. All the best, LNERW1 P.S. I am sorry if this seems rushed, I just want to clarify ASAP that I do not mean any ill by my cavalier attitude to accuracy.

I do understand your concern, and rest assured were I writing to inform rather than to check a box, I would try to find better sources, but again, I am only writing to check a box, and the person who I intend to read this is already knowledgeable on many things, but especially Bord na Móna and railways. As well as that, most people won't go past the summary they get when searching Google, so this will still be substantially more informative than most of its competitors. And in fairness both are designed to relay fairly to very accurate information- it's better than asking Xitter, Reddit or Facebook. Also, I have always been under the impression that the BnM network is larger than that of IÉ. Where does this come from? It appears not to be true.

Fair enough, but with a quick look at its source, I appear to instead be trusting Seán Cain, who seems to be fairly, well, trustable. In fairness, the article may not have been proofread by Seán. One thing, though- BnM has a larger network than IÉ, right? Surely that would place it at over 2000km? Yet more confusingly, Wikipedia lists the stats as below: So, it appears there is no consensus and as such I can do whatever I want (laughs in politician). In all seriousness though, it is probably just best to stick to the figure (just <2000km) that I already have as it does the only job I really need it to- conveys the sheer enormity of the BnM network.

After asking Microsoft Copilot (AI chatbot built-in to MS Edge) it has returned with 1000 miles/1600 km, citing kildarelocalhistory.ie. Not sure how reliable this is but sure I'll put it in anyway. It sounds cooler and it's a school project that doesn't even affect the Junior Cert score, so it can hardly be classified as misinformation and even if it was, my geography teacher is apparently friends with the chair of BnM so likely wouldn't be fooled if I am wrong.

Just to confirm, the network peaked at around 1200 to 1300km?

Looks lovely lad, I envy the dedication- and the locos!

An actual passenger sleeping car would be interesting. Cork-Waterford-Rosslare-Dublin-Belfast-Derry perhaps? It would require at least one line reopen but I'm sure it'd be worth it.

Next month did not, in fact, come sooner. However you are still beating me on progress. My last update was me whinging about burnout- I think. So again you’re beating me out at least.

Jaysus lads, this thread's drifting more than a boy racer in an uninsured Miata with furry dice hanging off the rear view. Roblox to Thin Lizzy in under a day has to be some kind of record. Thank God, I've never used Blender and both despise and fear Solidworks. I'll see about joining. Best of luck with the game.

Ah sure that's as good a reason as any. I don't have discord but I'm looking at getting it so I may pop along. I'd love to be able to help. What are the trains modelled in- Roblox Studio, Blender, Solidworks, etc?

Lovely looking models- and a lot of them! The inclusion of DART units suggests more than just Heuston-Kildare, so if you don't mind me asking, what routes do you have planned? Also, are you on YouTube? I'd love to watch the dev process for this.