KMCE

Yes indeed - early days but it does look good. It's the Wills point rodding kit plus extension pack. I'll post more details in the layout section. Ken

495 is finally at a stage where painting can begin. 495 was one of the few locos in Ireland that did not get the overall coat of grey, and remained in its original makers colours of olive green lined in yellow & black. Painting the body at the moment - will get to the chassis later. Lining is proving to be interesting - I'm using a Rotring draughting pen with yellow ink with technical drawing templates to help get squares & curves. Keeping it simple for the moment & building up slowly. The intention will be to weather this very heavily as the original never got a coat of paint so fine detail will not be critical. Getting there! Ken

Been a while - the real job is getting in the way!! Painting and weathering of the newer wagons underway at the moment. A story of a few step forward followed by a few steps back, however I'm getting there. Amazing what a bit of weathering can cover up!! Painting of 495 is ongoing at the moment also, and that will need quite a bit of work. I'll fill in the details in the 495 post in Irish Models. Brake van, gas wagon, vehicle wagon (already done) open wagon and the DSER covered wagon coming along nicely. Gas wagon may be a little light in colour? Brake van needs more work as running boards and buffers to be painted, glazing to be added and roof needs a lot more work. Open wagon took a bit of a battering during painting losing the brake levers brackets & one brake shoe. Brass to white metal connections are rather fragile - I'll use superglue at this stage to effect repairs. Coming along rather nicely. More as time permits. Ken

The DSER appeared to favour the lattice post signals on the line. This one being from the up platform with the shunting signal for the headshunt. They had some very interesting rotating shunting signals, both ground and post mounted. The signal on the post is the same type as below. The post and ground signals are preserved on the down platform. Ken

Now that looks good - Well done.

Now you're talkin' That looks good!

Tony, The detail is excellent, but don't treat it on a panel by panel basis. The roof would have weathered homogeneously with subtle differences at the sheet lines. This is looking good keep going! Ken

Turns out that the Worsley kit will provide partial sides and not much else. The ends are too narrow and are more suited to the narrow gauge version. I'll scratch build some ends for the model I am building. Dimensions shall be as per the drawing below. This is drawn up from a poor original GSR drawing of the railcar with elements stuck in such as the notes bottom left. I'll post the drawing up in the resources section also for reference. Ken

Ernie, Was that for the complete collection or just the Irish element? It would be interesting to see if they would be open to offers for some elements of the collection.... Ken

Located in the Restaurant in Woodlands Hotel, Adare, Co. Limerick.

Hello All, I just bid on some DSER Locomotive & Coach photos on e-Bay and was in touch with the seller (marymurray22) looking to see if there was more where these came from. The reply: "I am selling on behalf of my mother, who has now decided to put all of H C Casserley and R M Casserley ( my grandad and father) negatives collection up to auction in September through G W Auctions . (I think its on their website, with venue tbc. They do have live iternet bidding though! Its the whole archive including Ireland and I know grandad was particularly fond of you lot! " Site in question: www.gwra.co.uk Auction is listed, but no information yet. May be one for the diary. BTW - She has a lot of UK railway photos etc up for auction on e-bay if anyone is interested. Regards, Ken

I would be very interested to touch base with this individual to discuss all things model DSER!! Ken

Meanwhile, Our good friends Shepherd & Beesley also mentioned in passing that given the rise in gas lighting to the coaches in 1895, a means of conveying gas around the network was needed. Two old wagons Nos. 131 and 242 (cattle wagons, I think) were stripped and their chassis used to carry tanks for the gas. It appears these were long lived and 131 operated on the network up to 1959. No drawings, or even full photos were available, so with a bit of research through loads of photos, it was possible to get some partials which allowed a wagon be built. The cattle chassis would most likely have been short, so I went for a wagon length of 14" which dictated the size of the gas tank. I cannot claim it to be historically correct, however given the severe dearth of information available, I think this is a reasonable representation. The tank is not fixed at the moment as the whole lot needs a good clean prior to painting. Once it's all painted I most likely will glue it together and blend the elements together with some weathering. Nice little wagon and a good way to pass a rather dull Saturday. Ken

Thanks for the comments guys, much appreciated. On the 3rd Brakes being used on the goods trains, I gleaned this info from the book on the D&SER by Shepherd and Beesley who noted this was the practice up to 1875. It also relates that goods were only really carried on this line from 1855 on, so perhaps there was 20 years of mixed trains before they decided, we really need dedicated brake vans. It appears the growth in cattle traffic was what raised the need and the first lot of brake vans were known as cattle brakes, before the vans, as per the model above, were built around the turn of the century. Ken

In the late 80's when you are standing on a miserable wet platform at stupid o' clock, and the station master announces the loco has failed, you can imagine the inventive names bandied about!! For interest, it appeared to be the A class featuring more frequently in these announcements. Ken

Appears to be an ex-GSWR horse box - Number on the solebar ?663G. Ken

Congrats Eoin, Looks like you got the 10.000th post in this section!! Ken

Cheers Eoin, Well, that conversation about the DSER third brakes got me thinking!!! A bit more research coming up........ Ken

DSER Goods Brake So following some research & the receipt of a photo, I have developed up a model of the 15 Ton DSER goods brake built in 1902. As mentioned in another post the DSER used passenger brake vans or third brakes on all trains, including goods, until 1875. After this they commenced building dedicated brake vans for goods traffic, which mainly worked the cattle trains and not unexpectedly became known as cattle brakes. The brake van here was part of the final group of dedicated brake vans built in Grand Canal Works for the DSER. Starting with panels grooved and cut on the mill. Roof rolled to the curve for installation later. As the sides were grooved to simulate panels, we need to add the panelling details. In this case 1mm strip from brass & nickle silver. Yes - these were six wheel vans. Having no information on the vans themselves I had to search around for more information on dimensions of a six wheel brake van. The GNR built 25 ton 6 wheelers in 1914, which I think may have been influenced by the DSER van. The length of the GNR van was 20 ft over the frames, which I took as a reasonable length for this van and the proportions seem to work. The chassis has been set up using compensated W-irons from SSM, with the centre axle supported via 0.5mm PB wire to allow the centre axle float (thanks to @murrayec for the advice on this layout). This works well as the chassis rolls very well without binding. It definitely seems to run much better than the Cleminson chassis on the GSWR coach - I may change the coach to this arrangement. With all sides added to the chassis & roof sitting on for the moment, we get to here. A brake ban is only useful if it has brakes - in this instance all 6 wheels are braked, with outside brake rods. For this I used 1mm Nickle silver strip, while looking good, appears to be too low, and perhaps too wide. So another solution was devised using 0.5mm square wire. The revised 0.5mm square does appear to look a little lighter & more prototypical; moving the rodding it in closer to the W-irons improves the look. Still a little more work needed around the hoops down from the chassis to represent the crank arrangement. Springs and axle boxes were also added to get the brake rodding to the right position - this all needs to be cleaned up with files & white spirit to remove the flux. So - I give you a DSER 15 Ton 6-wheel goods brake. Ok, steps and a little more detail on the roof is required to finish, but all in all I'm very happy with how it has turned out. A quick shot with the other wagons to put the size in perspective. More soon, Ken

Pop, That's an excellent model with some nice ideas on the interior. May do something similar for the interior of my 6 Wheeler. Paint colour looks excellent. I tried the Humbrol RC 403 (Crimson Lake) on the fish van, however it has come out more purple than crimson so may have to re-think this. Your route with the crimson & black may be the way to go - do you have the code of the Humbrol paint you used? Edit - just re-read the post .......Humbrol 20! .......... need to pay more attention Ken

Started into the weathering. Covered wagon is coming along quite well. Not sure about the rust on the road vehicle wagon, may need to tone it back a little. An overall misting of dust form the air brush may help to tone everything down. That Austin really needs a wash!!!