Mol_PMB

With a Murphy 141 on the bench in front of me, I note that the buffers look too close together, and too small. I have a set of Appleby Model Engineering 141 buffers in my stash which are a bit longer and have a bigger face. They look a better match to the prototype. However, they're solid cast metal rather than sprung. Has anyone on the forum tried swapping the buffers and resetting them at the correct spacing? How did you get on? Or is it just me with this level of OCD? Probably! Cheers, Mol (photos from Jonathan Allen and Ernie on Flickr)

Presumably this was before rolling stock needed different signalling/comms equipment to travel cross-border?

I have spent most of the afternoon having a grand tidy-up and clearing the decks for some holiday projects. As well as more work on the layout I will be working on some rolling stock, as a have quite a stash of things to work through. A little progress on the layout this evening has seen the lighting extended to the fiddle yard, focused on the sector plate areas where I'll need to align the tracks: I have been transplanting a few trees to get the best look. They all slot into holes in the board, so at they stage they can be moved, but once the groundcover is done then they'll be stuck in. Here's a general view of the layout. The end pieces of the fascia have been made and are shown just clamped in place. I still need to do the top and bottom sections: One of the jobs on the list for this week is to regauge the Murphy 141. I'll also fit a decoder and kadee couplers, and renumber it to 156 which is a personal favourite of mine and was also one of the first to receive the supertrain livery. It will be suitable motive power for a bitumen train. And a bitumen tank is another project for this week. Watch this space. This length of train will fit on the sector plate and the loco can also run round it in the loop. It's short but not unrealistically short for this branch, and feels like it's in 'scale' with the layout. If there are already some wagons in the sidings when the train arrives then the shunting could be quite involved. Anything much longer doesn't fit. As an alternative to the 3 wagons, I could also have 2 30' coaches, or 1 bogie coach. When I start thinking about visiting railtours (to add operational variety) then the one real example was a bogie coach and a tin van. Another nice (but fictional) rake to model would be two old 6-wheel coaches and a tin van. To handle those, it would be possible for me to extend the sector plate by 6" or so, overhanging the end of the board. But now I'm thinking too far ahead - I'll leave that to the future if it seems necessary.

Lovely modelling! Maybe they’re all trying to work out a story to explain the missing crate of beer?

This looks very impressive!

Now you’re making me thirsty!

Or indeed when browsing eBay!

Many thanks for your kind comments! On this layout with a viewing angle across the tracks, I suspect the gauge difference wouldn’t be so obvious. But having to build my own track enables me to choose finer rail profiles, more natural turnout geometry etc, and it all helps. The gauge is more obvious looking along the layout - this is the view from the fiddle yard, which is a similar view to most of the prototype photos I have of this location:

Here’s a beautiful bargain for @DJ Dangerous to snap up https://ebay.us/m/i93ZFs Yours for just £225 plus postage plus taxes!

I’ve been working on the trees. Finally got all the foliage on the sea moss trees and it was time for a trial fit. Firstly with just the sea moss trees (and the painted ones on the backscene). There are two larger ones in the foreground and 5 smaller ones in the corner: Then adding the two larger Primo trees I bought: They’re pretty good at concealing the hole in the backscene that the trains come through: But if you crouch down a bit you could still see the trains: I may add some more undergrowth to help hide the hole in the sky from this angle. There’s already a tendril of ivy on the tree trunk, ready to spread…

The two different types of end lagging.

They appear to be in accordance with the diagrams in the GNR wagon diagram book. See also an earlier post: https://irishrailwaymodeller.com/topic/19592-cie-tar-bitumen-tanks-–-the-1950s60s-wagons/#findComment-273196 I have to say they are begging to be modelled! It would be an entirely scratch-built job as there is no suitable tender kit to use as a starting point.

I expect they haven't got time to wait for the site to load! It does seem to be having a good moment at present, for me at least. I was about to have to resort to actually doing some modelling rather than just writing about it.

Happy days! I have found some photos of the GNR tar tanks! Interestingly, these are both branded UTA (the photos date from 1959 post-split), but were photographed at Inchicore: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53507104989 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53507218565

I've just been trawling through the IRRS photo archive looking for something else, and found some photos of Dun Laoghaire in the 1950s, where a water tank of this type had been painted as an advertisement for Kingston Shirts. So if you fancied a brighter paint scheme on your water tower then there's a good precedent. The IRRS photos show some good closeups of parts of the lettering: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53507111269 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53505868742 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53507068729 Ernie's views are more distant but show it in glorious colour - bright orange with black and white lettering:

Agreed. IRM is extremely slow, and has been for several days. It works eventually but I keep imagining a dial-up modem chirping away in the background. In comparison, RMweb is running at normal speed.

Nice to see the registration plate and number. Many thanks for the images!

Rails of Sheffield have some Irish stuff on eBay at the moment - A class, 141s, Genesis coaches, but you won't like the prices!

They'll miss my birthday too I'll have to muster all my patience, and get on with building the kit stash. I wonder how the Park Royals are doing?

Very nice! I very occasionally see kites overhead, buzzards and kestrels are more common in the skies here in Manchester, and we have a local pair of falcons that I have watched catching pigeons around the M60 Barton viaduct. In the garden I have very good numbers of small birds visiting (tits, finches, sparrows etc) and consequently sparrowhawks also visit my garden. They usually perch on the outbuildings or fences but one hid in the apple tree. We also have parrots nesting locally. They’ll be at it again soon, they breed very early in the year.

Exciting times…

Dear IRM, I realise that I haven’t been a very good boy this year so I’m unlikely to get a Christmas present. I’m sorry and will try to do better next year. Is there any chance I might see the Park Royals in time for my birthday? Kind Regards, Paul, age 49 3/4 P.S. if you could announce a C class model that would also be very welcome.

Indeed, I was wondering the same. I have a Hunslet and several Park Royals on order (and paid for already) but haven't ordered the others. Hoping for some definitive news soon. Over on RMweb people are reporting announcements of Electrostar dispatch already, so maybe something has gone awry in the announcement system?

Excellent news! Hopefully this will clear the decks for another IRM project to suit those of us stuck in the 1960s and 1970s.

Another tip for square open-topped water tanks - they usually had internal bracing to resist the water pressure pushing the sides outwards. Although not Irish, this webpage shows some typical examples: NSW Railways Infrastructure and Operations: What’s on the inside (of those water tanks) Tricky to model, and you can get away without it by either modelling the tank brim-full (which it normally would be except when a loco has visited recently), or by roofing the tank (which was sometimes done to prevent leaves accumulating inside). Edit: here's a link to an IRRS photo which shows the bracing inside an Irish water tank: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511430534 Enlarged extract, it's not the clearest view but a rare angle: There appears to be a diagonal in the horizontal plane at the top of each corner, and diagonals in the vertical plane at intervals along each side (which could be hidden by water). Perhaps also a tiebar across the middle? You can also see the valve operating lever and counterweight.