Mol_PMB

I’m trying to resist a second one! I’m a long way from home with very patchy phone signal, which helps me to save my money for a fleet of C class that I have more use for.

Yes, I do have more photos, but I’m away from home at the moment. Remind me in a week or so! cheers, Mol

DPD. After I had specified a delivery date when I would be at home, and they had acknowledged it, they ignored that entirely and threw it over the gate 2 days early. Didn’t even tell me they had done so. It was raining a lot too. Anyway, the loco survived thanks to its large and well cushioned box.

My Hunslet was thrown over a 2m high gate by the courier, landing on hard paving, and survived intact and working. That’s a seriously good box. Well done IRM / AS. PS These are big boxes…

Some unusual containers for you - I think these are 20’ x 9’6” bulkers loaded with a mineral of some sort. They looked heavy when being craned on board my home for the next 10 days, and went low down in the hold. Not Canarian though, I’m in Hull.

Good source of power bogies for an 80 Class…

Yes, etches.

Ah, I realise my memory was wrong. The silver coach on the West Cork in July 1957 was a standard, not a compo. https://flic.kr/p/2qE5gYJ I may well draw up the sides for one of those as well, they have the same interior as a Park Royal.

I’m glad you mentioned Vic. Although not a relative of mine, we do (did) share a last name and a penchant for destroying rolling stock. Aware that some people are of a nervous disposition I won’t show you what I’ve done to a Park Royal today…

DJD, they're the wrong scale for your mythical O gauge 071s. You need something more like this: https://skytrex.com/products/mkiii-coach-2nd-class?pr_prod_strat=e5_desc&pr_rec_id=9060bb077

Indeed. Though the profile of the middle of the Park Royal is more like a laminate. If I fit laminate type sides (e.g. the suburban compo) I will need to widen and reshape the ends a bit. Alternatively, if I fit the conventional sides (e.g. the compartment compo) then I will need to narrow the bottom of the ends slightly, and also narrow the floor of the underframe unit slightly. I think the roof profile of the laminates is very similar to the Park Royals. The bodies of conventional construction I think had a slightly different roof shape. So at the moment I'm thinking the laminate compo is probably the better choice for re-bodying a Park Royal. A nice pic of one of these from Ernie, in the company of Park Royals: Closeup of a very clean one: Some were through-wired for operation in AEC railcars, there's one near the far end of this train: They weren't just Dublin-based, there are photos of one at Albert Quay and reports of it running on a special on the West Cork (though I'm struggling to find it right now)

A couple of options for replacement sides for an IRM Park Royal. Upper: compartment composite; Lower: suburban open composite

You're giving me ideas about a working model rail grinder. A couple of Dremel discs and some high speed motors mounted on a wagon would soon sort out your flangeways...

No. They'll be out to get me now that I've started counting vents!

I'm going to end up moving some vents and sanding off some ribs... IRM have placed their 9 pairs of vents according this drawing, published in Autumn 1954. Unfortunately, Inchicore chose to fit 10 pairs of vents when they they built the real thing. Some of IRM's roof ribs are in the right place. To be fair, I haven't found any drawings showing the roof ribs, or the correct vent positions. But it can be worked out from careful study of photos - there is a logic to it. Edit: I'll probably only bother re-doing the roof on one of my carriages, it's a lot of work for a very small change in appearance. But I want to do one with a green roof as originally delivered, so I'll make the effort to get that one right.

Getting back to Irish-ish locos, I'd prefer an XA:

We'll need some complex gauge-changing stations between your 21mm / P4 module, my 21mm / EM module, and everyone else's 16.5mm / OO module... Oh, not forgetting Darius's Indian Interlude!

As well as some minor modification/detailing repainting like the one I've done already, at least one of my Park Royals is destined to be rebuilt into something else entirely. I will re-use the underframe and bogies, and perhaps elements of the ends, roof, interior and other parts. I haven't quite decided what to build yet, and I have a slight nagging doubt that IRM themselves may have the same idea and produce other body options on the same underframe. There's a surprising variety of coaches that used the same basic type of 61'6" triangulated underframe and 8' commonwealth bogies, as follows: Traditional-bodied 9'6" stock delivered in brilliant green with silver underframes: Compartment composite 2137-2161 (1954) Compartment second 1372-1378 (1954) Buffet car 2419-2422 (1956) Laminate-bodied 10'2" stock delivered in unpainted aluminium with silver underframes: Open second (7 bays) 1429-1443 (1956) Open composite (suburban) 2162-2171 (1957) Open second (7 bays) 1444-1448 (1958) Laminate-bodied 10'2" wide stock delivered in light green with black underframes and bogies: Open second (8 bays) 1449-1496 (1958-60) Brake open second 1909-1913 (1959) Oddments not in any of the above categories: TPO 2972-2978 (1958) Full brake 2549-2558 (1960) Dining car 2402 (1961) The story is further complicated because many of the composites (and a few others) were later converted to brake seconds, full brakes, or steam heating vans. So there's many different options! The easiest to do are the 7-bay open seconds 1429-1448, basically just requiring new sides and some detail changes. The interior layout was the same as a Park Royal. All the Park Royals were seconds of course, and I can see an advantage in modelling a composite instead, to provide some first class accommodation. Hmmm. I shall mull this over.

First IRM Park Royal on eBay, at something of a premium! https://ebay.io/m/zj1iAr

Only last night, @jhb171achill was saying it would be a horse for the next announcement... ... and now we have these workhorses! What other secrets does he know?

Musings on roof panels joints and ventilators (not liveries!).

Lovely to see - thanks Ernie! On a couple of recent visits to Ireland I've stayed in the Marine Hotel (just behind the trees on the right of the image at Sutton Cross) so it's great to see how it looked all those years ago. I've also walked much of the tramway route.

Just looking at the terms and conditions on the website. Whilst it does say that loyalty points are non-refundable, I can't see anything specific about suspending a customer account as a consequence of cancelling an order. The way these terms are written give the impression that cancelling an order should be a simple process and is an expected aspect of the business. https://www.accurascale.com/policies/subscription-policy https://www.accurascale.com/policies/terms-of-service

That is surprising. In the past, I have been given misleading information about order payment policy changes by the Accurascale customer service bot. I thought that had been resolved, but it’s still possible that the information you have received is incorrect. Or it may represent an extreme but unlikely case. If this is genuinely a new policy applicable to all then it should be briefed out properly to all account holders. Hopefully one of the IRM / AS team will clarify the position here.