Mol_PMB

It does look very nice - I'm glad I was able to get a light green one, which was a fairly common livery for the class. Of the 18 models made by IRM, 12 were in variants of orange and black livery plus two in black. Only one in plain light green, and none in light green with a waist line. The dark green on the A46 model was short-lived and applied to only a few locos. I suppose at least I'm helping to sustain the resale value of IRM locos, even if the money doesn't go to IRM. Hopefully it will work when I test it later!

A new arrival from eBay today, a green A class which I had been mulling over for a while and eventually gave in despite @DJ Dangerous badgering me to buy an anteater instead... I have posed it here with three of my vans which are conversions from the IRM fitted H vans. All of these have been modified to 21mm gauge which isn't as bad as I thought but still a fair bit of work with the brake gear. The green one 18829 has the extended buffers fitted as per prototype. The middle one 18828 is one of the rare prototype Palvans converted from H vans. This is a kitbashed Parkside BR Palvan body on an IRM chassis, also with extended buffers. These were originally green too, but at least one received the plain grey livery shown here. The left-hand one 17083 represents the batch of vans built before the H vans, with a similar body but on a conventional non-triangulated chassis. This uses the spare IRM body from the middle van, on the spare Parkside chassis from the Palvan kit. Both with appropriate modifications. All have been repainted, lettered and weathered. My green van was probably a fair match to the shade of the green A before I weathered it. I have yet to test the A class, and of course it's presently the wrong gauge. I have yet to try regauging an A; as with the wagons it will need new wheels but the existing axles should be OK.

The approvals process for new and refurbished vehicles has moved on from the days of 'Grandfather Rights'. Old steam locos are in most cases well beyond their original design life and have many replacement parts so they are hybrids anyway. Essentially the key aspects to demonstrate are: Acceptable design (applicable to both old and new locos, new-build parts to old designs can be justified as OK in many cases, but even old locos need design changes e.g. for signalling system compatibility) Conformance to design (for new locos/parts: materials and build quality; for old locos/parts: condition (corrosion/wear etc) Maintenance policies and practices (equally applicable to new and old locos, but in some cases more critical for old locos if parts are near end-of-life) Operational policies and practices (equally applicable to new and old locos, does their operation on the network have an acceptable level of risk, considering that the network has changed a lot since the locos were designed, and thinking of modern approaches to competence, safety and tolerable risk.) There's no reason why a new-build loco based on an older design can't be approved - Tornado for example. These days, available materials and manufacturing methods are different from those 100 years ago, and technical standards and requirements have changed too. So nothing will be exactly to the original design, not even an overhauled old loco.

No, I decided that the 6 unfitted H vans I'd ordered before that was announced were enough! There's no point me getting one as a collector's item because regauging it would destroy its value. I'll modify the 6 normal ones I've bought, and renumber/repaint some of them.

Ridiculous! Next you'll be claiming that there's a new-build NCC Mogul... (I did see Peter Scott beavering away at it on Friday. He's done a sterling job, but there's a long way to go and I fear he may not see it finished.)

I've just slightly scared myself that when my 6 arrive, I'll have a total of 23 Irish goods vans! 14 of those are from IRM, 2 are a mix of IRM and Parkside, 4 from Provincial Wagons kits, 2 from JM Design kits, and 1 modified from a Parkside kit. I'm not done yet as I still have several more designs that I want to add to the fleet.

It would be technically possible for it to run again, but very challenging. Even when I briefly worked on 226 at Carrick with Aidan about 20 years back, 103 was a basket-case, and despite having the box built round it, there's another 20 years of deterioration to deal with. 103 is in a poor state with many major missing bits, and spares will be very hard to find. I'm not sure what level of technical documentation still exists to help with re-creating parts that are missing or beyond repair. Restoration to running order would be more akin to the new-build diesel projects in GB - such as the LMS 10000 or the Baby Deltic. It would need lots of money (I'd estimate over a million euros) and a dedicated team of people working on it over many years. Sadly I suspect that's unrealistic and if that level of funding and effort was available it would be better focused on restoring/maintaining the existing ITG fleet (including some of the Moyasta locos) and finishing 226. Someone's going to want to save an 071 as well... The B101s were never a large or widespread class, the last were withdrawn about 50 years ago but it's been over 60 years since they were in fleet service on passenger trains. Anyone that remembers them vividly enough to really care about seeing one run again probably won't be alive to see the job finished. I'm afraid I just can't see it happening. A cosmetic restoration for display would be easier but a lot of bodywork would need replacing, and before any work is done on the loco any asbestos issues would have to be resolved. A cosmetic restoration doesn't have any earning capability either. Also, there's only any point doing the cosmetic restoration if there is somewhere dry and secure to display the loco - where would that be? If there were to be a large museum with plenty of covered space available, then it's worth considering, but even then I can think of higher priorities. The best we can do is to build models!

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Many thanks. There's a lot to learn from the carriage register, but equally a lot of questions posed that can hopefully be solved by reference to other sources. This will keep me busy for a while. Thanks again!

Great, many thanks! I obviously need to study IRN. The reference to the 4000 series numbers in that second clipping is interesting. I've seen photos of some of those which appear to be former GSWR corridor stock. 4043, 4027 and 4036 are visible here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511303071 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511303076 The copy of the CIE carriage register that I have is missing the pages for 'secondary' stock which would have included those vehicles - I guess the pages were removed from the original once all the listed vehicles had been withdrawn. They're still on the contents page though. I will be sharing all the data in due course, I just want to get my head around it first so I can share it in the most helpful manner.

Brilliant, thanks. That solves many of the mysteries. I think there were a few more, I’ll check when I get home.

Ah yes, the blue variety is particularly nasty. Not sure what sort was in the CIE Sulzers. I wonder what B103’s eventual fate will be? It’s probably more of a liability than an asset now, sadly.

I’m currently working my way through analysing the CIE 1969 carriage register; the copy I have has been hand-annotated with updates to about 1975. It is apparent but not explicitly stated that around 30 CIE-built composite coaches in the 21xx number series were declassified to standards and renumbered in the 16xx series in the early 1970s. Soon after, most were converted into luggage vans or heating vans. I wasn’t previously aware of this. The information in the hand-written annotations is not fully complete to trace all the renumberings, though I have worked out 1601-1610, with regard to their previous numbers as composites and later numbers as vans. Has anyone got more info on these vehicles, or any photos of carriages carrying 16xx numbers?

Here's a more accurate sketch of the layout based on Quartertown Mill. Still the same 1600x400 footprint, with a scenic section 1200x300mm. Minimum curve radius 900mm, designed for a max total train length of 450mm including loco or 300mm without. Rails are black, buildings red, backscene and trees are green. Building outlines are simplified at present. I've added another smaller sector plate in the fiddle yard to increase flexibility by allowing loco run-rounds or hand-shunting of wagons between tracks. There is also the option of a third track in the fiddle yard if it can run inside/under the buildings on the scenic part, which ought to be possible. Grain vans would be dealt with on the headshunt at the left-hand end, whilst flour would be loaded into vans from the platform with canopy in the middle of the layout. Coal for the boilers or tar bitumen would be unloaded on the short spur bottom left. Three wagons can be left in each of those locations without snarling up operations completely. Three wagons and a loco will also fit on each of the fiddle yard tracks. I think this works out quite well and there's plenty of scope for freight trains to arrive on scene, run round, shunt and depart, then re-marshal in the hidden sidings. The next step is to draw up a plan for the two points in Templot.

Alco did build locos for the South Wales steelworks, but the one pictured above is a British-built Brush-Bagnall. Edit: this is one of the Alcos (Gordon Edgar photo on Flickr). They were withdrawn much earlier than the Brush-Bagnalls.

Oh, and just as a health warning, it's full of asbestos!

Wonderful, many thanks! Those extra photos give some useful different views of the buildings and scenery, and the description of the line and traffic is invaluable. I expect there may be some more photos out there somewhere from other tour participants, but they will be hard to find.

Something like this might work, just a quick pencil sketch but I'll try it out on the confuser later. Designed for trains of 1 smallish diesel and 3 wagons. Storage for plenty of stock on the two hidden tracks. In reality I believe the Webb's Flour Mill closed in 1957 but I can give it a slightly longer lease of life into the 1960s. Grain vans inward and normal vans carrying flour outbound, plus some open wagons with coal for the mill's boiler house. That fits my existing fleet well. The branch remained open until 1977 with tar bitumen traffic for Roadbinder Ltd which would also be possible to model, or I could choose to represent some other freight not associated with the mill. Random IRRS specials also possible - pic posted on this forum by @Westcorkrailway: Only 2 turnouts to make, not too daunting. Baseboards could be a Grange&Hodder 'cheat' to get things moving quickly. A mix of industrial buildings and foreground greenery, possibly feature part of the mill leat at the front of the board. Hmm, I shall think, but I probably shouldn't think too hard - I should just get on with it! So far I have only found 3 photos of the place when the line was open, though some of the buildings still survive. The others are in IRRS Journal No.198 p.234, and this one: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53507047725

Many thanks - here it is and it looks very inspiring. I shall have a read of the thread.

One of the IRRS journals I chose to buy on Saturday is the February 2019 issue, and I picked this one because it has a detailed illustrated article on Private Sidings on Irish Railways. There were surprisingly many industries, of varied types, which had their own sidings served by CIE. In some cases they had their own wagons, or even their own motive power, but in many cases they were shunted by CIE locos with standard wagons. A surprising number of them were in the Cork/Kerry region. Inspired by some of the small but very effective shunting layouts I saw at the Belfast exhibition on Sunday, I'm wondering whether a simple 'Irish Industrial' layout could be a starting point to give my 21mm gauge stock something to run. It would be smaller and simpler than my previous plans, and with fewer turnouts to build. A good practice layout to try out track building techniques and get something running before tackling a more ambitious scheme such as Fenit. The same locos and stock would be usable. I'll have a think and review some trackplans for small, simple shunting layouts.

Here's a first for you then, at Portarlington in July 1958 according to the slide mount. This is a slide I bought secondhand on ebay, but I'm not sure of the copyright position. I apologise if I have transgressed, please let me know and I will remove it. Colour-Rail image FIE02922 also shows B112 in this livery without any red on the front, but at a later date as it's more grubby. I did look on the Colour-Rail website for the image above but it doesn't appear to be listed, so I assume it's from another source. I think B112 was one of the locos displayed at the Inchicore open day in 1958, and was parked next to A46. If so, you can just see it behind A46 here, along with some kettles, all in colour: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53449604144/ And in this video in monochrome: Taken together, these photos should fuel the 'shades of green' debate... The Inchicore photo appears to show both A46 and B112 in light green, and they are considerably lighter than the adjacent 800. But the established wisdom is that these first repaints of diesels in green were in dark green, and B112 in the pic I've posted above looks pretty dark. Aha, @leslie10646, looks like you beat me to it with posting a near-identical image.

In the DCDR bookshop at Downpatrick.

As well as wonderful memories and plenty of photos, I have come back from Belfast with this haul: I must say that the Downpatrick book shop was excellent, a real goldmine. I could have spent twice as much there if only I could have carried them all home! It was also great to see @jhb171achill, @Tullygrainey, @flange lubricator and many others, and to see 124 running again. Great to put some faces to names. Thanks very much also to @flange lubricator for the copy of the CIE carriage stock register, which I will make available on the forum in due course. I've just had a quick look through the GSWR carriage diagrams document and I've found that it has been annotated with those vehicles wired for AEC railcars. That and the CIE carriage register will give me some more useful info for my AEC trailers thread. Meanwhile I also need to properly draw up the 'Big Boy' goods van based on my measurements and photos. I managed to fit a lot into my 3-day visit - Whitehead, Cultra, Downpatrick, Portadown, Derry, and some of Belfast itself. There was so much going on over the bank holiday weekend that I couldn't do everything - if I'd known about 131's last trip further in advance then I would have done my best to go on that too. I must confess I'm pretty exhausted today, and glad that I'm not back at work until tomorrow.

In the green livery, only some of the B101's had the cowling in the bufferbeam area painted red, with the ends apparently outlined in black. Here's a view of B107 from Ernie: Others had the front cowling painted the same colour as the body, like B102 here: The 'bufferbeam' colour doesn't correlate with the presence or absence of a waist line. Again from Ernie, here's B104 with red cowling outlined in black, but with the waist line: For the initial livery, the whole front was silver. This slide sold on ebay recently, for rather more than I was willing to pay!

A little bit of digging in my memory, library and online has produced the following. In IRRS Journal No.84, D. Renehan's article on the E class includes an introduction covering some of the earlier diesel shunters in Ireland, including a couple of paragraphs on the D class which provide some useful technical data. In 1945, CIE placed an order with Brush Electrical Engineering Company for the supply of engines and electrical equipment for five 0-6-0 diesel-electric shunting and transfer locos. The first was completed in December 1947. In the mid-1940s, Brush was primarily an electrical equipment supplier. Brush did not make their own engines, but bought them from several manufacturers: Mirrlees was one of the most common makes used. Brush did not usually make the mechanical parts themselves, these could be subcontracted or left to the customer to build (as with the D class). However, Brush must have had close involvement in the design of the mechanical parts and the interfaces to the engine, generator, motors, transmission, cooler group, controls etc. In 1947, Brush Electrical Engineering Co joined with W. G. Bagnall (a former steam loco builder) so that they could produce complete diesel-electric locomotives including the mechanical parts - however by this time the D301 class were already under construction. Brush's main-line type 2 loco for British Railways was the Class 30, which had a Mirrlees engine originally. Later they were re-engined with English Electric engines and re-classified Class 31. They did not build any 0-6-0 shunters for British Railways, and just one 0-4-0. However, Brush also produced many locos for industrial and export customers, often with mechanical parts from Bagnall, though other firms such as Hudswell Clarke and Beyer Peacock were sometimes used. In the UK, many Brush locos were built for steelworks, and these included 0-4-0, 0-6-0 and Bo-Bo shunters, all diesel electrics and mostly with Mirrlees engines. I have encountered the 0-4-0 and Bo-Bo variants myself at Port Talbot (I did some work for the railway there a few years back). The Bo-Bos were still in use until the recent closure of the blast furnaces, though they had been re-engined. Here's one of Gordon Edgar's photos: The Bo-Bo doesn't look to have much in common with the D301 class. But the 0-6-0 variant of the Brush-Bagnall-Mirrlees locos looked like this (photo from Hugh Llewelyn on Flickr): Compare the bodywork to a D301 class, especially the bonnet side doors and louvres, and you'll see a very clear link to the D301 class. Inchicore built the mechanical parts for the D301 (rather than Bagnall) but I suspect they used many details from the Brush design. Dimensional changes would have been needed for the wider track gauge. The UK steelworks locos were too big for the British Railways loading gauge and might have needed slimming down a bit to fit the CIE loading gauge too. From D. Renehan's article, the engine in the D class was a Mirrlees TLDT6 vertical 6-cylinder of 487bhp at 710rpm. This drove a Brush 290kW dc traction generator and a 10kW auxiliary generator. There were Brush nose-suspended traction motors on the leading and trailing axles. The arrangement of the steelworks 0-6-0 locos was very similar, with subtly different engine variants (Mirrlees TLT6 and TLST-6). The 487bhp engine power was significantly greater than the equivalent English Electric 350hp locos, but may not have been fully utilised as the total generator rating of the Brush design was only 400hp. Now to the dimensions, here is a CIE diagram of the D301 class posted by @BosKonay The drawing has few dimensions. Based on those which are shown, I estimate the image is to a scale of 0.0353 feet per pixel. Using that to scale other measurements: Length over buffers: 28'9" (should be 29'0" according to IRT&T data) Wheel diameter: 4'0" (should be 4'0" according to IRT&T data) Length over headstocks: 25'9" Wheelbase: 11'8" (5'9" + 5'11") Front overhang buffer-wheelset 8'3" Rear overhang buffer-wheelset 8'9" Width over cabsides: 9'0" Width over bonnet: 6'6" Height to cab roof: 13'1" Scaling off drawings can introduce inaccuracies, as can copying and scanning. I'm not claiming these figures are perfect but they should be reasonably close, perhaps +-3" or 1mm in model form. It's probably most useful to compare those to the LMS class 11 (BR 12033-12138) and the BR class 08, since those are readily available in model form. The LNER type (BR 15000-15004) is also an interesting comparator. Data from 'The Diesel Shunter' (Marsden) Now, given the potential inaccuracies of the scaling process, many of these dimensions are acceptably close. Note that the wheel diameter of the Class 08 is larger than the rest. In this respect, the Heljan class 11 model might be a preferred starting point for some. The D301 is also slightly wider and taller than the other types, with that high curved roof. I note that @Auto-Train Original has already dealt with this on his model - good work! I haven't considered the accuracy of the available models of these prototypes - they may not be spot-on themselves.