Mol_PMB

Those look good! Thanks for the info.

Indicative dates for the next RPSI diesel tours were informally announced as follows. Details TBC and these are not fully confirmed, but may be useful for your diaries: 8/8/26 Dublin-Galway 17/10/26 Dublin-Tralee I think these are both billed as 071s but there is talk of a baby GM coming out to play in the future Apart from this coming weekend’s Midlander trains I haven’t seen any future main line steam advertised yet, but they tend to be at fairly short notice. If anyone has more info, please let us know.

Excellent work - that looks very neat considering the challenges you have had to deal with! In my day job I often use the track geometry data recorded by that unit. I've never actually been on it - though I have been out on the 'big sister' NMT.

Sorry for not responding properly before. I think 'SIDHE' looks excellent, well done in creating such a unique and attractive model which is pretty much hewn from raw materials. I sometimes find myself looking back critically on a completed model and thinking 'I wish I'd done xyz' but I'd bet no-one else would notice the minor shortcomings, and once it's placed in the cabinet or on the layout I'm happier to move on to the next challenge.

Back in the dim and distant past, for my first 16mm scale garden railway attempt in my parents' garden I dug a trench approx 100mm wide and deep, and then used green plastic lawn edging to line the sides and filled the middle with gravel, adding the track on top. It didn't work very well. After a year or two I dug out the gravel and filled the trench with concrete, and that worked better. Before casting it, I put in some wooden pegs to set the level every foot or so, and to give me something to screw the track into. I later ballasted it with a mix of gravel and cement. For my third attempt (in a different property) I abandoned the ground level idea and built brick walls with the railway on top. A lot of work but a more comfortable operating height, though derailments could be more perilous! That line never got finished as I had to move again, and I gave up on garden railways after that and sold off all my stock. It would be embarrassing to list all the different scale/gauge combinations I have tried over the years, and probably not really finished a layout in most of them. Four attempts have been Irish prototype including the current one, and all different gauges!

A close friend of mine who lives nearby has built a large HO DR layout. His is set in the 1980s though, mostly diesels, so the opposite end of the date range from Northroader. He doesn't post much online but has done some really impressive work with automation of the trains and some lineside features. If he commands a loco to go on shed, then the computer sets the route, opens the shed doors and moves the loco, then closes the shed doors again. Way beyond my electronic skills! He's also spent a lot of time fitting lighting to the coaching stock, similar to what you have just done. He has far too many ferkeltaxis for my liking, but then he's also a Pacer enthusiast...

Some recent updates on this model which is proceeding well: Search results: 4 results for "Cowans* Sheldon*" Oxford Rail Reveal Cowans Sheldon Crane Update – Rails These were a 'standard' design used by many railways in GB and worldwide, including several Irish lines. Of course there were a host of detail variants, and Oxford are initially producing 4 models of GB prototypes, including both the early and late jib types: The RPSI have one at Whitehead, with the simpler type of jib. 2 Crane From the NLI O'Dea collection, here's another Irish one with the more elaborate jib design: Holdings: 10 ton crane x CBSCR, Inchicore, Co. Dublin. :: Library Catalog

Excellent!

I heard talk at the weekend that a charging point is to be installed so that the Ryder Cup services can be operated by the new DART trains. I'm not sure how much substance there is to this, but if so I do look forward to them being rebranded Foynes Area Rapid Transit I suppose that given IE's shortage of rolling stock and the desire to portray public transport in a good light, a brand new train might be a fair option compared to a tatty, noisy 29000.

Medicine for the day was dispensed in plentiful quantities from the RPSI bar car

Well I’m back in Ireland, again, so still no modelling progress to report! And I’ve frittered away my afternoon on a boat trip and some birdwatching! I am most of the way through cataloguing the hundreds of photos I took at the IRRS archives last week, and I will be adding some more info to several threads in due course. One of the boxes I looked in on a whim was marked ‘catering’ and turned out to include a whole host of information about buffet cars, tea cars etc from 1940s through to 1970s. Fascinating stuff and some useful info on GSWR 838 and 841. These were the first catering cars through-wired for use with the railcars, and 841 is a carriage I plan to model using my custom etch. Despite being recommended for scrapping in the mid-50s, and narrowly escaping being burnt to a crisp on a Sligo train when the railcar next to it was burnt out, it survived until the early 60s and was formed in the last passenger train on the CBSCR. I might see one or two of you on the RPSI tour tomorrow - I have a seat booked in the bar car. @Eiretrains Cheers, Mol

A couple more candidates for this thread, from the GNR. The first isn't a railcar but a push-pull or 'motor train': The second is a true railcar, with a driving trailer as well:

Superb!

I can imagine myself developing a sudden but brief interest in golf around September next year...

Thanks for setting me right, JHB. There's some great photos on that Flickr site but we obviously need to interpret the captions with more caution than I had done.

While laser-cutting can engrave, it can't provide smooth areas of half-thickness etch that we make much use of in etched kits. Hobby desktop laser cutters like my Creality Falcon 22W machine won't cut even the thinnest metal, they are the wrong wavelength and not sufficiently powerful. You would need a professional machine. In the past when I had access to a water jet cutter I managed to get that to cut 10 thou brass quite neatly. It could also cut 2" thick steel on the same machine! But again, no equivalent of the half-etch. In my view, etching is the right technology. It can be done at home with a hobby setup though I prefer to pay a professional to do it.

Another gem from Trainiac on Flickr on that theme. From the same source, this one is almost as stubby as the Triang-Hornby 4-wheeler:

Here's the real GSWR No.1, photo on Flickr from Trainiac:

Like this? (Flickr image by Trainiac)

Tunnocks are absolutely the right thing, and tasty too. Here's my 1920s MGWR soft-top (kitbashed from one of Leslie's GNR kits) with a Tunnocks tarp:

Locos might be a 101 piloting a 321 class? Just a guess - happy to be corrected.

Anyone fancy a bottle of something? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/318258641165

Nice old postcard on eBay at present - a timeless viewpoint but this looks like a fairly early image. Impressive telegraph poles! Can it be dated by the electrified tram lines and the loco classes? There's a sailing ship at the quay in the background too. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/168355382108

A phone photo of an MGWR 7 ton van diagram in IRRS archive. It's not actually the same one that's in the book although the main dimensions are the same - it seems there were several variants of bracing and vents. Note that this isn't a square-on image so please don't measure and scale off it! I hope to convince Richard McLachan to do his proper photography process on the wagon diagrams so they can be published and shared - there are lots of them.

Sent you a PM with the email address