Mol_PMB

Certainly into the Irish Rail era… When I found and uploaded this photo a couple of years ago it was with some from Mullingar and I captioned it as Mullingar, but I’m having second thoughts now. I think it might be Gort. Anyway, a brown H van dumped in a siding in the early 1990s, note the IR and Irish Cement sign on the goods shed.

We're well off-topic now so I'll carry on along the tangent... One place I worked had a boss who loved a witch-hunt. If anything went slightly wrong, the highest priority was to find someone to blame, and give them a good b0110cking. No thought of why it might have gone wrong, or what could be improved in the process to reduce the chance of errors etc. We countered that with the concept of the 'Duty Scapegoat', and created a roster to share that duty amongst ourselves, a different person each day. We even managed to get an official company badge made in the name of 'S. Goat' which would be worn by the Duty Scapegoat. Whenever a witch-hunt began, the Duty Scapegoat would immediately confess to whatever misdeed had occurred. This was especially effective when it couldn't possibly have been them, or when a moment's thought would have shown it couldn't be an error by any of the staff anyway. It took a few weeks for the witch-hunt to stop, but they did. One of my former colleagues still has the badge, I think. The boss is long gone.

Are yours snails? I think the snails have plain roofs, and the roundels have the variable patterns.

Wonderful news!

Predictions of the past? Now if only you could place a bet on those! Will your proposed horse be available in a alternative liveries, it would be ideal traction for a fitted H van... (pic from Ernie) But more seriously, and still off-topic, when might we expect the next IRM/AS announcement, I wonder? They seem pretty busy at present so maybe it's a little way off yet.

The O'Dea collection at the nli has a good selection of railway staff at work, some of which also show uniform details. Here are just a few: https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000304867 https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000306073 https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000306058 https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000303702 https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000306734 https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000306905 https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000306401 https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000307857 https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000305044 If you search the O'Dea collection for keywords like driver, guard, master, foreman etc they will come up.

My package of etches arrived yesterday from 4DModelshop, a week after placing the order. Work is very busy at present but I hope to have a chance to build a chassis this weekend. Here's the chassis etch:

Which ones are you interested in? And if you say 'all' the answer is 'everywhere'!

There's a very fine display of Irish staffs at Castlerea 'Hells Kitchen' alongside A55. There were two common sizes of the ETS (electric train staff) - standard and miniature, of which miniature were the more common. Obscure fact of the day - there were only 6 patterns of rings, termed A to F. So there was a potential safety risk that a staff would fit in the 'wrong' machine if you found one with the same pattern, and could therefore indicate a clear line when it was in fact occupied. To minimise this risk, any station had to have different patterns for each route leading from it. I think it was Athenry that had all 6 patterns. This was also the reason why over-carrying a staff into the wrong section was considered an offence almost as serious as going without the staff, because the over-carried staff could potentially be misused at the next station. Again, another risk mitigation was to make staffs of the same pattern visually different, such as using a different shape for the portion where station names were inscribed, or attaching a ground frame release key. That wouldn't stop anyone putting a staff in the wrong machine, but it would make it very obvious at a glance that the offence had been committed. Some former Irish miniature ETS machines have been refurbished for use on the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways.

Genuine question: which was in use for longer, the snail or the roundel? i.e. actually current and being applied. My gut feel is that the roundel wins, whether we're talking about rail only or the wider CIE.

I wonder if that will come up in this evening's IRRS talk?

This isn't a drawing, rather the instructions for a kit, but has a bit of history too: Phoenix.pdf I'm sure I've seen a drawing of either Phoenix or the Atkinson-Walker steam loco it was converted from, but I can't find anything with a quick look through my library.

This is an old book devoted to drawings of narrow gauge stock: Irish Narrow Gauge (Narrow lines extra) by Lloyd, David: Fine Soft cover (1988) | Hereward Books I've had one since the 1980s, you may be able to get a cheaper secondhand one by shopping around. Most of the main Irish railway company histories have some drawings of locos and rolling stock. What I'd love to see readily available is the CIE 'Diagram Book(s)' equivalent to to the BR ones on the Barrowmore website: Barrowmore Model Railway Group (BMRG) We have a few drawings extracted from them scattered across the forum here, but nothing like a complete set.

Impressive! I once knew someone with a loft layout who cut a big notch in a roof beam purely to provide adequate sighting of a home signal. And that notch was not necessary to see the signal from the operating position, but from the point of view of the imaginary driver in the cab of the model loco approaching it. I'm sure your model passengers will put up without a canopy at the far end of the platform though - hopefully it won't be raining inside the loft...

That’s great, many thanks. I couldn’t see any on the RPSI’s stocklist but maybe that’s just the operational fleet which is presumably limited to Mk2 and Cravens stock now.

I was wondering how many Park Royal coaches are still in existence. I know RPSI and DCDR had some, and one or two are preserved statically. The heritage carriage survey lists 5 (1381, 1383, 1400, 1416, 1419), but in many cases the records haven't been updated for 8-10 years and I think some may have been scrapped since then? http://www.cs.rhrp.org.uk/se/search.asp So, what's still around, and where? Cheers, Mol

I suspect this is genuine and probably qualifies for this topic - but if so it's probably of dubiously legal provenance. Maybe a former BnM crossing? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/286353207509

I think that in the available space you would struggle to fit a reasonable gradient (assuming that you want tracks both over and under the bridge, connected together). It's a long bridge too, so the approaches would need some fairly sharp curves that would add to the challenge faced by a train climbing the gradient. Even if you could physically fit it in, I suspect it would be unreliable and frustrating. Of course there's nothing stopping you having separate high and low level circuits, and that may be the best approach if you want to feature the impressive bridge. Or put a road over it (much more prototypical for a suspension bridge).

You may find that in some cases the old signs are still there under the new signs - often rebranding is just done with vinyls these days.

A couple of non-urgent questions for IRM when you have had a chance to unpack from the Scottish trip: When do you expect to close pre-orders for the Park Royals? I'm wondering whether to add one more to my order; I'm presently waiting until my IRM points transfer to the AS website so that I can spend them, but I don't want to miss the boat. And the second question associated with the same potential purchase: If I order another one to go with the three I've already ordered, is the multi-buy discount applied or does that only work on items ordered and paid for at the same time? Many thanks, Paul

while there is a pause in construction as I await the next etch order, IRRS Flickr have uploaded a super photo of E418 brand new in July 1957: https://flic.kr/p/2qNj1Yx Thank you! Having done the green numbers for the silver livery, I have also been working on the decal artwork for the black livery - both the numbers and the white vees at each end. I’ve done artwork for two different shapes of vee as they weren’t all the same.

Rapido have a track record of making their models available in 'what-if?' liveries as well as the accurate ones. Maybe someone should suggest UTA black? Photo from Ernie:

Well this weekend's progress on the H vans has been less than expected, partly owing to a day spent working in the garden and some time with friends. But also a significant realisation that once I reassembled the first wagon, the wheelsets would be trapped, and therefore I needed to finally make a decision about wheel profiles and back-to-backs. That also required some tooling to be made. So I've done all those other activities and haven't yet made any progress on the H van itself. I have decided to use 21mm gauge, 19.2mm (-0 +0.1) back-to-back, and mostly Alan Gibson EM gauge profile wheels which have a rim width of 2.3mm. This compares with the 2.8mm rim width of the IRM wheels. I had previously found that the IRM wheels in the Bulleid wagons could not be set to even 19.0mm back-to-back without the front faces rubbing on the back of the W-irons. With the thinner EM profile wheels, there's adequate space for a 19.2mm b-t-b and still good clearance to the W irons. So, for the IRM wagons the process is to take the wheels off the axles, and replace them with EM wheels set to 19.2mm b-t-b. This has required me to make a little press tool adaptor so that I can push the axle quite firmly without pressing on the pinpoint. Also I have made a 19.2mm b-t-b gauge. The stock of Markits(?) wheelsets I got from John with 28mm axles have an intermediate wheel rim width of about 2.6mm, and they fit OK in John's models with a 19.2mm b-t-b. The flanges are a little thicker than the EM gauge wheels so I'll have to check they're OK once I get some pointwork. For other wagons such as Parkside kits, I have used the Alan Gibson axles as well as their wheels, and extended the axles by 2mm by cutting in the middle and sleeving with a 2mm ID brass tube. Gibson wheels on IRM axles in IRM H van chassis: The next step is to do a batch of these and secure them to the correct b-t-b with a dab of superglue, and then paint/weather them as a batch. Whoever said that getting started in 21mm took a lot of extra effort was right! But I like a challenge.

Yes, I think over 200 were made. I've only built one but some people have whole trains of them. Leslie was considering whether to do one last batch of wagons before he retires. This was the most recent thread:

The website does describe it as "CIE G CLASS DUETZ DIESEL 1961 - 1977: Complete Body Kit for the D611 type - No castings." so one wouldn't expect a chassis in a body kit. I won't pick out the typos... However, I found some descriptions of building it which said it came with a 21mm gauge chassis. The wheelbase is 33mm, I'll have to start sketching up some drive options. There are a few oddities, such as there being holes apparently for handrail knobs in the cab backsheet, where there are no handrails on the prototype. Meanwhile there is no provision for the built-in lamps on the cab backsheet of a G611. On the G611, the cabside handrails are set into recesses on the prototype, which could have easily been provided on the etch, but are not. Although in most areas it's a G611, there are some aspects which are more like a G601. However, the Worsley products are sold as scratch aids rather than full kits, and in that context it's certainly a massive step ahead of some blank sheets of brass. It's also inexpensive at £33. So I'm not complaining, and I look forward to adding to my shunter fleet.