Mol_PMB

As mentioned, the cattle wagon is progressing well too. The parts are very nicely cast and went together well, with a little care to make sure everything was square. I used a modified Parkside PA06 chassis instead of that provided in the kit - it was easy to regauge to 21mm and had clasp brakes, so I've built a vac-fitted cattle wagon. It is currently finished in clean ex-works brown livery, but yet to be lettered, and it will have some light weathering. There are a few more details still to add, including door bangers (ready to go on) and brake handwheels (to be stolen from an IRM H van later this month) As yet I haven't glued the roof on, hopefully it will seat down a little better when glued. I don't intend to load it. With these vans, the GSR grain hopper, 3 corrugated opens, and some H vans on the way, I have the potential for a 15-wagon 1970s CIE freight train. I need to think about somewhere to run it (and also make a decision on couplings, which I've been putting off!)

Very nice work! I agree 6' carriage width seems too narrow - even the old Ffestiniog coaches are wider that that, and the FR is a 2' gauge line with a famously tight loading gauge. I like the developing shellfish business - I hope the journey time to the big city isn't so long that they start to whiff a bit!

Super! Very inspiring.

I've got to the stage where a number of wagon projects are nearly finished, waiting on some custom transfer artwork that I need to complete and get printed. Then I'm going to do a big batch of weathering and will suddenly have a train of a dozen wagons which will be far too long for my photo plank! And that's before the IRM H vans arrive. I think I need a new display cabinet! My childhood memories of Irish railways are in the mid-1980s, pre-tippex. But I find the 1970s period a little more interesting and varied to model, with the transition from traditional freight trains to fully-fitted liners. For the older goods stock, I'm aiming for a roughly 50/50 mix of grey and brown livery wagons, with the idea that I can represent slightly different eras in the 1970s by adjusting the proportion of grey and brown wagons in the train. My memories of CIE brake vans are all of 30t vans in brown livery (and I have a suspicion/hope that IRM may have one of those up their sleeve), but I wanted a grey brake van as well, and the JM Design 20 ton brake van kit was perfect for my needs. A lovely model even straight out of the box, with some extra details added by myself: handrails, lamp irons, metal buffer heads and coupling hooks, extra reinforcing strips at the base of the sides, and some more details around the stove both inside and out. This model is now physically complete and lettered, but not yet weathered. I also need to add glazing. The livery is slightly unusual but prototypical for this van. The wasp-stripe transfer for the ducket wasn't quite big enough for the way my prototype was painted, so I had to carefully paint the yellow and black to extend the stripes both up and down. Hopefully the imperfections will be disguised by the weathering! https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511648559 Not far behind the brake van in the build process is a Provincial CIE cattle wagon. Watch this space...

This link to a photo from Jonathan Allen on Flickr is one I saw a few months ago and then forgot where I'd seen it. I've found it again so I'll link it here. It's one of those wonderful transition-era trains with some bogie container flats at the front, 4-wheel container flats in the middle, and a rabble of old goods vans on the back. Jonathan dates this as 1979 (slightly uncertainly). However, the date can't be far off as the bogie flats with Y33 bogies were only introduced in 1978, and the traditional goods vans vanished in the late 1970s. To me, the item of most interest here is the 1970s Manchester Liners container, broadly of this type as available from C=Rail: https://shop.c-rail-intermodal.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&path=72_73&product_id=272 Having studied the Manchester Liners containers in detail, it's always nice to see them in unexpected places!

Very nice - something for everyone there. In the second photo, that incredibly shoddy silver A class is a sight to behold! Has anyone on forum weathered a model into this sort of condition, I wonder? In the third photo, A58R carried black and shallow tan livery from 1971 to 1974, but was repainted into supertrain livery by 1975. So I'd suggest this is early 1970s.

Nice work! It’s a great location to model in any era, loads of character in the architecture and quite tightly enclosed by the buildings. I assume you have seen the photos of the works on the NLI archive website? Mostly 1960s and quite a few interior shots as well as the exterior. Mol

Detailing up this brake van is rather fun, it helps that it's a great model to start with. Eventually I'd like a 30-tonner as well - IRM seem to keep ruling them out, which is a pity. Maybe they'll surprise us?

Wonderful, many thanks. I'll use that interior scheme which is much the same as used on British Rail goods brakes too. Must have been the practical choice! My chosen prototype has some unusual features on the (grey) external livery though - the area above and below the ducket is grey rather than black, and the roundel is tan. https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511648559

Was there a standard interior colour scheme for these brake vans? With the nicely detailed handbrake, vacuum setter and stove I feel I ought to paint the inside, though to be honest it's not very visible from the outside. The only interior photos I've found are on this page, which suggests a dark floor and pale walls and ceiling, red handbrake wheel on black column, heatproof panels behind the stove but perhaps also pale: https://www.abandonedni.com/single-post/mind-the-gap I'm idly wondering about an interior light too, which might also provide some illumination in the side lamps. Is it worth it? Probably not.

I'm just detailing up my kit example, it's an excellent model but I decided to detail it with handrails, lamp irons, an extra strip at the base of the sides, and a finer chimney for the stove. Now, I know these vans were built in several batches by the GSR and CIE, and there are detail differences between batches. But I'm trying to work out whether I should fit roof vents. This is the prototype I'm modelling, but the photo has a very messy background and it's hard to determine the roof details: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511648559 This is a GSR one and it clearly has 2 torpedo vents in the roof as well as the stove chimney (Ernie photo on Flickr): This is also a GSR one and it clearly has 1 torpedo vent in the roof as well as the stove chimney (NLI photo on Flickr). The vent position appears to be similar to the image above, but only the vent further from the chimney is fitted, and it is oriented laterally rather than longitudinally: This is an earlier CIE-built van seen later in life in 1974 and it clearly has 1 torpedo vent in the roof (same position as above) as well as the stove chimney (IRRS photo on Flickr): https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53570450936 Another 1970s photo, this time from Ernie, shows another early CIE-built van and it appears to have a pair of vents, same positions as in the first photo, but not the same type of vent: Probably around 1970 photo, this from the IRRS archive, shows a later CIE-built van and I think we can just see the top of a pair of vents, same positions as in the first photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53527285226 On the other hand, there are plenty of photos of vans which definitely have no roof vents, such as this from Brian Flannigan which is a GSR-built example: Or indeed this in the IRRS Archive which is one of the later CIE batch: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53509010781 Knowing how goods guards spent much of their life in a struggle to keep warm, and newspapers were an essential accessory to fold up and plug any draughts, I can't imagine that roof vents were seen as an advantage by the users of these vans. On the other hand, there would be some benefit of avoiding carbon monoxide poisoning from the stove. Maybe the brake vans were all built with them but they were removed from most vans over time? Has anyone got any more info on the roof vents? There are of course a whole host of other detail differences between the vans, either from build or subsequent modification, but I won't get carried away with those now. Cheers, Mol

Now that is an excellent observation, John! Because B+I's Lancashire Flats were 24' long: I should have read all the information I posted a bit more carefully! The fleet list above is from 1971, the same year as these photos with the 'framework'.

Lovely! The butcher's van in the background is making me hungry - perhaps a fry will be in order tomorrow morning?

Gosh, is this weathering supposed to add value? Noting that Rails themselves have brand new, upgraded design Murphy 141s for £40 less... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/196924966977 They might have got almost that grubby in the IE era but not in CIE days.

Great persistence and a lovely result with that rivetting tool. Looks much better than the NWSL version I bought 20 years ago and struggled with.

The Templot track is based on a chair that plugs into a rectangular slot in the sleeper. In reality the chair is quite a substantial casting and this gives it strength in its own right in model form, so it can be a separate component. With spiked flat bottom rail there isn't any form of chair, and often no baseplate (at the most, a small thin one). It would be more difficult to create a robust rail fastening as a separate component to represent the spikes without it becoming too heavy and visually intrusive. My experiment in 4mm scale used laser-cut sleeper bases with spike holes pre-'drilled' with the laser, and Peco track pins as the spikes. They're still a bit heavy though, but not too bad from normal viewing distance once weathered in a bit: My method is also very time-consuming to lay as it needs hundreds of pins, so I'm interested to see how the 3D printed versions work out. I might decide I ought to be using bullhead track anyway, it depends on which prototype I end up going for. Mol

Now, whilst on the subject of early containers, I would like to talk about the odd frameworks that are seen fitted to some 4-wheel container wagons in the early 1970s. I'd better state up front that this is conjecture based on photos, and I'd welcome any facts to prove or disprove my thoughts. I'm sure many forum members will be familiar with this image of a B+I liner train, which is included in at least 3 editions of Jane's Freight Containers as well as several other publications from the early 1970s. In this photo, alternate wagons have a strange oversize framework instead of a container: It's worth noting that there are other photos of B+I and Bell liner trains from the same period that don't have these things, just containers, like these three different trains pictured in the nli archive dated 1971: https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000307812 https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000308267 https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000307819 Now, here's a link to a very interesting photo by Jonathan Allen on Flickr, which shows a mixed freight heading south from Lisburn around 1972. The third and fourth vehicles are 4-wheel container flats, both carrying early Bell containers. One is normal, and the other has one of the strange frameworks with the container loaded inside it. There is negligible difference between the heights of the containers, suggesting that the framework doesn't have much thickness at floor level under the container: However, the fact that a container can be loaded inside the framework, apparently with a bit of space around it, shows that the framework must be significantly larger in footprint than the nominal 20'x8' of the wagon floor. Being longer than the wagon floor probably meant that the couldn't be loaded on consecutive wagons without fouling each other, hence the alternate marshalling of the train in the first photo. So now we come to this excellent photo uploaded by Wrenneire in this thread https://irishrailwaymodeller.com/topic/8148-freight-containers-irish-oo-gauge-40ft-or-20-ft/page/3/, which shows the frameworks more clearly: The first thing to note is that the frameworks carry the wagon number; the nearer one is 25904, one of the later examples of the 25436 series. This strongly suggests that they are attached to the wagon, rather than being a 'swapbody' or other intermodal container which would be numbered independently of the wagon (* see below). It's also interesting that there is something loaded inside the framework, being craned in or out. The load appears to be a 'Lancashire Flat', laden with crates and sheeted over with an orange and black sheet. Very similar to the one on the adjacent road vehicle. So, as with the train at Lisburn, the framework is intended to have a container loaded inside it. So what were they for? Why not just load the containers directly on the wagons, which would have been perfectly viable? I suggest that they were a security measure, intended to prevent theft of the containers' contents, or other tampering. The framework would prevent access to any container loaded inside it, because the doors couldn't be opened (whether side or end door). I think they were deliberately made to signficantly overhang the ends of the wagons, so that they would also prevent the end doors of containers on adjacent wagons being opened sufficiently to access the contents. They would also provide some additional protection to sheeted loads on Lancashire Flats (as in Wrenneire's photo) just by making it more difficult to access and handle the loads. Whatever they were, they seem to have been quite short-lived, perhaps an unsuccessful experiment? Any more info welcome! * Note: the CIE swapbodies had their own numbers; the only sensible approach as they were designed to be swapped between wagons, as shown by these photos from Brian Flannigan on Flickr: Keg swapbody number 340, in 1971: Pallet swapbody, number only partially visible but ends in 53, in 1971:

Now, I mentioned earlier that the CIE container asset listings in the annual reports changed in 1974, becoming less detailed. The categories were reduced to: Rail: Covered Rail: Lancashire Flat Rail: Other Road: Covered Road: Lancashire Flat There was no split between ISO and pre-ISO, and the 'other' category swept up all the less common types. The distribution is shown in the graph below, through to the split of CIE in 1987 and a little beyond. The 1973 totals for rail and road are also shown to provide a comparison with the previous graphs: Between 1973 and 1974 there was negligible change in the totals for road and rail, so it is likely that the 1974 fleet was much the same as for 1973, just categorised differently. The overall trends from 1974 onwards are: The road container fleet gradually reduced each year until it reached zero in 1990. It seems unlikely that there were many new containers built for the road fleet in this period. The rail container fleet increased significantly in the 1974-1979 period, and then gradually declined slightly. Among the rail containers, the 'covered' category increased by 250% from 487 to a peak of 1703. Among the rail containers, the 'other' category doubled from 198 to a peak of 420. 'Lancashire Flats' gradually decreased throughout the period. The only Jane's I have for this period is the 1982 edition. That doesn't have a detailed fleet listing for CIE but states: "A total of 2035 containers and 323 flats are owned" [total 2358]. Comparing with the data in the CIE annual report for 1982, and combining road and rail, the totals are 259 Lancashire Flats and 2148 for everything else [total 2405], which isn't too far off considering that the counts may represent different dates and some of the 'others' may have been types of flat. So from 1974 onwards we would expect to see large increases in the numbers of CIE containers, and in the variety of types, but the statistical data from the annual reports and from Jane's don't give us any specifics. We'll have to work it out from photos and I haven't started that study yet! As a taster, this wonderful photo linked from Jonathan Allen on Flickr is dated 1977 and shows a long train of CIE containers: From the front, we have: Side door container, 8'6" high (new type) Side door container, 8'0" high (old type mentioned in previous posts) Bulk Freight container, 8'0" high (new type) Side door container, 8'6" high (new type) Tiltainer, 8'6" high (mentioned in previous posts) Side door container, 8'0" high (old type mentioned in previous posts) Side door container, 8'6" high (new type) Side door container, 8'6" high (new type) Double Side door container, 8'6" high (new type) Side door container, 8'6" high (new type) Side door container, 8'0" high (old type mentioned in previous posts) Tiltainer, 8'6" high (mentioned in previous posts) Open-top half-height container (possibly under the umbrella of the 'Lancashire Flat' group) Side door container, 8'6" high (new type) Tiltainer, 8'6" high (mentioned in previous posts) Side door container, 8'6" high (new type)

Sorry, I missed this excellent photo of a tiltainer from Wrenneire in this thread: https://irishrailwaymodeller.com/topic/8148-freight-containers-irish-oo-gauge-40ft-or-20-ft/page/3/ This does confirm that the sheet and the container numbers matched, and that they were in a 1400 series.

http://www.trainlogistic.com/pt/Comboios/Gabinete/fich_loc1400.htm The bogies are virtually identical (both broad gauge though a couple of inches difference in gauge) and they both have the intercooled 8CSVT engine rated at about 1350hp, with EE generator and traction motors. Start looking at the details and there are several common features - for example the fuel tank within the solebar, and the light clusters.

If I were IRM I'd have used this as an excuse for a trip to Portugal to record the engine sounds of the CP 1400s which were contemporaries, and very similar mechanically and electrically, although very different in appearance. They're still in regular service.

Speaking of wheels makes me wonder - would IRM consider offering a set of 21mm gauge wheelsets as an extra for this loco, in the same way that Accurascale offer EM and P4 wheelsets for their GB locos? https://www.accurascale.com/products/class-37-em-18-2mm-gauge-drop-in-wheel-sets?_pos=1&_sid=4e43ab327&_ss=r https://www.accurascale.com/products/class-31-p4-18-83mm-gauge-wheelsets?_pos=3&_sid=692d586f4&_ss=r

A couple of posts back I described the CIE insulated containers. From Steve Parker on Flickr, here's another view of an insulated container; it appears to be number 2073 or perhaps 2078: Next, the Tiltainer. Introduced in 1973, these were CIE's first 8'6" high containers and there were 100 of them. These were open-topped and mostly open-sided, though they had low drop-sides. They also had supports for a sheet to weatherproof the box. This photo from Ernie dated 1974 shows one of them, almost brand new: This photo from Jonathan Allen on Flickr dated 1975 shows three of them in a train of other CIE containers. Note that the sheets were numbered, probably to match the containers. They appear to be in a CIE 14xx series: Again from Jonathan Allen on Flickr, here's a closer view of half of one, dated 1975: https://www.flickr.com/photos/152343870@N07/49534056868 I think the later CIE containers with full curtain sides were different from these early 'Tiltainers', although they might have been modified.

As yet I haven't found any images of the early CIE refrigerated containers, so I'll have to pass over those for now. Let's look at the Barley hoppers. There were only 12 of these, introduced about 1970 and I understand they were used for malting barley traffic from Tralee to Guinness in Dublin. Here's an excellent photo by Brian Flannigan on Flickr, dated 1971: Although there weren't many of them, they were unusual enough to attract photographers. Here's an image from elsewhere on this forum: Legible numbers on these images include CIE 480, 482, 487, so I would guess that the number series was CIE 480-492. The IRRS has a photo of some in the yard at Heuston in 1970: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53509415685 Whilst by the 1980s one had been repurposed as part of a mobile concrete mixing train: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53527285451

Next, the 100 insulated 20x8x8 boxes, here's a photo (dated 1978) from John Mayner of one of these: There is a clearer monochrome photo of the same type in a contemporary IRRS journal article, and the container in that image is numbered CIE IRL 2041. I'd suggest these were probably in the 2000-2100 series. Incidentally that same article said, "there are containers with side doors (CIE has 200 of them) ... While the CIE stocks of high-capacity containers are at present limited to 200 dry cargo, 100 insulated, and a few "reefer" units..." which helps to confirm the quantities of both these insulated boxes and the side-door dry boxes described in the previous post. The insulated boxes crop up in the background of some IRRS images too https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511775805 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511477583 Intriguingly, and thanks to Wrenneire for posting this, there was a bad attempt at producing one as part of an Irish train set in the pre-IRM days. Shape and style completely wrong, but the number CIE IRL 2007 and tare weight are spot on: Finally, I've posted a link to this photo of B+I Line vessel 'Rolf' before, but look just in front of the ship's bridge and you can see the end of a CIE ISO insulated container, complete with orange roundel: I'm scraping the barrel a bit here for decent photos of the CIE insulated boxes - has anyone got any better ones?