Mol_PMB

A thoroughly good trip today courtesy of the RPSI, and great to catch up with a few people. 071s still sound as good as ever, and Cravens remain my favourite carriage type, despite the lively ride at high speed. The railtour catering provision has come a long way since 1508, and there seemed to be a lot of empty kegs by the end of the day. I don’t think it was all me!

Setting expectations like that, who’s going to put their head above the Parapet now?

Only if you lot keep Pointing it out…

I did half wonder whether the sides might be GSWR as they did, I think, have some compartment/saloon composites. GSR and CiE copied the idea. Sorry to be vague, I’m away from my notes at present.

The Fry model collection includes several silver carriage models which must have been built about the same time as the real thing. Interestingly there are 3 different lettering styles/colours on them. They also include a silver Park Royal - did this ever exist in full size?

I’ve just been to see a slightly bigger E401 - and a very nice model too! Difficult to photograph well in the glass case.

On the floor, I think there’s a strip each side which folds up to attach the body sides. The separate full-length strips must be the solebars and they have tabs which go into the slots in the floor, from underneath.

These show the layers of the sides quite well too: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511884225 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/54256972253 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/54256972233 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/54256744461 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/54419692264

These photos show the side beading arrangement moderately clearly. https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53509033328 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53509293725 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53509294600 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53507834347 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53508810174 The lower bodyside part should overlap in front of the upper part, on that half-etched strip. That way the lower panelling is flush with the upper beading, and you get the three different layers visible on the prototype. As for the exact prototype, I'm afraid I can't help as I'm no expert on GNR carriages. But the window and door arrangement shows that it's a gangwayed coach with toilets, and I would suggest 4 compartments and the remainder a saloon. Whether the compartment/saloon arrangement was first/third, or whether the saloon was intended to provide dining accommodation for use with an adjacent kitchen car, I can't say.

I would suggest that the upper and lower halves of the sides are intended to overlap in the middle, to give a multi-layer effect that couldn't be achieved if etched in one piece. I'll see if I can find a prototype photo to demonstrate.

I've completed the construction and detailing of these two 6-plank open wagons, and I've distressed the woodwork a bit based on the prototype photos. They now need to be cleaned up and painted, but that will have to wait until after my weekend trip to Ireland. On the latter topic, does anyone have recommendations for things to do in Dublin on Sunday, on a railway/transport/industrial history theme? I've got almost all day, I just need to be at the airport by about 1900. Most of Tripadvisor's 'top 20 things to do in Dublin' seem to be trips away from Dublin to somewhere else! (I've already pencilled in the Casino museum at Malahide on Friday afternoon when I arrive). Failing that, any recommendations for nice pubs a bit off the tourist trail, maybe near the LUAS?

Very nice, and great advice - thanks. I do like that crane!

After that many they could probably flog me a membership and a load of books as well!

I'll be on this tour, might see some of you there? Looking forward to a trip in the Cravens set and on some of the branch lines. And a pint or three of the black stuff.

The M3 Parkway line is one of the few bits of the network I haven’t travelled on, so I’m planning to do a trip from Docklands on Friday afternoon this week (I’ll be in Dublin for the RPSI tour on Saturday). I note that there are a couple of direct trains from M3 Parkway to Connolly in the evening. Does anyone know which route they take?

It appears in the book ‘Steaming in Three Centuries’ but may also be elsewhere. @leslie10646 may be your best lead.

701s? That series was always a gap. H class?

Stadler is a Swiss company that has grown from modest origins 30-odd years ago into a major player in the European rolling stock market. They have acquired various other failing manufacturers including factories in Spain such as the loco plant in Valencia. Their products are highly regarded and they often produce very small batches fir niche applications. They’re not cheap though!

Love the test cars too! People seem to love the RTC red/blue but the later test car livery was also excellent. By the time I worked there the stock was mostly in Railtrack liveries.

I'm back from holiday and have decided to build a couple of wooden-bodied open wagons to provide variety in my rake of my Bullied corrugated opens. Many of the photos of trains at Fenit in the mid-1960s show a mixture of wooden and corrugated opens, like these images from Ernie and John Powell: The starting point was a pair of the Pre-Grouping Railways kits representing the GNR 6-plank open, a 3D printed kit with etched detail parts and available here: https://pregroupingrailways.com/product-category/irish-railways/ This was pretty much an Irish standard wagon design used by many of the Irish railways. However, there are various detail differences. The kit represents the type with a wooden underframe, but some railways preferred a steel underframe, and this also had implications on the style of body strapping. I decided to build mine as wooden underframe variants. The kit provides 3D printed ribbed buffers but none of the prototype photos I found had them. However, there were several different buffer styles used by various railways. The kit also has grease-lubricated axleboxes but most wagons in service in the CIE era had oil axleboxes which are a different shape The arrangement of planks was very variable, within a consistent overall height. Some wagons had fewer, wider planks, and later repairs led to wagons with different numbers of planks on various parts of their body! I decided to build one wagon as a former GSR (possibly GSWR) type with self-contained buffers, and the other as a former MGWR type with spindle buffers. Here's the current progress on the pair, MGWR on the left and GSR on the right: The kit comprises 3 main parts - body and two rocking axleguard assemblies (suitable for 28mm axles and 21mm gauge). On each wagon I fixed one axleguard assembly and used a wire pivot for the other to rock giving some compensation. The appropriate type of buffers were fitted. Lanarkshire B011 castings for the GSR type, and Gibson 4967 turnings for the MGWR type. Etched coupling hooks were also fitted. I filed the axleboxes to a rectangular shape to represent the oil-lubricated type, and added the cover plate fixing bolts with wire (only done on the GSR wagon so far). A bit of fine work with the Dremel and a scalpel has hollowed out one of the boxes to represent a missing cover (quite common in reality!) I bent up some 1mm x 0.25mm nickel silver strip to represent the door bangers (only done on the GSR wagon so far). The next step is to get the MGWR wagon up to the same stage as the GSR one, and then to add the brake gear to both. I also need to add mounts for Kadee couplings, and other minor details such as worksplates, label clips and perhaps a representations of the chains for the door securing pins. Some photos of prototype examples, first the MGWR ones, known numbers are 694M and 850M, both of which survived until at least 1970 with 694M receiving a repaint and CIE roundel at its 1967 overhaul: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511304021 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511736610 I plan to model 850M. Now the GSR examples, known numbers are 11162, 11476, 11562, 11595, 11644, 11743, 11786, 11802. Photos around 1960 show them with flying snails. 11162 and 11802 had been repainted in grey roundel livery in the late 1960s, while 11644 received a repaint in red-brown with roundel in 1970. https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53498764321 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishswissernie/49428783072 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53508785409 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511647714 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishswissernie/49529164797 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishswissernie/52392496910 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53570648608 Ernie's photo of 11562 is particularly nice and I plan to model this wagon: I'm enjoying building these, and I may well buy another to build as an ex-GNR wagon in tatty GNR livery with CIE stencil. Some of the GNR 6-plank wagons survived long enough to get repainted in CIE roundel livery such as 3541N seen here in 1970: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511304876 I might also buy one of the GNR 4-plank versions (available as a kit from the same manufacturer), which were also to be found at Fenit in the 1960s:

I believe that most will be bogie flats, suitable for containers, with optional ISO-compatible swapbodies to suit other traffics - such as the existing spoil wagon variants. Not a new concept in Ireland! Great flexibility for different uses, but not always the optimal tare weight. The future options may include the flexibility for other wagon types dedicated to certain traffics. This info came from a former colleague and is from a few months ago, so it's possible that plans may have changed since then. Hopefully someone here can tell us more now that the contract has been formally announced.

Many thanks John, that's interesting info. As you say, the 'Big Boy' vans were certainly longer and taller than the H vans, but looking at photos the 1946 batch seem to have had dimensions closer to the H vans. I think some of the difference in your model comparison is caused by the difference in floor height of the models. This photo by Ernie on Flickr shows 1946 van 17194 next to H van 18872: Other comparison photos of the two types, in the IRRS Flickr archive and from Ernie: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511423619 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53448460062 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishswissernie/27895402005 And a couple more photos of the 1946 batch, from Ernie and Jonathan Allen: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishswissernie/53974928869 https://www.flickr.com/photos/152343870@N07/52050027329 Some 'Big Boy' info in this thread:

As and when you have your more important challenges under control again, I agree. I'd buy another one or two brake van kits and I'm sure other people newly attracted to Irish modelling would be interested too. They are excellent models. I wonder whether the same logic would apply to the tin vans, expecially once we have the Park Royals?

Did you have to pay a 50% deposit up front on your H van order? I had to.

Yes, little trickles of white paint on the coping stones and a few streaks on the front wall. They would need to be very fine in 4mm scale though, a very fine brush would be needed. I have five different species of gull on my Ship Canal layout and the row of dozens of them is quite prototypical for the present day but probably a bit excessive for the 1960s period I'm modelling, as there was more pollution back then. I enjoyed adding them to the layout though, and they help to set the canalside scene because I only have room for a tiny bit of water on the front of the layout. The bigger birds are sold for 7mm scale and are about the right size for large gulls (e.g. Herring Gull, Black Backed Gulls) but for the smaller gulls (e.g. Black Headed Gull, Mediterranean Gull) I used 4mm scale gulls. This is probably way more information than you wanted! I do like birds...