Mayner

The West Cork an interesting choice for a club in deepest Linconshire. Is MikeC building some locos & stock to run on it?

Definitely worth a field trip to West Cork apart from lifting the track very little seems to have changed since the track was lifted in the 1960s. http://eiretrains.com/Photo_Gallery/Railway%20Stations%20C/Courtmacsherry/IrishRailwayStations.html. There are some very atmospheric photos of the line in Ernie Shepherds CBSCR book. The branch is probably the nearest thing in Ireland to lines like the KSER, Mid Suffolk & Tanat Valley corrugated iron buildings very light construction.

Courtmacsharry would make an attractive model with the main street as a backdrop, single slighty curved platform road, run round, two sidings one to pier, loco shed, small goods shed. Timoleague station curving layout squeezed in between the Abbey and town, seems to have been the operating hub of the line, cattle bank, carriage, loco shed/workshop on down side, single platform goods yard on up town side of line. The station site is now a car park.

Colour photos of T&C in both editions Irish Railways in Colour Steam to Diesel Tom Ferris (Midland Publishing) incl. brand new C Class at Timoleague on excursion, J26 on beet working late 50s including a great shot of Timoleague yard full of wagons and trucks transferring beet.

It seems to be more co-incidence than anything else that Tyrconnel and myself started work on a G2 luckily we work in two different scales. Though Tyrconnel range is becoming increasingly tempting as I am searching for a 14BA nut and a crankpin bush that fell on the carpet.

A G2 would be a very tight fit on your turntable 47' 1½" over buffers 34' 8¼ engine and tender wheelbase. The Midland/GSR would have probably used a Standard Goods J18/19 or possibly a H Class J6 for long distance coal traffic with a J26 or possibly the ex Fenit Hunslet 0-6-0ST 299 for the Arigna Valley shunt. The GSR used J15s sometimes with the leading rods removed on sharply curved Castlecomer Branch which served Deerpark mine in the Leinster coalfield.

The plan as dawn just about works in OO with a minimum radius of 2', but would work/look better in a larger space. In 21mm gauge a larger minimum radius of around 3'6" would restrict me to a conventional around the wall scheme with an oval or folded or the traditional U shaped terminus fiddle yard scheme.

Keeping the width of the baseboard down to 1'6"-2' can be advantage in an around the wall scheme, making the layout look longer and more circulating space for operators/visitors. I have an 8X4 work bench in the middle of the layout room.

One around the room layout I have visited is an O Gauge mountain railway with basically an oval with floor to ceiling scenery another HO American marshalling yard with a branch line serving several industries. both with a large circulating space in the middle

I had thought of designing/building a double deck layout, but did not work in as the mainly because you would need scaffold or a raised platform to operate the upper level as the layout is built on storage units 4' above the floor.

I switched Abbeydorney around to maximise the length of run between Listowel and Abbeydorney and reduce the length of the hidden run from the Tralee end of the storage yard to Abbeydorney. In the plant the line from Tralee crosses over the Listowel-Abbeydorney to re-create the summit section near Ardfert and Eastbound falling grade into Abbeydorney at the expense of leaving most of the Abbeydorney-Listowel section hidden and loosing Lixnaw & the Tar siding.

Abandoning the long hidden sections and using turnbacks at either end would be very interesting and challenging for lads who enjoy tail chasers.

John

I used to enjoy the NMRA meets visiting Scaleforum & EXPO EM while living in the UK. The NMRA meets used to be more of a bun fight for the latest kits & rtr while the finescale expos were more about modelling.

From an operators perspective the layout tours was a lot less hassle than running an exhibition layout, with a steady of visitors arriving every half hour and more of an emphasis on answering questions keeping something running. The large scale stuff performed faultlessly despite changing between battery RC live steam and RC DCC, the Irish 4mm narrow gauge locos and stock was equally reliable though the Tillig points in the fiddle yard need replacing.

The second photo is 12" to 1' Scale the top end of Pukemiro Junction one of my favourite places though some 9 & 3/16 Scale NZR modellers come close in modelling native bush and typical NZ street scenes and archiceture

I am not sure how I missed that one, the yard would have been very difficult to shunt without the second crossover.

There was an article on the layout in the Railway Modeller 72 or 73. Although there were a couple of scratch built locos by Harry Connaugton including a GNR compound, a number of locos ran on Triang-Hornby L1 & Jinty chassis, The layout was converted to automatic operation displayed at Shannon Airport for a year or so and ran for about 6 months in the Kilkenny shop durinng he late 70s

Modelling Irish railways is either a matter of ignoring the gauge issue like many modellers in order to get something running, or deciding whether to run with an established scale and vary the gauge, or use an established gauge and vary the scale. Unless you are absolutely determined to scratchbuild everything including rolling your own rails and casting and machining wheels its probably easiest to stick with an established scale.

Having a 45mm gauge garden railway and seeing Ian Ramseys U Tube videos 15mm scale Irish narrow gauge with some of John Amstrongs live steam Irish locos and stock would be tempting or even an 8.6mm scale B141 or C Class, but I would probably need to take out a second mortgage and what do I do with all my small scale stuff.

While the OO/EM/S4 thing in the UK is complicated enough Large Scale American G Scale is a real can of worms with 3' gauge narrow gauge stock modelled in three different scales 1:20.5, 1:22.5 & 1:24 all running on 45mm Gauge 1 track, not helped with Aristo Craft doing a Henry Greenly and producing a large scale OO with American standard gauge models produced over size to "make them look more impressive" and other manufacturers following suit.

Somewhere or other I have a presentable Schull & Skibereen Erin bought second hand from the UK modelled in plasticard on a Toymobile chassis, built like a battleship boiler fittings formed from bits of tube, bolts, washers etc

John

The whole business of motivation is a very interesting thing, I think the majority of Irish based people who model the Irish scene for much the same reason as someone in the UK models the local scene because its familiar and achievable in OO with a mixture of rtr locos and stock, flexible track and points.

Outside of Ireland the motivation is almost the reverse with a focus on the exotic aspects of Ireland's railways, much more kit and scratch building, a focus on fine scale wheel and track standards, the correct gauge, historic rather than contemporary and above all a focus on the unusual like the SLNCR and the narrow gauge.

You mention that your available space is reasonable for OO but tight for 21mm. This leads me to ask about minimum radius for 21mm gauge based on your experience. This is something I have often wondered about.

The minimum radius depends on track standards 3' seems to be about the minimum for OO wheel track standards, in S4 you pretty much have to work to scaled down prototype radius Templot starts blinking if you go below 4'

Diesels and bogie stock are fairly forgiving but bogie and outside cylinder steam locos can be a challenge because of reduced side play in chassis and tighter clearances.

David

We seem to have managed to turn Arigna into a major industrial centre with coal & iron traffic flowing over the SLNCR and narrow gauge connections to Sligo port and eastwards to the GNR at Belturbet!

The N Guage is set in the late 60s/70s period mainly Delaware & Hudson, with LV, RDG & EL power sneaking in on run through and connecting services.

The railcar is based on a set of Worsley Works with Black Beetle bogies under the powered unit. The cars were built 3-4 years ago along with a couple of Laminates and a Park Royal, and never got round to testing or fitting couplers.

Great to see someone modelling such a distinctive railway, the bridge and railcar really look the part, well done!

John

I vaguely remember attending the show in the 1980s as a child John and loving it. Seems so long ago now. Who ran that show?

 

The current one is on the ground floor. It is a very nice venue' date=' but tends to get very warm due to the glass ceiling![/quote']

 

The early shows were tied up with the Dun Laoire Festival and run by the MRSI, I always remember as a teenager spending two very enjoyabe days helping to operate an end to end layout.

Ah the Dunlaoire Show brings back memories, used to draw big crowds in the 70-80s. Is it still held upstairs in the Town Hall?

John

Parkside Dundas http://www.parksidedundas.co.uk/acatalog/copy_of_BRITISH_RAILWAYS.html do both the Palvan and BR Ply sided vans.

The kits were originally were fairly basic and inexpensive, the Palvan is one of the more recent kits more detailed and expensive.

While its fairly straightforward to convert a kit to 21mm by moving out the solebars, modifying a rtr model either involvesrhaving to totally replace or slice the chassis or bogies down the middle like the Dapol tank wagon