Mayner

I really like the weathering on the container really brings the model to life

I have had a number of enquiries and I am looking at producing another batch of these sides. Please P.M. if you are interested.

1:14 may be quote as a maximum grade quote by the Drewry Car Company rather than the ruling grade on the Blessington Line. 1:14 would probably have been beyond the capability of a single steam loco with a heavy mixed train north bound train on steep twisty final approach to Crooksling from Brittas. The climb from Embankment to Crooksling was a lot longer but not as steep or twisty. In his book Fayle talks of the mixed train loading up to 2 coaches and 15 wagons. A lot of the goods traffic was sand from Doran’s Pit in Blessington and livestock for destinations on the DUTC system. My father had vague recollections of the Tramway with its Model T Railcars. People who lived in the area around Crooksling would borrow a p.w. trolley and coast down to Brittas or Embankment for a Saturday night dance party. The fate of the D&BST & Clogher Valley are remarkably similar although the D&BST seems to have become the more decrepit. Both lines were built with Baronial Guarantees and were taken over by the County Councils when the original companies went bankrupt, both required special legislation to close the line and compensate the shareholders and employees when the railways closed. The DBST turned to internal combustion long before the CVR experimenting with petrol electric railcars in the WW1 era and set the way for the Donegal with its Ford railcars & Drewry car in the 1920s

Kilmacthomas would be a spectacular basis for a scenic layout with the railway carried on two viaducts above the town and the Commeragh Mountain background, perhaps if you find more room in the basement Patrick The wagons appear to be on the cattle bank siding between the two viaducts, the one nearest the running line appears to have a ladder at one end like the H van bulk grain conversions. I don't think Flahavans a private siding but are mentioned in Irish Railfans News as a major shipper, possibly grain in and porridge out.

I wonder how container traffic through Waterford Port compares with 20-30 years ago when Bell operated services to the UK and the Continent? The daily 15 bogie Cork, Limerick, & (2) Dublin Bell Liners in the 70s & 80s would had a combined daily 120 TEU capacity which makes todays twice weekly train look insignificant.

The silver would have been a striking livery if they had found a means of preventing the metal tarnishing. Even unpainted stainless steel stock tends to look fairly rough in close up. The suburban composites 2162-2171 had a short life and were converted into Brake Standards 1914-1923 in 1970 . The 64 seat Laminate Standards 1449-1496 appeared in green from the start. Worsley Works do a set of brass parts for the 1449-11496 Standards & 1909-1913 Brake Standards

Red oxide was standard for wagons and vans not just fitted stock. The colour is quite different from the Bauxite used in the UK which weathers to a much darker colour. I think the 4 wagons on the cattle bank siding in Kilmacthomas may be bulk grain wagons for Flavahan's cereal factory. I was lucky enough to travel over the line on an IRRS special immediately before the line closed and walked through Durrow Tunnel and over the viaduct about 15 years ago.

Nice work, is the line leading offscene on the left a Market Branch? shades of Omagh perhaps

0:59 Flat with Insulated Container attached to Limerick Waterford passenger trains Despite dieselisation CIE & UTA continued to operate a steam age railway with loose formation trains into the 70s One of the original GNR 600 class sets operated a regularly operated a link that included a return Enterprise working, a couple of off peak Amiens St Howth services and finished its day by working the Derry Vacuum to Portadown presumably with a string of vans coupled behind the railcars. The UTA basically treated its MPD & 70 Class railcars as locomotives and hauling freight trains on the main line and parcel traffic in and out of Larne.

Wonderfully atmospheric cab ride on the goods from Dugarvan into Waterfordhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIO9F94Vz5U

Finally finished work on the Buffet car. I originally planned to fabricate the interior seating and tables from metal before chickening out and using Evergreen square tube and sheet. Few figures were intended to bring the car to life but difficult to see from outside the coach. I spray painted the glazing of obscured windows which has resulted in a much more realistic effect than paper. Buffet car galley side. Bar side.

The additional hoses on the B201 class was to allow multi unit operation and operation of Push-Pull trains with de-motored AEC railcars on Dublin Suburban services. There is a photo in the Irish Metrovick book of Maybach powered B233 leaving Connolly in multiple with B191 on a Sunday morning Dublin-Limerick train. The B201s were really hard worked on the Dublin suburban services & seem to have been less reliable than the pure-bred GM locos with almost daily reports of delays and breakdowns, this may have contributed to the early withdrawl of the class following the introduction of the DART & replacement with small GMs on Drogheda and Arklow services The class basically took over the majority of Dublin suburban services with the introduction of push-pull trains and cross city services in the early 1970s, they also regularly worked bulk and bagged cement trains between the Drogheda factory and Dublin

The saga of the Self-Heating Carriages and fitting 10 C Class with ETH connections is mentioned in IRN in Jan 1956 & Jan 60 Five coaches 2089,2094,2096,2097 & 2098 were experimentally fitted with Victor diesel generators supplying 220V/ac for heating and lighting. The Jan 1956 edition notes that they were moderately successful and two coaches were in use on the Clonakity & Drimoleague Skibereen-Baltimore branches in West Cork. 10 C Class (no numbers identified) fitted with electrical connections to supply power to the Self-Heating carriages and the generators removed from the coaches by Jan 1960. Apart from West Cork it’s difficult to establish where the self-heating carriages were actually used most of the short feeder branches that still had passenger services were steam worked to the end Birr and Ballina are possibilities as the passenger/mixed went over to C Class operation in late 59. It’s unlikely that a C Class operated a train with ETH after the 1963 closures, the “self-heating carriages” were all withdrawn from service by 1964 and CIE had adapted night storage heaters charged by cheap off peak electricity for heating the Loughrea coach. There simply were very few places for a C to potter around with a single coach apart perhaps from the Inchacore Works train, but I don't think the operating people would have been to happy about a C Class breaking down and blocking the main line out of Kingsbridge Apart from pilot duty and filling in for the Loughrea G Class the locos were basically redundant by the mid 1960s. Its possible that CIE did not remove the ETH connections from C Class locos until the locos were re-engined with Maybach or GM power units.

[video=youtube;c3L-XaV66Ds] The Australians seem to have solved the problem with the smoke and fumes, very clean exhaust on WAGR Metrovick in use on Perth suburban passenger services. Maybe it was a combination of the Irish climate, grade of diesel bought by CIE and design of the bodywork, even the re-engine Metrovicks tended to get a lot dirtier than the Sulzers and General Motors locos.

During the 1950s CIE modified a number of carriages to "self heating' coaches for branch line services with electric heating powered by a small under floor gasoline or diesel driven a/c generator. The generators were not very reliable in service and a small number of C Class were modified to provide HEP to these coaches. The Loughrea Coach was a modern Laminate brake standard with electric storage heaters which were charged overnight. The need for HEP with the C Class would have disappeared with the ending of passenger/mixed train services on short feeder branches apart from Loughrea. There is information on the saga of the self heating coaches and C Class operation in the Irish Railfans section of the RPSI website

The N Gauge modular movement is mainly about modellers bringing their individual modules to meets and exhibitions to put a large layout together, consistency between modules is usually far down the list of priorities The oNe Trak movement http://mrns.homestead.com/One_Trak.html is an attempt at something more realistic than can be achieved with standard N Track modules and tend to be layouts built on modular principals rather than a group of modules joined together for an exhibition or meet.

A southbound freight on the Main Line North MLN) ended up stranded between two slips when the quake struck just after Midnight on 13th amazingly no one was injured and the train appears to be undamaged. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/nz-earthquake/86698393/kiwirail-waiting-to-recover-goods-from-train-in-no-mans-land-near-kaikoura The main issue seems to be keeping the looters at bay until the road is re-opened which could be a matter of months or years. The railway and road run from the ferry port of Picton to Christchurch. Train ferries are used to transport wagons between Wellington & Picton and most of the rail traffic is through freight between the Christchurch and the North Islands.

The MU controls were electro-pneumatic with intermediate coaches wired to run with the railcars. The BUT railcars and coaches had the same type of rubber gangways as used in mainland Europe were draft roof and would have required less maintenance than the type of gangway used in Ireland As David said the 600 Class was limited to a maximum of two power cars, the BUTs and CIE 2600 cars 4 power cars. Why CIE never re-wired its barely run in 600s to bring them in line with its own 2600 fleet is on of lifes little mysteries

I think the railcars were assembled in Dundalk from parts supplied by BUT. The 700s seem to have been introduced before the single ended 900s, the original GNR publicity photo is of the BUTs is of an Enterprise with 4 700 class power cars and 2 non powered trailer cars. I think the original intention was to design a train that could be divided to run to different destinations. This is supported by the double ended 700 Class and continental style corridor connections. The GNR managed to operate a fast Belfast-Enniskillen service for a few weeks before the Irish North Closed in 1957 with a 700 class by dividing a Belfast-Derry (Foyle Rd) BUT railcar set at Omagh. After the break-up of the GNR CIE seems to have used its BUTs on Westland Row-Rosslare services in preference to its own AEC cars which were less powerful. There was talk of CIE selling its last serviceable BUT set to NIR during the 70s, CIE overhauled a set of BUT railcars during a loco shortage but the unit was stored in Dundalk paint shop and never went back into service.

A reasonable selection of Irish 3d printed N gauge models are available from Shapeways http://www.shapeways.com/shops/valvedesign?s=0#more-products. I think the diesel locos are designed to run on Lifelike N Gauge chassis. The main challenge is in achieving a reasonable surface finish on 3d printed material

The garden railway is taking on more and more of a DRGW/RGS theme with structures and rolling stock Finally added a water tower to the main station after 8 years! Picked up a Piko water tower on e-bay nicely weathered. RGS Motor #4 on the passenger/mail run. This is a brass model produced by Accucraft about 8 years ago converted to on board battery 24GH RC control. I need to sort out some 1:20.5 figures.

We rode the California Zephyr from Denver to San Fransisco the crossing of the Rockies and Sierra Nevada are both in daytime.

I suppose you could argue that the 30 wagon limit was an elf and safety thing as it kept a fully laden train within the 560 ton load limit for a loose coupled train on the WRC and hopefully allowed the driver and guard to keep control and prevent a run away. Taking a load limit of 780 tons on the majority of main line routes a beet train could theoretically load up to 40 12 ton opens with a gross weight of 18 tons. I wonder whether laden beet trains from midlands and east loaded to the 780 ton 40 wagon limit for the journey over the MGWR line and excess tonnage left at Athenry for collection by a Gort-Tuam special or an overload goods. Overloads were common enough on lines with heavy goods traffic and severe load/weight restrictions. An overload would be run for just 1-2 wagons once the regular goods was fully loaded. In steam days overloads were common over the Limerick-Sligo line as the heaviest loco allowed was a J15

Just had a look at the CIE 1980 WTT Loose coupled goods trains hauled by a 001, 181, 141 or pair of GMs were allowed to load to a maximum of 560 tons or 45 vehicles including a 30 ton brake van between Ennis & Claremorris, a 121 or 201 was allowed 10 tons less Laden trains would have been restricted to 30 opens plus van, trains could be loaded up to 780 tons or a max of 66 wagons on most of the main lines. CIE carried a lot of goods and mineral traffic at the time, ore traffic probably peaked around 1980 with Zinc from Tara & Silvermines, Byrytes from Silvermines and Dolomite and Magnesite in an out of Ballinacourty heavy traffic all years rather than a seasonal traffic over 3 months. Tuam used to process beet from Dundalk, Navan, Enfield and Kerry in addition to stations on the Ennis-Athenry line

The report is a lot more optimistic about the future of rail than similar reports in the 70s & 80s and is pro-active in identifying IEs medium term funding requirements. Proposals to close Nenagh Branch & Limerick Junction-Waterford line seems to have been used as part of CIEs/IEs negotiating strategy to secure government funding for the railways for the best part of 40 years. It will be interesting to see if the Government implements the more positive recommendations, or the branches are sacrificed to secure some additional funding for the main lines. The same sort of thing went on in the 70s the Government would cap CIEs subsidy and at the same time refuse fare and rate increases to cover national pay awards and increased fuel and material costs during a periods of rampant inflation. CIE & IE managers and staff became very skilled at doing more with less until the system started to fall apart in the early 1990s