Mayner

The 62'6" air braked wagons were converted to carry timber traffic. These wagons were used to carry container traffic on the Cork & Galway mail trains and became surplus to requirements for container traffic after mail traffic ceased in 1993-4. There was also a risk of of exceeding the axle load if 3X20' containers with a heavy product such as butter or milk powder were loaded on these wagons. The 62'6" wagons were in use in timber traffic by 1996 for traffic from the West of Ireland to Waterford & possibly Clonmel plants The 4 wheel wagons were a later conversion as timber traffic built up to serve the particle board plants at Bell View & Clonmel. The closure of the Ashai plant in Ballina and failure of Bell Lines in 2007 lead to a substantial drop in container traffic, that would have made most of the 4w flats surplus to requirements for container traffic. Timber traffic ceased completely around 2002-3 when IE suddenly discovered that it was un-profitable, traffic resumed from the west to Waterford when a new contract was negotiated with Coillte, though after 20 years IE & Coillte have not sorted out a rail connection to the log yard at the Waterford Plant, though I suppose it keeps the local hauliers happy

The building on the right looks suspiciously like it started life as a locomotive running shed and the line to the left of the A Class as a passenger station, which would have made sense as the Dundalk & Enniskillen would have had its own station, running shed and works before the GNR Works and Loco depot was established. http://www.geograph.ie/photo/1030219

Barrack Street Goods Yard. The connecting line to the Dundalk Newry & Greenore Quay St Station & Dundalk Port at upper left line to the Square Crossing Clones, Enniskillen, Omagh and junction with the GNR (Dundalk South Junction) main line bottom right. The yard was closed in the early 90s and freight traffic transferred to a new yard on the old Irish North Western connection at Dundalk Junction. Site now occupied by Civic Centre/Council offices. Interesting the "Fitting Shop" beside the DNGR connecting line was this part of the old Irish North Western works

A smoke box will weather differently to the boiler and smoke box cladding as its exposed to direct heat from the smoke from the fire and exhaust steam. So a rusty or burnt smoke box was quite prototypical on a hard worked loco.

The DLK log cradles were designed to fit over and straddle the 22'6" flats, the long channel visible in the photo is part of the cradle as opposed to part of the wagon chassis a fairly unusual arrangement.

Driving a government vehicle I was often been stopped for suspected speeding but never in my own private car. We work under a similar performance management system to the traffic police, so most cops have a fair idea we are not going to be difficult at being stopped unnecessarily by another public servant trying to reach their quotas and keep their boss and Government Minister happy. Though again I might just have been lucky .

I disagree: Both the Mayo and Sligo lines have a faster more frequent passenger service than they ever had, the Bus Eireannn service from Westport Castlebar to Sligo via Ballina is more direct and scenic than by rail through Claremorris The Burma Road (Sligo-Claremorris) closed to passenger services over 50 years ago was primarily intended for people travelling to Limerick, though in 1897 the 5:45 a.m. from Sligo connected into the MGWR down Limited Mail at Claremorris at 11:00 arriving in Claremorris at 11:36. At that time there appears to have been a morning and afternoon passenger service over the Burma road, the afternoon service was a mixed goods and passenger train or for a time machine! I am not sure if it was possible to travel by rail from Sligo to Castlebar by rail before the Burma Road closed to passenger traffic when the service was down to a single return Sligo-Limerick working

Beautiful drawing very old with handbrake on one side only and wooden centered wheels. The requirement for a handbrake on either side most likely came in after 1900. The East Downshire Steam Shipping Company operated out of Dundrum (Co Down!) and had a fleet of private owner wagons that operated on the County Down. The wagons apparently ended their days in internal use at Dundalk Port after the County Down Main line closed. Provincial Wagons once produced an East Downshire coal wagon http://www.provincialwagons.com/3.html I have a large scale drawing of the Irish "standard" wooden bodied open wagon used by the Great Northern & the Southern Companies from about 1916 onwards, if I find it I will scan it!!

Sidelined locos and freight cars (coal and oil tank cars!)were quite noticeable when we were on holidays in the States in 2016, there were articles about lay-offs and stored locos in the local papers in Western States. A lot of the locos in the UP video look like they were due for replacement/heavy overhaul.

I can claim that I have used ply for baseboards in three different countries on two continents! Scandanavian birch ply is probably the best option, we had major problems with Canadian ply on an Irish site, most of our home produced ply in New Zealand is from Radiata Pine warpps and twists into wonderful shapes unless securely fixed down. I 1st used ply 9mm ply as a baseboard material on a 4mm shunting yard layout in the UK with an open top trackbed busing the technique in Barry Normans Landscape Modelling of fabricating the baseboard framing laminated from 75mm wide strips of ply laminated into "beams" X 75mm spacer blocks cut from 75X25 (nominal) softwood. The baseboards were very strong and stable despite using cheap ply, the main drawback was that the 9mm ply trackbed sagged between supports and noise with glued Woodlands Scenics ballast. I eventually fixed reinforcing strips under the track bed. I used 12mm ply for baseboard framing and top for an American N gauge layout in Ireland, the framing was simply 75mm strips of ply reinforced at the corners with 50X25 (nominal) stripwood. This was very strong and stable but again very noisy. Being from a building background I am not above using 18mm construction ply on 100X50 softwood framing for baseboard framing. I tried this on my 1st 21mm gauge layout in Ireland in Ireland, but was hardly portable to get out of an attic so the less said the better. The current incarnation is on a 1200X4800 permanent baseboard on timber piles in the garden all in CCA H3.2 treated timber. The ply is capped with a damp proof membrane with a drainage channel on either side to drain rain water, track and ballast (real stone) is glued down with dilute pva concrete bonding agent. Certainly strong enough to walk on no signs of delamination or decay after 3 years in a rainy extremly humid environment. This section of baseboard is slightly noisier than adjacent sections where track is laid on 250X45 softwood, main issue is water not draining away quickly and flooding the line after a heavy downpour.

I visited Pendon fairly regularly when I lived in the UK about 30 years ago, though I never saw the Madder Valley in operation. I used to drive cross country from Leighton Buzzard where I lived gricing the Chinnor, Thame and Wallington branches (all still open for freight) or the modelshops in Oxford or Abingdon if it was a Saturday ah happy carefree days nothing to worry about but debauchery, drink and trains in no particular or5der

Decided influence of John Ahern's Madder Valley Railway in there https://www.pendonmuseum.com/jahern/jul1942.html

Its an interesting question, it depends really on whether the Ulster & Connaught managed to merge or simply work the Clogher Valley & Cavan & Leitrim The situation in Northern Ireland would have been fairly simple with the Ulster and Connaught continuing to work the lines in the Province until 1948 or when it became too unprofitable to continue in operation or decided to become a cross-border bus company. The Clogher Valley closed in 1941 when Stormont bought out the 5% dividend guaranteed in perpetuity (by the local ratepayers & government) on the original company shares. The Bessbrook & Newry survived until 1948. It difficulty to see how Bawnboy Road-Maguiresbridge & Tynan-Bessbrook would have been built survived for very long without some form of Government guarantee on capital or operating subsidy If the U&C simply worked the C&L the GSR would have absorbed the line and collected its 5% dividend until 1934 before making a decision on the future of the line. The Baronial Guarantees were a bit like current day public private partnerships to finance infrastructure projects the Government & Councils provided a 5% guaranteed dividend in perpetuity on the issued capital and was also responsible for making good any operating losses on the undertaking, if things got really bad and the company goes broke the Council took over responsibility for managing and operating the undertaking, but was still required to pay the 5% dividend to the original shareholders. This happened with several companies including Clogher Valley, Schull & Skibbereen & Tralee and Dingle, the C&L managed just about to stay outside this category, though the 5% dividends to the shareholders (Local gentry) were a sore point in Leitrim.

The Bandon seems to have been reasonably prosperous in the early 1900s ordering 8 4-6-0T from Beyer Peacock between 1909 & 1920. Rocksavage seems to have been pretty good at re-building locos into different wheel arrangements all the Bandon 4-4-0T, 4-4-2T and the 1st 4-6-0T were re-builds from earlier 2-4-0T & 4-4-OT locos. At one stage the Bandon appears to have two No 19s? in main line service a Baldwin & a Beyer Peacock 4-6-0T which could be seen arriving in Albert St on successive trains from West Cork. The other West Cork staple was a series of 5 0-6-0ST to a standard Beyer Peacock design dating from the 1880s which lasted into the late 30s, the GSR divided these locos into 3 Classes on account of slightly different wheel diameter although boiler and motion appears to have been the same, the usefulness of the 0-6-0ST on goods and mixed trains may have influenced the Bandon to buy the Baldwins rather than a loco with a leading bogie or pony truck

Good to see that I am not alone in my 3' gauge interests and the C&L at that!. A TT or OOn3 layout takes up roughly 3/4 the space of a OO gauge layout so 4' is a bit tight length wise for a station yard or an Inglenook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglenook_Sidings or Timesave shunting puzzles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timesaver. A quay side Timesaver based on the planned C&L extension to Rooskey & the Shannon shipping services would make an interesting shunting layout My own layout Keadue is an L shape terminus to fiddle yard layout with the station on a pair of 4X1 baseboards. The original plan was to model Drumshanbo but I did not have the space, the layout is intended to operate as a through terminus like Fivemiletown on the Clogher Valley with trains from Sligo/Boyle & Ballinamore terminating at Keadue (except for the coal specials)

Looks great David, I especially like the main line sneaking off stage to run down the main street

The main draw back with the American Steam locos was that the design and construction was totally different to British practice and would have made maintenance and operation challenging. New Zealand quickly adapted American steam loco practice and adapted the 2-8-0 as standard for goods & 4-6-2 for passenger after problems with locos supplied for the UK, the indigenous 4-6-2, 4-8-2 & 4-8-4 types supplied from the early 1900s onwards were all based on American practice and trouble free in operation and maintenance on some extremly challenging routes American and British locos tended to have a similar design life, we have 80-90 year old Heislers & Climax locos still with their original boilers in sound condition , O&K in Germany tended to build more for planned obsolesence The 10 year life of most American locos in the UK is probably tied up with boiler certification and maintenance intervals. The CBSCR 0-6-2T were basically yard switchers rather than main line locos and probably would not have been as steady at speed as the indigenous 4-4-0T, 4-4-2T & 4-6-0T locomotives, wonder whether anyone thought of fitting a pony truck and assembling/converting the locos to 2-6-2T John

The design and production costs on etched brass parts are fairly low. Worsley Works will produce a kit if there is demand for more than 4 sets of parts, alternatively if you can find a draughtsman or have a go at the CAD work yourself the tooling and production costs with PPD in Scotland are quite reasonable.

CIE got a lot of criticism from the experts in the media for choosing bogie rather than articulated stock for the DART, the 1500vDC system and disrupting/closing businesses because of power surges during testing. There was also the more serious issue with the Government treating the DART as a cash cow charging CIE & IE interest on a free EU Grant that was provided to fund the electrification and German rolling stock. No piece of equipment is 100% reliable, while the Luas seems to have operated reasonably reliably for 14-15 years, the entire 071 fleet was withdrawn in the mid 1980s with cracked bogies, the MK3 Coaches had serious reliability problems with the plug doors and a train of MK3 coaches divided in the Cork Tunnel as a result of a defective coupling assembly, the DART had teething problems with the original automatic cab signalling system and drivers eventually given limited control over braking and acceleration. The Luas is quite embedded in Dublins transport system with Dublin Bus carries 139m passengers, LUAS 37.6m and DART16m.

Too much time on RM Web Richie. Perhaps there is a case for IRM commissioning a Baldwin as its first rtr steam loco . Would definitely outsell any kit but a bit too exotic to shift enough units to reach break even point. Its difficult to see demand for a Baldwin reaching break even point for a traditional brass kit with whitemetal castings, but might be feasible with etched brass with lost wax castings from 3D printed masters if the buyer is prepared to pay a preminium . https://nzfinescale.com/ Rapid prototyping in combination with 3D printing would probably be the most economic/low risk (to the designer/comissioner) way of producing the model. Coastline Models seems to be achieving good results using http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/106745-coast-line-models-bits-and-pieces-covering-mostly-cambrian-areas-in-4mm/page-2 Shapeways & Imaterialise. The cost/difficulty in sourcing stocking suitable wheels and motors from the UK is a major issue now that rtr has basically wiped out the market for loco kits. Ultrascale who manufacture probably the best wheels in the world have an on-line shop and 9 month lead time, Markits and Gibson the two biggest manufacturers/suppliers don't have on line shops and seem to sell mainly through exhibitions and specialist societies. John

Leslie Cut and cover construction would probably have taken two to three times longer than building a surface section of tramway/light rail. The big additions in terms of time and cost over surface over a surface line include civil works and earthmoving in connection with forming the tunnel and mechanical and electrical services within the tunnel. Multiple piling rigs working within the city centre forming the retaining walls and the road traffic from a massive muck shift would result in a lot more disruption than that occurred with the LUAS. At least with a bored tunnel like the Port Tunnel most of the work goes fairly un-noticed with traffic congestion limited to a couple of sites, a bored tunnel from the airport or M50 to the city centre would create the least disruption material can be delivered/spoil may be removed by motorway, geologically Dublin is trick not impossible. Discouraging cars from entering the city center seems to have been part of a strategy for at least 40 years, starting with pedestrianising Grafton & Henry/Mary St in the 70s, restricting O'Connell St to public transport, closing streets for the LUAS and the port tunnel, certainly the days of the demolishing large areas of the city center and inner city to make ways for motorways are long. The LUAS was originally conceived as an affordable substitute for CIEs Dublin Metro, with Lines from the city centre to Tallagh, Stillorgan/Sandyford Ind Estate and Ballymun to be funded mainly by EU money as a bribe for voting for Maastricht Treaty. The LUAS was originally a CIE baby, but the LUAS was spun off the the Rail Procurement Agency (CIE light rail project team) politically CIE/IE was viewed as union ridden and in-capable of delivering the project. Being a Fianna Gael/Labour plan, the incoming Fianna Fail lead coalition got cold feet over the matter due to a lot of business opposition, the EU money went to doubling the Maynooth Line and new suburban rolling stock. The LUAS then morped into the Sandyford-Stephens Green & Tallagh Abbey St line with the construction of the city centre and Ballymun Lines postponed to minimise traffic disruption or avoid running out money as the Ballymun Re-generation and Dublin Port Tunnels were going on at the same time. The Ballymun line morphed into a light rail Airport Metro which incorporated the Green Line with an underground section through the City Centre from Harcourt St, the Metro was put on ice following the GFC.

Due to challenging ground conditions cut and cover is being used on a section of the City Centre link in Auckland, the disruption to city center business and transport is pretty horrendous. The primary reason for building the cross city line is to relieve congestion at the Auckland down town passenger terminal opened about 15 years ago. At the time there was little Government faith in rail and only enough land was released for a double track line into the terminal. The basic funding model for commuter rail in New Zealand like the UK is that central government funds rail infrastructure, and City and Regional Councils are responsible for funding the trains and subsidising loss making services on the domestic and commercial rates Comparison of tunneling costs https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2016/10/05/the-costs-of-tunnelling

Buying a replacement chassis on trade me may be a safer option than trying to replace the gears. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hornby-R353-0-6-0-chassis-motor-with-LBSC-tank-loco-brown-wheels-OO-Gauge-/372247948958 The trickiest part of the re-assembly is making sure that cranks are in the right position relative to the other wheel sets (quartering) when you re-assemble the wheels on the axle with the worm gear, otherwise the loco will not run or run very badly. If you want to give it a go special tools are available for removing wheels and gears from axles https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=model+railway+gear+puller&rlz=1C1CHBF_enNZ752NZ752&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwih-OCd_IHaAhUJvLwKHSihAlAQsAQIKQ&biw=1920&bih=974. Loctite 601 retainer is the best option for securing a gear or a worm on a shaft or an axle, great stuff but don't let it near a bearing or it will lock the shaft solid. John

There are reliability issues with every new and old piece of equipment, Altsom will sort out the teething problems with the longer trams otherwise they will face heavy penalties and loss of reputation I think road traffic having priority over the trams at the crossings and the level of segregation of street running is one of the biggest draw backs of the LUAS, no such issues in Vienna where some streets with shared two way street running are as narrow as the LUAS cross city line

The more serious modellers tend to use couplings with a delayed uncoupling function. Kaydee is basically the standard for American stock (& Irish) https://kadee.com/ British finescale modellers tend to use a variety of couplings based on the old continental hook and loop coupling or inverted versions of the Triang tension lock.Spratt & Winkle B&B, Dingham not a lot to choose between them reasonably effective, reasonably priced and fiddly to assemble. I used B&B on a British shunting layout very unobtrusive & reliable