Mayner

Alan Edgar (RM Web De Seby) as built some excellent S4 models of NCC & GNR locos including a scratch built NCC Whippet and a Mogul built using a set of Worsley Works parts http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/80681-an-ncc-whippet/page-2 It looks like the BNCR tender underframe was wide enough for a standard LMS tender tank.

I wonder if China is offering to build a TGV to establish a presence for CNR in Europe?

The kit can be assembled in either late MGWR or GSR/CIE condition with round topped superheated boiler. The kit can be assembled with the late MGWR GNR style curved canopy cab, or the later Inchacore style of cab with either circular or rectangular spectacle plates. The GSR & CIE cut slots in the valences of most MGWR from the mid1930s onwards, the odd engine escaped including one of the Achill Bogie 4-4-0s I originally designed the kit with solid valences with the option of the builder forming the slots by drilling out and filing half etched sections of the valence. I will look at releasing the kit with the option of solid or slotted valences as most of the demand is for the locos in late GSR/CIE condition. The design of the kit is influenced by North Eastern Kits Tennant 2-4-0. The RM Web article will give an idea of what's involved in building the 650 Class though I have added non-working inside valve gear. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/58520-ner-tennant-2-4-0/ I have completed what I hope are the final ammendments to the drawings for the photo engraver and send the patterns on the 1st stage of the mould making and casting process next week.

I normally use the Kadee No36 long coupler for Irish stock, https://kadee.com/htmbord/page36.htm Using the No 5 the draft gear box has to be packed out past the buffer beams, not sure if a long shank coupler is available that will work with the 232 gearbox

As JHB says it probably easier and more satisfying to scratch build an Irish Station building, the style of architecture and building materials were quite different to England and Wales. The nearest you will get to a generic Irish design are Mill's brick station buildings on the GNR such as Malahide, George Wilkinson's buildings on the MGWR Sligo & Cavan Branches and the DWWR Dublin-Wexford line between Harcourt St & Enniscorthy and Nenagh on the GSWR After building Workhouses George Wilkinson the Architect went on to build equally forboding railway stations http://eiretrains.com/Photo_Gallery/Railway%20Stations%20D/Dromod/IrishRailwayStations.html#Dromod_20100816_012_CC_JA.jpg The Waterford Limerick and Western had a nice cottage style of station building for smaller stations on the Limerick-Sligo and Thurles_Clonmel line http://eiretrains.com/Photo_Gallery/Railway%20Stations%20K/Kiltimagh/IrishRailwayStations.html#Kiltimagh_20040703_005_CC_JA.jpg

Possibly the Liverpool factory. The whole set up has a post WW1 trading estate feel to it like Park Royal in London or Trafford Park Manchester. The gantry is similar to the gantry built to service the MGWR track re-laying train in Mullingar during the early 1920s The van on the left has a Lancashire & Yorkshire look to it. It looks like Jacobs was a progressive company to see the advantages of containers in the early 1920s or did they go shopping for war surplus equipment like the MGWR?

Jeremy Suter produced a number of high quality whitemetal kits of Irish wagons about 20 years ago including GNR & NCC flat wagons with bread containers, a UTA version of a GNR Bread Van, MGWR Loco Coal Wagon and GNR Standard Van. The kits were suitable for OO, EM or 21mm gauge. As far as I know no more were produced once the initial batch sold out. Jeremy was the Scale4 Society Sales Officer and also supplied track and back to back gauges for 21mm gauge

Most of the main lines had scheduled mail services, though TPOs only ran on certain routes, principally Dublin-Cork and Dublin-Galway. For many years Mayo mails were carried on a Night Mail train that connected with the Galway Mail at Athlone, Sligo-Limerick and later Ballina-Limerick trains carried mail in the guards compartment. CIE also had bogie TPOs similar in general outline to the Hornby model and even picked up and dropped mail bags at speed on the Cork line into the 1970s

To get back to Tony's original post came across a colour photo of a Jacobs container in a photo of Phoenix shunting at Strabane in 1959 in Irish Railways in Colour a Second Glance Midland Publishing 1995. . Phoenix is shunting a cut of wagons that includes an open wagon loaded with a Jacobs Container, a CDR or S&LR van and a dropside wagon loaded with what looks like a BR Type A container. Former GNR U Class Lough Melvin has been re-numbered as UTA 65

Apparently the CVR General Manager and some of the Aughnacloy Works staff built a scale model of a Caledonian 4-4-0 in the evenings after work

They would have mainly come on the BR Irish Sea sailings though Belfast Dublin, Rosslare & Waterford Ports. Most traffic from points in Northern Ireland to the South would have been carried in conventional wagon loads, the Donegal was they exception containers were used to overcome the transhipment problem with the break of gauge and to allow Donegal traffic to travel under bond from Dundalk to destinations in Donegal. A lot of the Irish Sea container traffic would have been meat from plants in Munster and the West to the London market and would have had to have been handled smartly by both CIE & BR. Oliver Doyle wrote about weekend specials of meat in containers from the Clover Meats factory in Waterford to Rosslare. Normally the traffic was carried on BR Waterford-Milford Haven service which did not run on Sundays.

It would take a highly skilled pattern maker or 3D modeller to design a pattern or tooling for a large complex loco like a WT. Its possible to produce a wax master for investment casting in metal or a mould for resin casting using 3D printing techniques. http://marksmodelworks.weebly.com/scratchbuilding-aids.html

I look the little touches like the beet loading ramp and small container gantry typical of the era and each an individual wagon load. Looks like things could get a bit hectic during the beet season crossing trains with short loops and no lay-by or headshunt to shunt a train clear of the main line or running loop typical of most secondary main lines!

You could always pretend CIE re-bogied 233 with a spare set of 141 bogies, there is a parallel with the Chicago Rock Island and Pacific which re-built some of its Alco FA units with power units and trucks (bogies) salvaged from scrapped wartime General Motors FT locomotives

A rtr model of a WT is more likely to be a commercial success than an etched brass or composite brass and whitemetal kit. In my experience the proportion of modellers prepared to tackle a metal kit is a small subset of the Irish modelling community. The majority of modellers based in Ireland appear to have a preference for RTR or body line kits suitable for a rtr chassis as the tendency is to model the railways with which they are familiar while overseas (incl modellers based on the British Mainland) modellers of an Irish prototype have a preference for kit and scratchbuilding in order to model the more obscure and unusual incl the steam era and the narrow gauge. A one piece resin body in NCC, UTA or NIR livery designed to fit the Hornby 2-6-4T chassis would be a low risk option and would probably sell well. While fewer people are likely to tackle a more accurate model of a WT based on a set of Worsley Works scratchbuilders parts I would not dismiss the option. Alan Doherty is on record that he is prepared to produce a "kit" if there is demand for 4 or more sets of parts, the WT is essentially an LMS design the majority of the castings may be available from the UK avoiding the need for expensive pattern making and custom casting for boiler fittings and the majority of detail casings.

I was thinking more of the traditional B type furniture or meat containers which CIE tended to load into open wagons rather than the more modern ISO containers. Perhaps Leslie might commission a Lyons Tea or GNR Furniture container

Tim Cramer built an O Gauge model of superheated D14 No 61 in lined green CIE livery and published an article on the "Irish Greyhounds" incl scale drawings in an Irish Modelling special published with British Railway Modelling April 2014. The special included articles with coloured photos on Tony Raggs O Gauge Knockmore Junction & Noel Dodd's Greystones layout a staple of the Irish exhibition circuit during the late 1980s

Of course they did! a weeks supply of fig rolls and cream crackers arriving at Ballinamore on the C&L. Presumably the containers were loaded at the Bishop Street factory and distributed by rail and road throughout the country. Another Irish staple Lyons Tea was shipped by rail for many years in Type B containers in open wagons and later ISO containers http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/gansg/5-unit/unitload1.htm

Oil firing tends to work best in locos designed for oil firing, not sure its cleaner than coal from an environmental perspective. Like the GWR CIE converted many locos to oil firing during the 1947 coal shortage, but abandoned oil firing once coal became readily available. One of the problems was excessive boiler/firebox wear on old locos due to a combination of deferred maintenance during the Emergency and the greater stresses from oil firing. The Festiniog fired their locos for many years on waste oil, and more recently diesel before returning to coal firing

The timber wagons were converted from 30501 -30540 bogie container flats during the mid 1990s

Railways have always been a political issue especially when it comes to the taxpayer picking up the tab for a loss making service whether its was in Tyrone or West Cork. It could be argued that Stormont was more responsible in forcing the Irish North West Closure in 1957, than Merrion St wasting public money dieselising lines like Harcourt Street & the West Cork which only to close them 2-3 years later. The Northern government was also quicker in facing up to the underling problems with the organisation of surface transport splitting UTA operations into separate companies 20 years before CIE. The GNR suffered from a poor route structure apart from Dublin-Belfast and Belfast-Cavan most destinations in the border counties could be reached quicker from Belfast or Dublin by road. The GSR & CIE had the advantage of more direct routes and a longer line haul from the South & West to Dublin and Waterford ports which gave rail an advantage over road until the recent construction of Motorways which was not present in Northern Ireland. The Free State quickly established customs barriers diverting trade away from Belfast & Derry ports to Dublin. The GNR eventually took advantage of this transporting freight traffic from Dublin and the East across Northern Ireland under customs bond to Donegal and Sligo. CIEs losses on freight services increased substantially in 1966 after taking responsibility for freight services to Belfast and the Derry Vacuum, which indicates that Stormont had effectively subsidised cross border rail traffic, something that would not have been popular with a large proportion of the electorate. Its all pretty irrelevant from a modelling perspective though like Charlie Haugheys vision of an All-Ireland Police Force and the RUC patrolling in the Republic, the GNR continuing to operate the INW subsidised by Merrion St would have been more palatable to both communities than closure or a CIE take over. Would the lines have continued to function to the present day if political and economic conditions were different is anyone's guess.

Leslie seems to have kept quiet about this one, but shares a similar chassis to the beet doubles Nice looking wagon which fills a large gap in 'modernish" Irish freight stock as the chassis is similar to those used under the Burma and CIE Stores Oil Tank Wagons. The flats seem to have been mainly used for carrying oil and bitumen containers following the widespread introduction of bogie container flats and fertiliser wagons. The Irish Tar & Bitumen containers were similar in design to http://www.meeberg.com/stock-for-sale/stock/6http://www.meeberg.com/stock-for-sale/stock/6 with a steel billboard fixed across the bracing bay at one end with advertising for Irish Tar and Bitumen. Perhaps Weshty might release the container from Ammonia barrier wagon kit as a separate item & with Irish Tar and Bitumen billboards and decal sets.

The Derry Road & the Irish continuing in operation opens up all kinds of scenarios including the GNR continuing in operation and Merrion St quietly underwriting the losses on cross-border freight and passenger traffic maintaining employment in Dundalk Works and reducing the cost of maintaining the Dublin-Derry Road through Monaghan, Louth and Meath. The GNR planned to dieselise freight and heavy passenger trains with German diesel hydraulics, while the 701 BUT railcars were designed to combine and divide en-route which opens up the possibility of combined Belfast-Derry-Enniskllen passenger trains dividing at Omagh or the Enterprise splitting at Portadown with a portions continuing to Belfast and Derry. Its likely that the Derry Road and Omagh-Enniskillen would have continued in operation to the present day had they survived the cuts of 50s or 60s as few lines with a reasonable level of passenger traffic have closed since the late 60s Both CIE & NIR turned to BREL in the 70s and more recently overseas builders, so todays Derry Road trains are unlikely to be radically than anything that ran in recent years on IE or NIR Passenger trains on the Derry Road might have more in common with stock used on the Enterprise than internally in Northern Ireland with the possibility of through trains of coaches from Dublin due to the more direct route than via Belfast and Antrim. Freight traffic is likely to the railhead at Strabane is likely to have remained heavy rather than divided between Sligo and Donegal and require loco haulage rather than being tagged on to an MPD or 80 Class Railcar. An NIR111 Class Co Co with 5-6 MK2 coaches in Enterprise livery connecting with a 2-3 car 80 Class in NIR livery or on lease to IE would be an achievable 1990s scenarios, with IE 071s and Dapol pocket wagons on the Strabane Liner with traffic from an IDA chemical or textile manufacturing plant in Donegal

I think the majority of modellers tend to model the railways they grew up with fewer people remember the steam era, judging by posts on this forum and available and planned RTR models demand is pretty much restricted to locos and stock that ran on CIE/IE between 20-40 years ago. Its telling that the black & tan small GMs did not sell as well as the IE versions and the OO Works UG was only available in UTA colours and did not sell as well as the U although it was a more generally useful loco. The availability of the Murphy Models diesels has probably lead to a greater interest in model railways in Ireland than ever before. The GNR(I) is better provided in terms of good quality kits and scratch builders parts and than the GSR or steam era CIE

I built an E Class using a Shapways body and also had some parts printed to my own design. The E had a lot of added detail including etched overlays, sprung buffers etc but I still haven't got round to finishing the model Each material has its advantages and disadvanages Most 3d printed models need some form of surface preparation the WSF (nylon) used in most 4mm models has no noticeable layers, good surface resolution, downside is a surface texture like smooth sand and cement render or mill scale on steel plate and is best filled with a car spray primer-filler rather than sanding. White Frosted Detail (plastic) mainly used for N has a smooth surface texture, finer resolution for modelling fine detail like beading, and is sandable. Main disadvantage is layers are noticeable and cost.