Mayner

The coaches in the pictures are in preserved condition at Tralee and Tuam the late 80s early 90s. The GSRPS restored several of these coaches in Tralee & Mallow for use on excursions and the Fenit Line some of which found their way to Westrail in Tuam and the last of these coaches is preserved at Dunsandle. JHB is probably the best to advise on livery, photos indicate that some early CIE built stock was painted plain unlined dark green without flying snail logo, repainted into the light green scheme with a single narrow eau-de-nil line at waist height before being painted into black and tan. Lettering in the green era seems to have been in light green (eau-e-nil)

I don't know if its the light colour the Dapol vents tend to stick out like a sore time. The one advantage is that they are separate from the roof moulding, so should be fairly simple to detail the roof of the Side Corridors with the distinctive toilet filler pipework in brass wire and replace the vents with something from Comet or MJT. Coachman (Larry Goddard) had a thread on RM Web on detailing the Airfix/Dapol LMS coaches, including a re-skinning job with etched brass sides, advice on flattening the Dapol roof and detailing the interior http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/67996-making-use-of-dapol-lms-coach-kits/ A slightly more modern version of the Corridor Seconds on Bulleid Triangulated underframe and commonwealth bogies.

The recent thread on modelling Limerick Junction raised interest in building pointwork with C&L and similar systems. I am using the system on a small British Railways layout partially as a decider whether to go with flatbottom or bullhead pointwork on an Irish layout. The C&L system is based on using ABS plastic chairs and sleepers and chairs in combination with nickel silver or steel rail to represent traditional Bullhead track used on railways in the in the UK and by most of the bigger Irish Companies especially the BCDR, DSER,GNR, GSWR & NCC. On CIE this type of track was widely used on the Kerry Road, Dublin Waterford Line and Wexford Lines until re-laid with CWR in the mid late 1990s. C&L supply point kits and individual components many modellers use ply or wooden rather than plastic sleepers cheaper and more realistic. Chairs The C&L system is based on a standard 3 bolt chair for running lines and a slide chair to support the moving switch rails at the toe end of a point. A number of different types of chai are used to support the rails around the crossing and check rails in points, with C&L its basically a matter of cutting and splicing a standard chair. Some systems (Exactoscale) manufacture special chairs. Chairs threaded on to a stock rail Not as tedius as it looks quite therapeutic if you take your time Building a crossing Ready made crossing vees are expensive, I use a jig for filing and soldering the vee probably takes about 5 minutes. partially assembled V waiting to be fixed in place The metal strips are for soldering the "wing rails" in place and maintaining electrical continuity. Model points are usually assembled by first fixing the straight stock rail in place (long straight rail. Then fixing the vee and wing rails in position .... Step 1. Straight stock rail and chairs positioned Step 2. Positioning the vee using gauges. This point is built on a Templot template, the position of the crossing nose, switch and other critical details are marked on the kraft paper backing before the sleepers and ballast was laid. Steps 3-6 jumping a head too fast point almost complete You basically work across from one side to another building a point once the first stock rail and Vee is positioned the second stock rail is gauged from first stock at the toe end and from the vee at the crossing, then the blades and gut rails fixed in position. The track gauges are roller gauges, the brass gauge has sections milled out for gauging across converging rails at switches and crossings. On average it takes me an evening to build one of these points. With the formation more or next complete the next job is to install the droppers for the wiring and tie bars, then weaher the sleepers and ballast, before fixing the assembly on the layout.

Side Corridor (compartment side) Buffet Buffet kitchen side The donor coaches are Dapol 60' Stanier Coaches. Plastic is removed from the area between the windows leaving a strip below the waist and a narrow strip above the windows. The sides are fixed in place with contact adhesive. Comet Kits RTR Conversions and Building Coaches the Comet Way http://www.cometmodels.co.uk/ are probably the best instruction for this type of modification. Comet recommend gluing the roof to the body before cutting out the sides when carrying out this sort of conversion. The flush glazing units on original Airfix/GMR/Dapol coaches were also used to lock the body in place on the floor and locate the roof. I have built the models with removable roofs clipped in place to strips cut from the old glazing units glued to the remains of the Dapol sides. I may be possible to kitbash the Dapol interior to fit the Side Corridor coach or scratchbuild an interior using plasticard and Ratio or Comet coach seats.

The first batch of Buffet Car and Corridor Standard sides will be ready for shipping in about two weeks at $32NZ(£16stg)+shipping. The TPO/Tool Van will be available in November. The first batch basically covers existing enquiries/orders, please send me a p.m. if you want to be added to the list for the next batch of sides/TPO kits. 1953 Side Corridor Standard Close up window/door details Iarnrod I am not planning scale width/length CIE coaches in the immediate future or at least I have released the 20t flats and MGWR vans and loco. Tin & Luggage vans are out of stock.

Richie: Great concept with the different era's from modern state of the art the 1860s to the increasingly run-down and obsolete as the port shifted Eastwards. Modelling an urban Irish layout warts and all is a challenge and a welcome change from a country station in a scenic setting. As a South sider I never got to explore the North Wall quays and yards until the late 70s, I will always remember going with my parents as a nipper to see what seemed to be the whole US Navy tied up along the South Quays from Butt Bridge to the Grand Canal Docks some time in the early 60s. To me the most striking thing was the dockside cranes of which there is little trace. Like most ports the Docks was melting pot of races and culture that never really recovered from the loss of traditional dock work and the community being dispersed to Corporation housing estates in the suburbs in Brendan Brehan's words to Hell or Kimmage. The decline seems to have set in from the closing of the LNWR passenger station and hotel when the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company lost the Mail Boat contact to Dunlaoire in the 1920s. Your plan has a bit of the Iain Rice's London Dock schemes about it, not sure about modelling the Quayside sheds (Campshires). Visually they cut off the view of the more interesting 19th Century buildings and streetscape from the river. The North-Wall Liverpool passenger boat also carried cattle up to its replacement by Car Ferry in the 70s, cattle arrived by rail and were driven "on the hoof" down the North Circular Road from the Cattle Market for loading on what's now City Bank and the Dockland University. There was an interesting photo in Heitons head office of a coal boat being off-loaded into railway wagons on the quay outside the Point Depot in GSR days.

For some reason I kept thinking of Dianna Rigg in the Avengers

Finescale OO with flexible bullhead track seems to be a good compromise for a large operating layout, you time scale to get the layout to a reasonably stage seems ambitious. Fitting in a layout with a working grade crossing between two main lines is a challenge sneaking the Waterford line around the back seems good idea. The main draw back of the plan for an operations based layout seems to be the rather limited staging, it might be worth while to double the Waterford line from behind the pump house and use it as what the Americans call surround staging to queue trains to go through the Junction. Besides Limerick-Waterford Mail, Liner, Cement and Fertiliser traffic, Bell Liner, Fertiliser & Quigley Magnesite trains regularly reversed at the Junction enroute between Cork and Waterford a very busy place

The etched sides are designed to fit to the 60' Dapol Stanier body shell. I found that I was simplest to remove all the plastic between the window and then use contact adhesive to glue the sides in place. The first lot of Buffet Car and Corridor Standard sides and the TPO ae winging their way South should be available in October.

JMRI with an IPhone or IPad seems a very good approach. JMRI is or can be made compatible with most DCC systems. Interestingly Digtrax has just announced that it is discontinuing the UR91 receiver for its Simplex radio system, potentially forcing users to upgrade to its "Duplex" system at $150US per receiver & $65 throttle upgrade.

Well done takes me back to my Irish gricing days Interesting but subtle changes in the close to 40 years since CTC was introduced, signal cabin and relay room survives, the shelter belt by the farm house has grown back in the 20 odd years since it was cut down, crossover between the up and down main lines moved to the North of the Crossover.

Besides the Dutch and BR vans CIE converted a sizable number of older coaches to Brake Standard and Brake Standard Generator Steam van (BSGV) format in the mid to late 70s mainly to replace the 4 wheelers on Suburban and the remaining branch and cross country trains. http://www.cs.vintagecarriagestrust.org/se/CarriageInfo.asp?Ref=3340. The Cravens as the most modern conventional stock appear to have been converted to TL lighting at an early stage, the all the Park Royals and even some Laminates were converted by the Mid 1980s.

The 30T vans seem to have been less popular with guards and the Operating Department than earlier CIE/GSR/GSWR brake vans. The all steel body would have been like a freezer or an oven to work in compared to the earlier wooden or ply bodied vans. The original oil boxes gave trouble with overheating and the hand brake was not supposed to be as good as a 20 Tonner. Apart from the running gear and foot boards the main spotting difference was greater variation among 20T vans, planked or ply body sheeting, wooden or steel duckets. Hybrids with a mixture of ply and planking. Perhaps another variation for Des?

Popeye Lovely job on the pallet cement especially the large wheels.

The timber swap bodies were fitted on 27301-27767 series 22'6" 14' wb skeletal flats the last 4w wagons built. These had a sightly lower frame to carry 8'6" containers and a longer wheelbase to improve stability at speed. The channel framing of the swap bodies sat down over the wagon like a saddlebag and hid most of the wagon solebars and underframe.

Great to see the local IE management getting the railway involved in the European City of Culture street theatre events. The event had major spin off effects for Glasgow and other cities that had suffered from poor press. Hopefully its good for Limerick as a city and some of the extra visitors arrive by train. The Giant Grandmother thing reminds me of a cross between Mrs Browne and in Gulliver's Travels'

Running a course to 'facilitate" Irish people to mix and mingle, a bit like selling snow to Eskimos

If you want to get something running quickly Marcway points with either SMP or C&L flexible track might be a workable alternative, they also build custom formations see Dave Holmans Arigna Town thread. Marcway normally use code 75bulheadrail soldered soldered to copper clad sleepers, with the chairs represented by blobs of solder, old technology, but a lot quicker and easier on the sanity and eyesight than threading on 1000s of chairs on a large layout

The Limerick-Tipperary section was opened in May 1848 two months before the GSWR line from Thurles. That single sided arrangement for large stations seems to have been common at the time Oxford, Cambridge, Bray is more convenient for passengers than crossing a footbridge and very handy for adding horseboxes, carriage, trucks and vans to passenger trains in era when most Irish passenger trains ran with a long string of vans. Besides the W&L & the GSWR did not exactly have good relations with the W&L blocking GSWR attempts to run to Limerick or divert traffic away from Waterford.

Besides the magazines Carstens published somewhat quaint landscape pictorials on many of the smaller American railroads, I came across a treasure trove of Casten paperbacks on Eastern roads in a Charring Cross Road bookshop about 20 yrs ago and later met the Carstens at a Chicago train show. A sad passing probably one of the last of the old style family publishing businesses.

Junctionmad: There are several good quality steam era photos and a pre-67 track layout in "The Waterford and Limerick Railway" CEL Feyer Oakwood Press 2000. It looks like the loop at Keane's Points was originally a siding, probably as a shunting neck for trains to an from Waterford while the section from Oolaor or Dromkeen was occupied. The station layout is similar to other single sided stations from the early railway era with up & down trains sharing a single long platform. The whole layout was designed around adding and removing coaches and vans to and from passenger trains with a minimum of shunting. I am not convinced of the merits of EM over OO for a layout of this nature. C&L & SMP both do OO gauge bullhead flexible track & Markway standard and custom built pointwork. OO has an advantage of a smaller minimum radius than either EM or 21mm in terms of curves and you are spared the chore of re-wheeling and possibly widening chassis. I work in both EM &21mm. Going back to the direct curve there may have been a subsidiary instrument out at Keane's Point's to allow a staff to be remotely released from the North Cabin for movements from the Direct Curve towards Limerick, or someone simply walked out with the staff.

TPO test build. Alternative sides and gangway blanking plates are provided to build the tool/riding van version. Some minor changes needed to the final photo tool the first batch of kits should be available November.

A 1953 built Brake Standard 1904 and Laminate Standard 1442 appears to have been the ‘official” Ballina coaches in the 70s and early 80s, both were fitted with storage heaters so the train could be operated without a heating van. Earlier some C class diesels were fitted with ETH equipment for use with a handful of early GSR composites fitted with electric heating. Although similar in general appearance most early CIE coaches were slightly longer and had different window arrangements to the LMS Stanier stock. Rather than carve up an expensive Bachmann or Hornby model I have designed brass overlay sides "shrunk to fit" the inexpensive Dapol Stanier composite http://irishrailwaymodeller.com/showthread.php/3482-JM-Design-Coach-Sides-amp-TPO-kit

IE seems to have recently lifted all the yard trackage in North Esk https://www.flickr.com/photos/be216cd1/sets/72157626321868083. This would seem to go against any plans to use the yard as a Cork railfreight freight terminal

Great looking test pilot job on the flat Richie, really captures the look of a skeletal flat Des! Going back to the Hornby MK2As I have a sneaking suspicion I tried kitbashing a pair into Cravens back in the early 80s by cutting out the centre set of doors and gluing the two parts of the body together.