Mayner

EM appears to be a reasonable compromise for Irish broad gauge and would allow Irish and British outline models to run on the same layout! I know at least one (UK based) modeller who has an EM (18.2mm) gauge MGWR 2-4-0 Modelling Irish railways in EM is a similar compromise to modelling British outline in OO and reduces the "narrow gauge" appearance of Irish steam locos and stock when viewed head on, the main advantage in using EM over 21mm is that it considerably simplifies loco/rolling stock conversion with EM loco and rolling stock wheel sets available from the trade and EM gauge society and eliminates the requirement to widen/replace bogies and rolling stock chassis to accept 21mm wheel sets. A significant issue in converting Irish rtr (and some kits) coaches and wagons to 21mm gauge before the introduction of IRMs bogie freight stock. Martyn Wynne's (Templot) choice of 20.2mm for "Irish EM" appears similar to the EM gauge society choice of 18.2mm as opposed to the more accurate 18.83mm for British outline standard gauge and may be related to concerns with achieving sufficient running clearances for EM profile wheels in broad gauge loco chassis. Having built several steam outline 21mm gauge locos I would be tempted to try EM if I was starting over again.

Studio Scale Models 30T Brake Van kit http://www.studio-scale-models.com › Brake30 is a reasonably inexpensive option at for modelling one of these vans. The kit is relatively simple to assemble and includes a Dapol Prestwin chassis complete with wheels and couplings, body folds up from one piece of brass and can be assembled by gluing, no soldering required.

Received the August Newsletter today which includes a 'goldmine" of information on Dublin's North Wall freight operations including an excellent collection of black and white and colour photos of the yards and transfer freight from the late 1940s to the 1990s including photos of Inchacore's pioneering Mirrless & Sulzer diesel locos in operation including 1968 and 1971 photos of a smartly turned out B114 working Heuston-North Wall freights. Well worth the subscription

30T Goods Brakes were used in revenue service on sugar beet trains until the ending of loose coupled operation following the introduction of the Beet Double wagons in 1985. Dublin-Tralee was the last long distance main line goods train to go over to Liner Operation after a coupling broke on a Heuston Goods-Tralee goods while climbing the Gullet to Inchacore and the train ran back into the passenger station and was wrecked. Loose coupled Cross Border (Dundalk-Adelaide) goods trains (with modern wagons & 30T Brakes continued to operate for some years after CIEs goods services went over to Liner Train operation. The duckets on the 20T & 30T Brake vans were different in profile and warning stripe arrangement. The 20T vans originally had vertical planked duckets, some were later covered in metal sheeting and some replaced with pressed metal duckets. On some 20T vans the vertical body planking was replaced by plywood, some balconies appear to to have been sheeted in ply others retained the vertical planking. The ducket and markings on the 30T Brakes appear to be quite different to the sheet metal duckets used on 20T Brakes

The Guardian is currently running a series on rail travel (mainly local slow trains) in Europe focusing on the more interesting scenic train rides, including Finland, Norway, and the Oder-Neisse line through the Czech Republic, Germany and Poland Todays article is on Irelands most scenic lines featuring Rosslare-Dublin, Cork Cobh, Longford-Sligo, Dublin-Belfast, the WRC and Derry to Coleraine https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2022/aug/03/6-best-railway-train-trips-in-ireland-dublin-belfast-rosslare-cork-sligo

There is a 1956 photo of 190L in the PJ Flannigan Collection (a must for C&L fans!) on the IRRS Flickr site https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/50163963961/in/album-72157715275322482/ The van which seems to be out of us by 1956 has a set of double outward opening doors with droplights at the balcony end, there is a Des Coakham photo of the van in less run down condition in Cavan & Leitrim Railway the Last Decde pictorial album Tom Ferris and Patrick Flanagan Midland Publishing 1997. Its possible that the 190L may have been used at some stage as a passenger brake, according to Flanagan the "vans were very well though of at first, but were not long in use as they got "shaky". One was used in emergencies, both survived to the end in bad condition."

Possibly because black was the only suitable paint available when 10L received its last re-paint/running overhaul. 10L and 6t also appear to have been painted black during their final years working on the C&L. There is a 1956 black and white photo of what appears to be a black 10L under overhaul in Ballinamore in the Pan Paperback edition of P J Flannigan's Cavan and Leitrim Book and a colour photo of a Black 6t almost ex-works taking water at Drunshanbo in 1957 in "Irish Railways in Colour" Tom Ferris (Midland Publishing 1992). Both 6t and the two surviving ex-CBPR 2-4-2T were in a grimy run down state with paint burnt off the chimneys and smokeboxes when the line closed in March 1959.

No 18 appears to be hauling an ex Clogher Valley Guards Van as a 'Red Van"

The Welsh Highland Heritage Railway Hunslet 2-6-2T Russell and vintage train operated a number of Hertiage trains over the re-opened Welsh Highland Railway between Dinas and Rhyd-Ddu as part of the Centenary celebrations of the re-opening of the original North Wales Narrow Gauge Railway to passenger services. The positioning run from Portmadoc was the first occasion Russell worked over the entire WHR main line between Portmadoc and Dinas since the line was closed in 1937. The coaches are replicas of original North Wales Narrow Gauge coaches dating from the 1880s to the early 1900s. I was attracted to the WHR and volunteered for the Heritage Railway during the 90s possibly as a result of the apparent similarity to the Tralee & Dingle and Donegal narrow gauge lines.

Merlin has not exactly had a good record on the "Seabreeze", No 171 seem to have a more consistent record being used to pounding up and down the grades of the Derry Road with heavy trains in the 50s and 60s Diesel was substituted for 85 because of fire risk when we rode the "Seabreeze" in 2018 and she failed (at Greystones?) on the return leg in 2019.

Russ Elliot's CLAG section on Continuous Beam Suspension does not appear to recommend extending CBS to include bogies. http://www.clag.org.uk/beam-annex3.html#should-CSBs-be-extended-to-include-bogies Though Scalefour Digest 41 includes is a diagram showing CBS for a 4-6-0 Fig 76 http://www.clag.org.uk/41-0rev.html#section19 Transferring weight to the bogie as Fig 76 would make sense though it may be a matter of how much. It may be a matter of experimentation when weighting and balancing the loco before final detailing stage. Officially the 800 Class had a locomotive weight of 84 Tons 4cwt, adhesion weight of 63 tons and a max axle load of 21 Tons (Clements & McMahon), to all intents and purposes the driving axles and bogie pivot carrying an equal weight.

Just noticed this thread! To turn the argument on its head what about the 95% of the population who will end up paying for the Metro (through their taxes) but will never travel on it? The main problem with funding public transport through general as opposed to local taxation is that it goes against the user pays principal with the small minority who regularly use rail benefiting, unlike roading, health and education where the majority of citizens benefit. Funding through local taxation, by landowners and by businesses that directly benefit is much more equitable. In many countries public transport is jointly funded by Central and Local Government with Central Government funding infrastructure, Local Government rolling stock and operating subsidy. In this part of the World public transport services are the responsibility or local and regional councils in terms of funding and service levels and are funded by rates with much more accountability at local levels than through an organisation like IE or the NTA. The Auckland Underground Rail Link the missing link in Auckland's suburban rail system is jointly funded by Central and Regional Government through direct (income tax) and local (Commercial and Domestic rates). Currently there is a high level of public and political opposition to imposing congestion charging (an Auckland fuel tax) to force motorists to use public transport. Like the DART, LUAS, and Metro, improvements in Auckland's rail system have been beset by delays for over 60 years and numerous consultants reports, New Zealand Railways 1950s proposals to extend and electrify the system was de-railed by a 50-90s focus on building motorways and low density housing, the Regional Council was forced to take baby steps to improve the existing diesel services with re-furbished ex BR rolling stock in the early 2000s to establish a case for electrifying the existing heavy rail lines. Attempts to build a Light Rail system to the Airport and areas outside the reach of the heavy rail system became a political football between political parties that support and oppose public transport achieving nothing in over 20 years.

A bit like construction farmers use specialist contractors to carry out ploughing, planting, harvesting, fertiliser spreading and spraying. Avoids tying up working capital in plant and difficulty recruiting/retaining skilled operators. Being a rail fan and living in the Waikato one of the big surprises in moving to New Zealand was that fertiliser was traditionally supplied in bulk rather than in bags often spread by 4w drive on-off road trucks or by air. Although most of the major depots were set up to receive fertiliser by rail traffic had virtually ceased by the early 2000s because of the high inventory cost of receiving and storing fertiliser in train load lots and high rolling stock maintenance costs. Bulk fertiliser was transported bogie hopper wagons similar to those used to transport coal https://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/end-of-the-line-for-ravensdown-rail-option/CTEAXRFEMRDXOP4Z6T7VRYNIEY/

Ultrascale may be a better option than Alan Gibson for P4 wheels as I understand that the Ultrascale wheel centers are molded rather than a press fit into the rims, Ultrascale also have a superior crankpin system with the crankpin bush recessed into the wheel center and a recessed pin for use behind slidebars on outside cylinder locos. I usually remove and Loctite Alan Gibson wheel centers to the rims because I had problems with the rims on Gibson wheels separating from the centers while pressing the wheel sets on to the axle while using a GW models wheel press tool. I had no problems with Gibson OO/EM profile driving wheels in service once the rims Alan Gibson supplies an extended 1/8" axle with the Outside Crank sets AGW Part no 5000,5001,5002, I cut the axle to length and face off in the Unimat on 21mm locos but need to find a use for my collection of surplus outside cranks!

Really creditable architectural modelling, its good to see a layout which incorporates early (1840s) railway architecture at Carlow and modernistic (post 2000) buildings and structures at Ashtown. The compressed nature of the station layout & low relief cement store is a good example of the challenges in building a model of a large mainline station such as Carlow in OO something that a lot easier to do convincingly in N Scale. I switched from OO to N scale around 1980 for much the same reason, but later returned to the larger scale in order to build Irish locos and stock.

Briquettes from the Littleton plant were transferred from road to rail at Thurles

According to W (Bill) McDonnell in a "Decade of Steam" the J15b 710 Class had a reputation of poor steaming and the injectors gave trouble if the small GSWR tenders, probable reason for placing the injectors in an accessible place!

The Z Boiler J15 conversion is on this years to-do list, its basically a matter of updating the CAD work to incorporate improvements identified as a result of the test build from the original artwork.

Some interesting photos. My family stayed for a week in the Roman Island caravan park on our summer holidays in 1975, Unlike JHB I didn't get to explore the railway or goods yard commercial shipping had ceased and the gates to the port entrance & the grain elevator locked The Limerick Steamship Company had a dilapidated wooden office/shed (not unlike the Dapol coal office https://www.petersspares.com/dapol-c011-hut-coal-office-water-crane-plastic-kit-oo-gauge.ir) at the Westport end of the Quay Road. Poloxfen's Grain Elevator was likely to have been built during the early 1900s, the RH Hall Elevator on Dublin's North Wall was built between 1915-20. The industrial buildings and tall chimney in the background behind the elevator may be the mill and power plant. Its possible bulk grain was loaded into MGWR convertible wagons through the roof and discharged through the side doors, American and Canadian Railroads carried grain in standard boxcars up to the widespread introduction of purpose built hopper wagons during the 1970s and 80s. Its good to see the photo of 001 hauling a tank wagon and CIE containers on flat wagons, there is a an excellent colour photo possibly of the same train shunting at Westport Quay in an IRRS Journal published during the late 80s early 90s, worth checking out by visiting the IRRS Library if in Dublin. The tank wagons were used for bringing in diesel to the CIE bus garage in the station yard, the 20' containers on 4w flat wagons were used as convention vans loaded/unloaded in the goods yard rather than for Lo-Lo collection and delivery

The "Ulster and Connacht" is mentioned briefly in P J Flannigan's Cavan & Leitrim Railway and in more detail in E M Patterson' Clogher Valley Railway. The Ulster and Connacht Light Railway was one of a number of schemes to link and amalgamate the Bessbrook & Newry, Clogher Valley and Cavan & Leitrim narrow gauge lines and extend the combined system into Roscommon & Galway. Ulster and Connacht promoters approached the C&L board for their support in the 1880 but nothing further is known. The "Ulster and Connacht Light Railways" re-appeared in the early 1900s and received parlimentary approval in 1903 to amalgamate and link the existing three narrow gauge systems, buy the mining rights to the Arigna Coalfield. The company issued a proposal in 1904 to build a line to extend the system through Strokestown, Roscommon, Mountbellew, Tuam with a branch lines to Galway City & Ballinrobe, the main line continuing through Cong into Connemara to Leenane on Killary Harbour to Clifden. The Dromod-Roscommon-Mountbellew section of the scheme are similar to light railway and tramway schemes of the 1880s which would have had a reasonable chance of success. The only actual construction carried out in connection with the Ulster and Connacht is/was an underbridge in a broad gauge railway embankment at Keadue in County Armagh built in 1908-9 to accommodate the Bessbrook-Tynan section of the U&C

The GNR & SLNCR were the main users of peak roofed Railbus/Railcar trailers in Ireland. The main challenge is building the railbus/railcar to haul the trailers. Neil Ramsey has mastered the art in 15mm scale and David Holman 7mm scale SLNCR railbus and trailer has appeared on his Workshop, Arigna & possibly Belmullet layout threads. Neil Ramsey's SLNCR railbus and luggage trainer appears at approx 1:47 in his Irish Broad Gauge Diesel railcar video

I am not the greatest at lining,. I usually paint coaches in 2/3 colours using spray can auto paint and masking using Tamiya masking tape which is available in a variety of widths. I don't remember whether I did the eau-de-nil strip using transfers (from Studio Scale Models) or masking. As a general rule I cut the edge of the tape against a straight edge with a sharp knife before applying the masking take to the model as the edge of the role may be damaged or not 100% straight. Carefully dress the tape around raised and recessed body detail before spraying the sides (and masking tape) with a light coat of body colour, this will stop the lining/second colour bleeding into the details ruining the model. The spray of hand paint the lining colour. I usually have 'livery colours" such as green, golden brown custom mixed by a local automotive/industrial paint supplier matched from existing models or colour samples. Starting from scratch the best option is to spray the body/side in the lining colour then mask for the body colour. The middle Tin Van has been spayed in white before applying the black and the tan as the livery colours, the van on the left is in silver livery colour, the van on the right in eau-de-nil primer before applying the light green livery colour.

A lot of current day releases model railway and die-cast vehicles appear to be intended to appeal primarily to the collectors market, relatively small production batches which tend to sell out rapidly. The golden rule is that the market sets the price when you buy and sell whether its crypto-currency, digital art, model train and diecast collections, or more conventional investments like property or stocks and shares. If you need to sell you are likely to receive less than you spent. I have some American large scale (1:20.3) narrow gauge locos and stock bought second hand from collectors and dealer, some of which were 'Shelf Queens" or were never un-boxed the prices paid were lower or similar to current manufacturers prices for new releases of similar items.

Having done nothing with North Wharf since February I painted the backscene with a "sky" blue undercoat and hooked up the radio DCC system, mainly because I need to move the layout out of the workshop/layout room to the home office! I will fit view blockers, fascia and pelmet once I complete the scenic works and possibly buildings The small Digitrix panel is a Radio/Infra-Red receiver allowing "hands free' operation with loco(s) and points controlled by DCC, remoter uncoupling with Kadee couplers and uncoupling magnets. I still need to finalise the buildings and structures in the Granary end. Complete terrace of houses between maltings and overbridge with semi-low relief malting building in corner behind bridge. The traverser/fiddle yard restricts train length to a small loco and 4 wagons. Baseboard end view showing DCC-Concepts baseboard alignment dowels and power connector (track and point power). The blue mixed at the local DIY store came out very close to the existing (2012-4?) backscenes. Backscenes screwed to stripwood strips.

Up to the mid 1990 block fertiliser trains regularly operated from Shelton Abbey, Foynes, New Ross, and occasionally Galway possibly from Belfast and Cork to destinations around the CIE/IE Network the majority of depots were served by a loop or siding so a train could be unloaded clear of the Main Line. The 1980 WWT had 3 bagged fertiliser paths daily to and from Shelton Abbey which appear to have operated regularly two from Shelton to the South & West and One to Cabra which acted as a staging point for other destinations. An 09:35 Shelton-New Ross via Kilkenny path is listed in the WTT this may have been used for block fertiliser trains serving Carlow, Kilkenny or Waterford. I remember seeing a block fertiliser being unloaded in the yard on the north side of the running lines in Kilkenny in 92/3 while a bagged cement train was being unloaded in the yard in on the south side present station building. Albatros fertiliser traffic from New Ross is likely to have been covered in the "Weekly Notices" with no scheduled trains or paths listed on the New Ross branch where laden fertiliser trains were operated in two portions between New Ross and Waterford because of grades. The 1980 WTT lists one Galway-Farranfore (private siding) and two Shelton-Tralee paths.