Mayner

. I like the idea of a diorama we can expect the buildings and structures to be to a similar standard to you GNR (I) signal box and waiting shelter. Are you planning to complete the model in 3mm or 4mm scale? Brian McCann modeled the County Donegal in 3mm on 9mm track, Worsley Works produce suitable coach sides for the Ballycastle in NCC days, though the Compound Tank locomotives used on the Antrim narrow gauge would be a challenging model in either scale.

The Deutz is a reasonably straight forward build, the main advantage of the Worsley Works kit is that you can fit the loco with a motor and 2 stage gearbox with better slow speed performance than the Spud motor bogie supplied with the Silver Fox rtr loco. http://www.worsleyworks.co.uk/Image-Pages/Image_4mm_Deutz-2.htm https://newirishlines.org/2009/09/23/building-a-worsley-works-cie-g-class/

Interesting maintaining a "Train Register" for a model railway, I wonder did he worked as a signal man before he took up driving? A fair proportion of professional railway men/women are enthusiasts active in both railway modelling and in the preservation movement.

The Directive basically forces the Government to open up domestic rail passenger services within the Republic to competitive tendering. https://www.nationaltransport.ie/public-transport-services/public-service-obligation-contracts/ The Government have been preparing to open up rail services to competitive tendering for several years, with IE operating as a "shadow franchise" operating passenger services under a PSO contract for the NTA as regulator. The next logical step would be to transfer the railways to NTA ownership (in a similar manner to LUAS) and split IE into separate operating and infrastructure companies. Interestingly both Greece and Ireland have been more than happy to accept EU money to upgrade their railway systems, but are reluctant to play by the rules in implementing EU rail directives. While I see little point in squeezing rail workers wages and conditions in order to export profits overseas, DB, Transdev or even an IE management buy-out would probably result in an improved level of service and value for money in terms of public subsidy that the current set up "4th Rail Package The market pillar will complete the process of gradual market opening started with the 1st railway package. It establishes the general right for railway undertakings established in one Member State to operate all types of passenger services everywhere in the EU, lays down rules aimed at improving impartiality in the governance of railway infrastructure and preventing discrimination and introduces the principle of mandatory tendering for public service contracts in rail. Competition in rail passenger service markets will encourage railway operators to become more responsive to customer needs, improve the quality of their services and their cost-effectiveness. The competitive tendering of public service contracts will enable savings of public money. The market pillar is expected to deliver more choice and better quality of rail services for European citizens, these being the overriding objectives. The technical pillar is designed to boost the competitiveness of the railway sector by significantly reducing costs and administrative burden for railway undertakings wishing to operate across Europe. In particular, it will save firms from having to file costly multiple applications in the case of operations beyond one single Member State. ERA will issue vehicle authorizations for placing on the market and safety certificates for railway undertakings, valid throughout the EU. So far, railway undertakings and manufacturers needed to be certified separately by each relevant national safety authority. create a "One stop shop" which will act as a single entry point for all such applications, using easy, transparent and consistent procedures. ensure that European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) equipment is interoperable. reduce the large number of remaining national rules, which create a risk of insufficient transparency and disguised discrimination of new operators."

Inchacore Works 1994-5? BREL International Coaches on temporary B4 bogies awaiting conversion into the Cu na Mara set for the Galway Line. A section of the carriage shops(Lifting Shop?) was destroyed in a fire in the early 1990s and re-built into a Crystal Palace style structure. MK3 Push pull driving car mock up between coaches and freight bogies. The photo of the flat wagon with the trailer is interesting. The trailer looks odd to modern eyes with what appear to be solid tyres and the axle under the center line of the body. GSR road vehicles appear to have been reasonably up to date with pneumatic tyres and high ground clearance for Irish roads by the 1930s. The railways experimented with road-rail vehicles & roll on roll off swap bodies in the 1930s. The NCC experimented in the 1930s with a roll-on-roll-off system for transferring containers between road and rail rather than a crane, the County Donegal introduced a small number of "Tranship Wagons" with swap bodies in the early 1900s where a narrow gauge wagon body could be transferred onto a broad gauge underframe using a system of rollers. The Tranship wagons appear to have been mainly used for bulk traffic such as stone and coal, containers were later used for through traffic under customs bond through Northern Ireland between Donegal and other the rest of the Republic. There is a photo of a passenger train in early CIE/Late GSR days arriving or departing from Limerick Junction with a road-rail tanker (similar to those used in the UK https://www.igg.org.uk/rail/11-kitba/rrtank.htm) on a Carriage Truck coupled between the loco & the 1st of the coaches. Carriage Trucks were basically low sided flat cars designed to carry road vehicles that could run at passenger train speed, most stations had a dock for loading/unloading road vehicles off flat wagons and carriage trucks, new cars, tractors and agricultural machinery were delivered by rail to local stations up to the mid 1970s.

The Bell Ships were surprisingly small by modern standards.

You could try snail mail "Chief Mechanical Engineers Office" Inchacore Works Dublin 8 or alternatively forward an e-mail enquiry through General Enquiries on the main web site. The CMEs Office used to be helpful in responding to requests for information from enthusiasts, but I haven't had replies to letters/e-mail in recent years.

Days are starting to get longer towards the end of Matariki with snow drops and daffodils starting to bloom. We ran our second group operating session early in July with the end of leaf fall. Two train crews and a few lookers good sunny winters day kept us busy operating for 3 hrs though we started to run out of daylight while we were returning the trains to storage! This area is shaded for most of the year with a brief window of sunlight in late afternoon during winter time but well worth the wait. The train is a mixed freight returning to storage, the gondolas (opens) in the backrgound will be picked up by a clean up run. 463 with a stock train, this is close to the maximum load for this loco on the 4% grade to the shed. A couple of weeks later 348 arrives at Arboles with a mixed freight (I planted tres arboles 3-4 years ago but they take time to become established). The track was laid on re-cycled ballast (fied with concrete bonding agent) on pond liner on 18mm treated ply and the moss takes over during the cooler, damper months (most of the year!) The train is a positioning run to deliver cars to this yard before I run the sequence. The caboose waits on the main line while the loco positions the cars on the siding (loop). Grading and tracklaying finally started on the Utah Extension extending the tail of the wye track. Not sure if it will go much further like a lot of planned extensions, but its already added another useful source of traffic and greatly simplifies reversing complete trains without a lot of time consuming switching.

Its looking well Patrick, have you implemented a car routing system? I am experimenting with JMRI Operations Pro which works well in large scale as its easy to read the car numbers and running one or two way freight/pick up goods dropping off or picking up one or two cars at wayside stations/yards can keep an operating crew occupied for a long time without the need for two much stock & tends to be more interesting than fixed formation passenger/freight trains.

I use an ancient Unimat SL for turning /milling the frame profile and drilling the chassis for my T&D railcar, I used a cheap 100watt soldering iron for soldering up the frames once I was satisfied that everything was square and bolted together, the vertical drill set up is basically the standard for pilot drilling for coupling rod and axle centers. Milling frame blanks Vertical drill drilling out holes in center of frame spacers Finished components waiting assembly. Not bad for a 1st attempt at profile milling.

Guy Williams book "The 4mm Engine a scratchbuilders guide" https://www.abebooks.com/9780906867709/4mm-Engine-Scratchbuilders-Guide-Richard-0906867703/plp or John Ahearn's Miniature Locomotive construction https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30343477715&searchurl=an%3Djohn%2Bahern%26sortby%3D20%26tn%3Dminiature%2Blocomotive%2Bconstruction&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-title2 are probably a better general introduction to scratchbuilding locos in the larger scales, than Iain Rice's work which is more suitable for 4mm fine scale work. Guy William's was a highly respected model locomotive builder who built many of the locomotives that regularly operate in the Pendon model railway museum in Oxfordshire and John Ahearn basically pioneered 4mm scenic modelling with the Madder Valley Railway which included a large number of scratchbuilt standard and narrow gauge locos that operated on OO gauge track the layout was restored and also operated at the Pendon museum. https://pendonmuseum.com/

Spent a very enjoyable week in Colorado in 2016 for me the highlights was not quite getting caught in a snow storm at Trout Lake water tower and trestle while tracing the remains of the Rio Grande Southern between Telluride and Lizard Head Pass. Daughter mainly interested in Thomas & Friends set ups at every museums & railroad depot we visited. Holiday worked out mighty expensive when I replace nearly all my LGB & Bachmann stuff with 1:20.3 after seeing the sheer mass of full size American narrow gauge equipment

I bought S&S No 4 Erin from a modeller in the UK (forgotten his name) who built several Irish Narrow gauge locos in plasticard on rtr chassisand was moving up to standard gauge on 2"½" gauge! Erin is very sturdily built in 1-2mm plasticard with no sign of warping or distortion, only bought parts very old LGB 0-4-0 chassis bogie wheels vacuum pipes and possibly dome!

I used to paint CIE coaches black and tan on one side and green on the other to span two eras, gone back to painting both sides the same these days.

Studio Scale Models produce a 10mm scale kit of a Tralee & Dingle Kerr Stewart 2-6-0T most likely to run on O Gauge track. The kit was originally designed and produced by Adrian Rowland. Worsley Worksmight blow-up some of their T&D scratchbuilder parts to 10mm if you ask. 15mm Scale (bigger still) is widley used for models of 3' gauge stock on 45mm (gauge 1) track outdoors the rtr stuff is expensive https://www.track-shack.com/acatalog/Accucraft-S20-9G-IOM-Mona-2-4-0T-Lined-Ailsa-Green-live-steam-locomotive-Accucraft-S20-9G.html I have a "near enough" plasticard scratchbuilt model of a Schull & Skibereen 4-4-0T on a Playmobile/LGB 0-4-0 chassis which would have been reasonably inexpensive and satisfying/straightforward to build. There is also an inexpensive IP Engineering http://www.ipengineering.co.uk/page26.html 16mm laser cut ply and card kit of the T&D inspection railcar

Colin GSR diagrams (outline only very little detail) of C&M locos were published a recent edition of New Irish Lines. I can scan a copy of the diagrams if its of help. Apparently the authors have been unable to locate a diagram of the original locos as rebuilt into 4-4-0Ts or the C&L 4-4-0Ts

There is a 1969 photo of a Cabra-Listowel horsebox special at Newcastle West in Rails Through North Kerry. The train was hauled by B160 and was made up of 15 "Pacos" (horseboxes) with a tin van at each end.

Trackwork looks really neat

Silver Fox supply OO gauge rtr models of the D & G Class that appear to pass the 2 foot rule i.e. layout locos that look close enough to the prototype from a distance of 2'. The D appears to be a re-painted Bachmann 08 and should have good slow speed running characteristics necessary for a shunter http://silverfoxmodels.co.uk/ir-ie-301-class-d-class-0-6-0-inchicore-works/ The rtr G Class appears to use a Tenshodo Spud motor bogie which is not exactly ideal for a shunter, The 27:1 Black Beetle bogie would be more controllable and have a better speed range than a Spud. The Valve Design (Shapeways) E421 appears to be a reasonably accurate model, the main drawback is achieving an acceptable surface finish with a 3D printed body and sourcing a suitable chassis. I assembled an E421 several years ago using a combination of the Shapeways body, my own detail parts and a custom built Bull Ant chassis. I don't see demand for a rtr E Class stacking up in terms of a rtr model, majority out of service by 1980, limited livery variations. The best option for a rtr E Class would probably to commission DC Kits or Silver Fox to design and manufacture a resin body to fit on a Black Beetle motor bogie with a non powered leading axle or commission Hollywood Foundry to produce a batch of custom built chassis to suit an E Class.

It would be interesting to see if there is sufficient level of demand to justify (IRM?) commissioning a rtr E421 or G611 Class. Judging by Murphy Models & IRM releases the highest level of demand appears to be for models of locos and stock which operated during the past 30-40 years, when the D, E & G Class shunting locos were scrapped or out of service. The majority of the diesel shunter's had a relatively short service life and apart from the G Class quite restricted area of operation. The Ds & Es were largely restricted to pilot duty at Connolly & Heuston Station, the North Wall Yards and Heuston-North Wall transfer duties. Most of the D401s appear to have been out or servcie or scrapped by the late 1960s The E401s appear to have been based in Inchacore for use on Heuston carriage & goods yard pilot duties and North Wall Transfer and shunting duties, The E421s appeared to have been used for Connolly coaching pilot duties and shunting and banking at the North Wall, eventually replacing E401s on Heuston pilot duties as the latter locos wore out and main line locos took over North-Wall Heuston transfer freights. The G Class were more widely dispersed but apart from a few sold to the Sugar Company and one (G611?) "borrowed" by CIE to shunt Limerick wagon works out of use by the mid-80s.

Depends on where in the world you are and the nationality/first language of the graffiti crew of gang members. Tags often include crew members or gang initials or signatures.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti#Tagging We had a very interesting meeting with the local Community Constable several years ago during which he produced and interpreted whats best described as a library of local grafitti including the names of specific gangs and deciphered some of the messages. Unfortunately the police abolished the community constables and centralised everything to "improve" their service to the public .

You hit the nail on the head minister a lot of graffiti or tagging is tied up with street gangs claiming territory. Tagging a train sends out a pretty strong statement in terms of claiming territory, rival gangs will tag-over each others graffiti. In New Zealand most city councils have a unit that basically records taggers signatures and paints out unauthorised grafitti on public property, police also keep a watch on graffiti as part of monitoring and controlling gang activity. We had a graffiti attack late one night on a construction site in Auckland several years ago, the perpetrators were not exactly under-privileged kids from the wrong side of the tracks but adults in well paid employment. The mupetts put themselves at considerable risk by walking out on a ledge 5 stories up to perform their art. Luckily a neighbour spotted what was going on and took their registration number.

They regularly worked Dunlaoire Pier trains, possibly too heavy at 17.8 ton axle load to work south of Dunlaoire. Some of the Midland Cs Class 4-4-0s (axleload 17 tons) 540-44 ended their days in the early 1950s on DSER suburban services. "I last fired on of this class in 1954 on the DSER suburban services. She was being worked to death at this time and , still steaming freely, bucked her way from Bray to Dubin until it was no longer safe to have her on the road. Cuscah would have been horified to see his fine mainline steeds on a glorified tram service" J O'Neill A Decade of Steam RPSI 1973? Another one for the wish list?

Hi David Yes I received your message, its likely that I will be going ahead with the design work for the J5 once I complete the artwork for the 52 Class & Midland Standard Goods (kits). I would be reluctant to commit at this stage to produce a weathered variation of the J5, weathering is very subjective its much simpler from a production and quality point of view to produce an ex-works finish.