Mayner

Brian Fennell a member of the MRSI Loughrea group scratchbuilt a rake of 15-20 mainly GSWR cattle wagons about 20 years ago. Provincial Models produce a nice model of the standard IRCH cattle wagon used by the GNR & SLNCR, no one produces a kit or rtr KN

The Cement Factory Branch opened in the 1930s up to the mid 60s most of the traffic went out in wooden bodied GNR vans or CIE H Vans. In the 1950s the GNR acquired a small number (12?) of bulk cement wagons for traffic to the Athy asbestos factory, these wagons were similar in general appearance to the then standard British Railways plywood bodied van but with an all steel body with the bottom section formed into a hopper. The GNR bulk cement wagons ran singally or in cuts of wagons in ordinary goods trains rather than the block or unit train workings of more modern cement wagons Platin came on line in the early 70s. The cement factory branch would make an interesting model in its own right, with a number of sidings serving separate industries including a factory and the oil terminal in addition to the cement factory. The oil terminal came on line in the mid 1960s to handle block oil trains from Foynes. The terminal could also receive oil sea and continued in use for oil traffic to Platin until the plant converted to oil burning in the late 1980s

I finally got around to ballasting the main line through Utah Junction following the track re-lay. Ballasting is basically a much more expensive scaled up version of small scale loose ballasting techniques using screened stone chips and 50% diluted concrete bonding agent. Glue applied using a large syringe and a length of clear plastic tube rather than an eyedropper . Waiting for some rain to wash away the stone dust from the rails and sleepers. Big improvement in overall experience , though I need to build up the ground around the water tower. There is a noticeable bump/change of level in the main running line opposite the water tower where I replaced a decayed section of decking/track support. I improved cross levels on a section of the main line in this area where the cross levels were badly off leading to excessive swaying and pitching as trains ran through at not quite speed. The area in the background has started to revert to bush https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_bush with self seeding shrubs and trees (including a Tasmanian Blackwood and a Sweet Gum) in the 10 years since a large gum tree in this area fell over fortunately not landing on the railway. The pencil pines by the water tower were planted about 5 years ago to provide more "scale" foliage, in the foreground a dwarf box hedge is taking over the area between the edge of baseboard and main line.

Another year older few if any of last years un-finished projects completed here we go again. GSWR coach painted, interiors to be fitted, decals, glazing and couplings still to be fitted. Brake 3rd hole above the ducket is for one of the side lamps. I like a mixture of open and closed droplights. 4 Compt 1st a lot more legroom and seating with armrests. I still have to finish installing pick ups on the J26, paint the loco and decide on lettering or a numberplate. The interior is not a pretty sight at this stage, not happy with the results from brush painting the partitions, will replace when I get my hands on some Evergreen planked styrene.

I think it was more a case of the cost and availability of land. A railway company would leave itself open to a lot of political pressure and potentially loose a lot of money if its stations were incapable of handling the traffic generated by a cattle fair or other peak seasonal traffic like fish or fresh produce. The Government funded railways (Baltimore, Valencia) tended to be a horse of an other colour with scrimping on construction and facilities compared to privately built lines. Galway and Harcourt Street stations were on relatively short but wide sites with station, goods yard and loco sheds in close proximity, while relatively small stations like Athenry and Loughrea spread out over the best part of a mile. Galway had/has the advantage of a loop that extends almost out to Renmore which allowed the station to handle long passenger and goods trains. While the Loughrea mixed passenger train usually loaded to 3w wheel coaches and half a dozen wagons, the station was capable of dispatching over 100 Cattle wagons in 4-5 specials during the big autumn cattle fairs. The average mixed on the Valencia line appears to have loaded to a couple of 6w coaches and 18-20 wagons. On the narrow gauge the C&L coal trains appear to have loaded to 10 wagons and a brake, on Keadue 5 wagons and a brake appears to reasonably With selective compression in 4mm 10-15 wagons appears to be a reasonable length of goods train.

Finding a home for the loco shed has been a problem since the day I bought it many years ago. It did not work in on the last N gauge layout so kind of now or never for the N gauge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WasCaeonY_s&feature=youtu.be I finished (most of) the wiring on the staging, industries yard board and surprise myself by running some trains to test that the layout is workable. Baldwin RF16 "Sharknose" diesels 1205 & 1216 picking up a cut of boxcars from the paper-mill. Rather like the Irish Rail MK2AC coaches the D&H acquired the sharks from a scrap dealer for an equivalent amount of scrap metal (boxcars). I have cut an opening in the baseboard for a river/stream to add a bit of visual interest and use up a Micro-Engineering bridge kit. I was playing with the AF feature of the camera with an aperture of f25 on a tripod to try and get a decent depth of field(difficult in N) The building behind the locos is a silo for storing household coal common in the North East and other parts of the US & Canada that have hard winters. A paper mill is a no-brainer as a lineside industry on the D&H. Shorter exposure moving train. The layout is similar in concept to Castlerackrent with an industry to add operating interest and act as a view blocker to the staging/fiddle yard. The Sharks leaving Port James on a local freight. The dilemma at this stage is whether to keep the layout as an Office Display piece or keep it in the garage and expand it into a large continuous run Class 1 layout (so I can run my collection of American diesels.) and once again let the Irish 21mm layout take a back seat. Mill/staging baseboard. Control is DCC (Digitrax DB150 command stations with radio throttles) the layout is divided into 3 power districts protected by Powershield PX1 digital circuit breakers (circuit board in left center), the circuit breakers both simplify fault finding and appear to have prolonged the lift of the command stations. Seep point motors connected to Lenz stationary decoders. Power feed to be wired in for pointwork and stationary decoders to be connected to circuit breakers. Trackwork, point motors, electronic components have all been salvaged from a layout started in Ireland about 20 years ago. Trackwork is Peco Code 55 with Electro frog points, I initially wired the points using the built-in switches to control frog/crossing changeover but have since installed sub-miniature micro switches and as relying on the combination of blade contact and built in pointmotor switches lead to intermittent contact & un-reliable slow running.

Nice to see the MGWR van assembled with the alternative doors! I will post you a set of end castings & handbrake wheels. I haven't heard back from Dart Castings on whether they have these particular castings in stock. The amount of tarnish is a bit odd on a fret straight from the engravers, possibly rushing with pre-Christmas orders. Those 6 compt GSWR 3rds did not exactly have a lot of leg room, most were withdrawn/converted to turf-wagons during the Emergency.

The Worsley Works Laminate Brake Standard is based on the 1909-1913? series built in 1959.

Interesting exercise which basically demonstrates that a small country terminus or through station requires a similar space lengthwise to a large terminus or junction station. Makes sense though on a railway system that was set up to handle 50-60 wagon goods trains and 20-30 wagon goods trains were not exactly un-known on country branchlines. It will be interesting to see how your North Wall scheme works out.

I don't know if there are verified 90+ mph timings for members of the 800 Class or other Irish steam locos. Irish steam records are mainly based on stopwatch recordings of runs by journalists and enthusiast "timers". In the steam era there was little need for high speed running in the absence of competing routes apart from Belfast-Londonderry and Belfast-Newcastle, in the South average train speeds were scheduled with relatively low 42.3mph Kingsbridge-Cork, 26.9 mph Kingsbridge Waterford, 33.6mph Broadstone-Galway. The most important trains were the cross-Channel Mails which were heavily loaded and called at all the principal stations, the ordinary all-stations passenger trains were even slower. The Irish steam record is held by a 1934 non-stop Dublin-Cork special (for the newly appointed American Ambassador) with a recorded average speed of 85.6 mph between Ballybrophy and Portlaoise. 402 may have reached or exceeded 90 at some stage between the two stations. Cecil J. Allen a British railway journalist appears to have been invited by the GSR to record the run. average speed exceeded 70mph between Limerick Junction and Kingsbridge. The loco was 402 a 2 cylinder 4-6-0 driven by Mark Foley with 3 coaches (95 tons gross). 402 was considered to be the best of the rebuilt 400 Class similar in capability to a GWR Saint or Southern King Arthur. 800 is reported to have achieved 92mph during a demonstration run in July 1939 There is a log of a run of 800 on an up Cork Mail between Portlaoise and Kingsbridge in Aug 1939 with 450 Tons in O.S. Nocks Irish Steam with a maximum recorded speed of 76.5 mph at Hazlehatch. O S Nock was particularly impressed with 800s acceleration on the climb out of Cork but the crew ran into problems with a sticking regulator valve near the top of the bank out of Cork and a patch of poor quality coal during the middle of the journey. A number of 001 Class were uprated to 1650hp this was to ensure that certain trains including Heuston-Tralee passenger trains could keep time within the existing line limits of 70mph on the Dublin-Cork line and 60mph Mallow-Tralee lines.

I guess its the greater mass but large scale locos and stock tend to be more fragile than OO or N. I had to re-build the pilot beam of 348 after she fell from a raised section of line about 7-8 months ago.

More or less finished tracklaying & power-bus wiring on the new layout. Remaining tasks to commission DCC control system include installing accessory decoders to control pointwork, Loconet cables and Digitrax UR91 radio receivers General view Fort/Port James? or main line section of layout. SD45s are on RW6 "The Paper Train" a high priority freight that conveyed newsprint from Canadian & on-line paper mills to the major Eastern US Cities. A pair of RS3 switchers & an RS11 wait their next assignment at the roundhouse while Baldwin Sharks 1205 & 1216 are working a local freight. This section of baseboard will have a curved MDF fascia profiled to match the ground contours and the backscene will be formed in a similar manner with a painted backdrop of the Adirondack mountains. H9N will run along the front of the layout past the foreground buildings before crossing the railroad with a 1930s concrete overpass. I originally intended to use low relief industrial and commercial buildings in the background, but have decided on a combination of steeply sloping tree covered hills and rockfaces in the background, I will probably trim the loco shed back into a semi-low relief structure. General view looking South. The backscene will follow the line of the foam track underlay, loco shed will be trimmed back to fit. Turntable is Peco, Spur tracks at the south end of the yard will be used mainly to store empty box cars for paper traffic from the local paper mills, ore cars/hoppers for traffic in connection with iron ore traffic. General view looking North. Foreground buildings Depot parking lot? A more open foreground may work better visually and be a lot less work than detailing all those buildings. I will probably replace the depot with one based on an actual depot on the actual line.

Oops!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Classical mishap while turning 348 yesterday just as 464 was waiting to be flagged into the yard. 348 just rolled forward as she was being turned, luckily she did not roll the other way and fall onto the floor.

A Civil Engineer once told me a 150 year old retaining wall would not "stand up" on paper. To a large degree the slope angle depends on whether you are forming a cutting or an embankment. Depending on ground conditions cuttings may have steeper slopes than embankments formed from fill material.

Looking well Ken. The later DWWR/DSER 2-4-0 & 2-4-2T had a business line appearance with high pitched boilers and large side tanks very little of the dainty finesse of 458 Class 4-4-2T about them. It almost looks like some one in Inchacore or possibly an ex-DSER draftsman had a hand in designing the 670 Class 0-6-2T, which was basically a superheated passenger tank version of a J15.

Ran what was probably the last trains of 2018 yesterday, mainly because I needed to use the staging yard as a workbench for some work on a new N gauge layout, but that's another story. I have been experimenting with JMRI Panel Pro ---Operations to create manifests and switch lists for freight trains in preparation for regularish operating sessions. Seems to work despite the limited number of cars with trains loading to 70-80% of capacity, one of the advantages of large scale is that its easy to read the numbers of the cars Manifest for a way freight (pick-up goods) train spends a lon-ng time of the road! Yesterdays schedule required 3 locos K27s 2-8-2 463 & 464 for the long distance freights, C19 2-8-0 for switching and trip working out of Jackson City and all available freight cars. 348 has cleared the yard and made up two freights for departure and waiting to depart with a caboose hop to collect stock cars and gondolas from towns further up the line. 463 has backed on to her train on the departure road 464 is coming off shed and will work the next westbound freight. 348 passing Arboles on caboose hop will pick up stockcars on return. I have got to sort our some screening between railway and grotty shed junk pile in background. Meanwhile 463 is working her way westwards with a train of stockcars and boxcars. Trains carrying livestock and perishable traffic had a higher priority than general freight traffic. 348 has turned and is now working back with a train of gondolas and a flatcar. The dwarf wall includes a large broken plant pot which looks a bot like part of an old furnace or coke oven. The plantings in the background were added about 3-4 years ago, the large trees were supposed to be slowing dwarf plants! 348 has attached the 3 stockcars to her train which puts her well (60%)over the load limits for the high line in the background for the run to Placerville (the staging) 464 & 348 ready to depart Jackson City. On arrival 348 uncoupled from her train, switched a cut of 4 cars stored on the main line to the departure road clearing the main for 464 to couple on to the recently arrived train. 464 then departed followed later by 348 (didn't want to chance leaving her outside overnight!) The pattern of operation is similar to the DRGW Black Canyon line during its final years of operation, 2-8-0s were the heaviest power allowed through the relatively level Black Canyon section on account of light bridges and trestles with 2-8-2s workking trains at the eastern and western end of the line. Starting to put the trains away! Large Scale staging tracks lower level, baseboards for 4mm Irish layout at intermediate level storage above and below. N Gauge baseboard plonked on top of large scale turntable.

I expect to start shipping the kits in late January. There was a glitch at the photo engravers that required re-work on about 60% of the chassis frets and I am awaiting a package from Alan Gibson Workshop in the UK who have been snowed under with trade orders from Warley and other pre-Christmas exhibitions in the UK. For those that want to build the late GSR/CIE version of the loco I have amended the loco body fret to include slotted valences and have omitted the MGWR canopy cab.

Seems to be intended for Dublin-Rotterdam services. The owners CLdN is based in Luxembourg and claim to use rail to transport freight in Ireland, the UK and across mainland Europe. https://www.cldncargo.com/documents/Brochure CLdN Cargo.pdf. Interestingly Irish Ferries have recently decided to transfer it Rosslare-Cherbourg WB Yeats sailings to Dublin Port apparently because Dublin is likely to be more profitable on account the substantially higher volume of traffic. Will be interesting to see how Stena and P&O Ferries react to Brexit, will they introduce Super Ferries like CLdN & Irish Ferries for direct European services or continue to treat their existing routes as a cash cow until their ships require replacement. JHB A bit like Belfast and Larne, Waterford and Rosslare Ports are too close together in an era of shipping line amalgamations and rationalisation and the development of larger ships. In a way its difficult to see a long term future for Waterford as a container port unless Cork and Dublin become highly congested or a new container shipping company enters the Irish Market, similarly Rosslare's long term role is likely to be restricted to RO-RO operations to the UK and possibly Europe. Establishing a railfreight terminal at Rosslare is likely to be a White Elephant and more seriously would be politically unpalatable in Waterford as it would potentially lead to an early closure of the Belview Container terminal Both Cork and Dublin container ports have the advantage of serving large cities directly without the need for long distance road or rail transfer railing freight from Cork or Dublin to Waterford or even Rosslare Ports offers no advantage in terms of environmental emissions compared to shipping direct from Cork or Dublin to the UK or the Continent.

Bit strange celebrating Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere though we are promised rain and thunder storms over the Christmas Hopefully might get to play trains once I have assembled daughters Lego and

Does anyone have an idea of how current container volumes through Waterford Port compare with the 80s and 90s while Bell Lines was in operation? Bell effectively used rail to divert traffic away from Dublin, Belfast and Cork ports and competed with the large shipping companies by operating direct services to UK and Continental Ports rather than land-bridging across the UK The demise of Bell and must have been welcome news to Dublin, Belfast and Cork ports and the major shipping companies. Will be interesting to see how Waterford Port fares after Brexit, with a shorter sea route for Irish exports to the continent compared with Dublin could help restore its competitive advantage as a port. Internationally deep sea container traffic is moving away from railway owned terminals to inland ports usually operated as joint ventures between property companies and ports. The joint venture attracts tenants by providing serviced sites with good road and rail access and competitive shipping rates. Perhaps someone needs to talk to the IDA and the Port Companies

Mr Fry's model railway was dismantled following his death in the 1970s The layout that operated at Malahide Castle was a 1980s interpretation built CIE apprentices under the supervision by Thomas Tighe rather than experienced modelers Certain aspects of the modeling especially scenery and rolling stock were more akin to 1930s tinplate models and considered to be crude compared to the original Fry Models and 1980s modeling standards I understand that wear and tear on wheels, motors, gears and bearing was a significant issue on the Malahide Castle Layout and locos, stock and probably track in need of replacement after 20+ years constant use before the layout was dismantled. The original locos and stock were unsuitable for sustained exhibition running and were displayed separately to the railway at the castle and also appeared at railway exhibitions. Personally I think the best approach would be to display the original Fry models and certain aspects of Mr Tighe's layout in a permanent exhibition and build a new layout in the spirit of Fry's Irish International Railway and Tramway system (which featured Irish and Continental trains and trams running on the one layout) with replicas of the original Fry locos, stock and structures.

3D prints tend to have either a texture like rough cast plastering or a layer cake effect as the plastic is deposited in layers. In a way Shapeways WSF would be an excellent material for the traditional Irish cottage, farmhouse, bungalow or semi-detached or terraced house with a lime wash or cement plaster finish.

JHB It might be worth while checking out Rapid Prototyping companies in Dublin. While everyone tends to think of Shapeways, there are likely to be companies in Ireland that provide rapid prototyping services to businesses. Inspire 3D may be able to advise you on the costs and limitations of 3D printing. http://www.inspire3d.ie/services/rapid-manufacturing-rapid-prototyping/

The JM Design Tin vans were originally intended to combine etched brass sides with a plastic or resin body shell and chassis manufactured using high end 3D printing technology from my own CAD work. But ended up as conventional brass kits as a plastic or resin body shell was uneconomic due to a combination of the limitations of the 3D printing technology and cost/ the low level of demand for Irish coach or wagon kits. Richies £500 excluding CAD work for a 6w coach is in line with the original set up costs for casting a coach body shell. As far as I recall the mould was good for 20-30 castings with a unit cost of around £20 per casting which swung the economics rapidly round in favour of a conventional kit. The other issue is producing an acceptable model from the CAD work is likely to require a number of attempts even for an experienced designer, sometimes issues with the limitations of the process, material and CAD work do not become obvious until you produce the completed model, after-all Rapid Prototyping using 3D printing was developed as a low cost way to check that the prototype is ok before tooling up for production. Bureau like Shapeways and I Materialise are a relatively low cost way of establishing whether a model is ok before committing to buying a 3D printer or commissioning a manufacturer to produce a model from your CAD work in resin or injection moulded plastic.

Eoin's detail is spot on & should prevent any long term problems at floor level.