Maitland

I got out my private helicopter (kindly supplied by Google Maps) and took a flight over Drogheda just now. There are points either end of the viaduct, so it's ordinary single track. I don't know the technical term for the safety rails, they aren't check rails as such which are set just inside the back-to-back gauge. You see them on a lot of bridges though.

Don't be tempted to try what some idiot near here did a few years ago. To stop people breaking into his shed, he rigged up a sawn off shotgun and a tripwire, aimed at groin height as the intruder came through the door. It worked perfectly, as he found out when he went in the shed and forgot it was there...

http://cspmodels.com/abante/index.php?rt=product/product&path=65&product_id=127 Avonside 0-6-0ST in 4mm scale.

I'm not sure the photo has to be posed. The loco has offset NG couplings, so no problem with the van. All it needs is something on the van to attach the SG wagon chain (or hook) to, and especially if it's an empty it doesn't have to be very substantial. Perhaps just a rope? After all they are doing that for parallel track shunting. And no need for anything much if they are pushing them somewhere.

The Swift Book of Transport Oddities, 1962. It's also got a photo of an MGWR brake van with the top windows blanked off. Thanks for the location everyone.

Changing bogies is for wimps. There was through running between the Leeds and Bradford tramway systems at one time- despite Leeds being 1435mm gauge and Bradford 1220mm. The wheels slid on the axles. Has anyone any idea where the Derry photo was taken? I'd like to know what it was that stuck out to make the track swerve like that. Or maybe they were under the affluence when they built it.

There weren't that many examples of mixed gauge in Ireland, but I found a couple of photos in a book picked up in a charity shop. Turntable at Strabane: http://irishrailwaymodeller.com/asset.php?fid=19396&uid=1160&d=1449835271 This would make a good model, mixed gauge, grooved rails, gauntletted track in stone setts on Derry quay: http://irishrailwaymodeller.com/asset.php?fid=19395&uid=1160&d=1449835254

Bit late in on this, but there are a small number of kits available for 3mm scale (16.5mm gauge for 5'3", 9mm for 3') from Worsley Works, though these are only "scratch aid", i.e. bare flat etchings, find your own detailing and chassis. http://www.worsleyworks.co.uk/3mm/3mm_Irish_Standard_Gauge.htm Also this chap has a number of Irish 3D printed body shells in 3mm and N: http://www.shapeways.com/shops/valvedesign?s=0#more-products

It looks as though if the DSER had got that 2-8-2T, they'd have had to regauge (or revert for part of it) to standard, because that's what it was as near as the fuzz of the scan will allow me to determine. If the South Maitland 10 class dimensions are anything to go by, it would have been a bit wide at 9 foot 7 for most of the UK, but fine for Ireland. Maybe they'd have laid a 3rd rail.

Idling my life away browsing through the Beyer Peacock loco drawings collection at Manchester Science Museum (http://emu.msim.org.uk/htmlmn/collections/online/imagescontact.php?QueryName=DetailedQuery&QueryPage=%2Fhtmlmn%2Fcollections%2Fonline%2Fdetailedsearch.php&col_ColTypeOfItem=Still+Image&col_ColCollectionName_tab=%22Beyer%2C+Peacock+%26+Co.+Ltd%22&Search=Search&StartAt=261), I ran across this "Dublin and South Eastern Railway 2-8-2T": http://emu.msim.org.uk/web/pages/common/imagedisplay.php?irn=15647&reftable=ecatalogue&refirn=34625. Order No 01904. Drawing No 93578, 1922. Now, as far as I can see they never got it, and I can't imagine what they would have done with it if they had, particularly just then. I suspect it's a museum miscataloguing- they digitisation shows all the signs of having been done by bored temps on minimum wage. And sadly, unless the original scans held by the museum are better, the images are too poor to be truly useful. Dimension text is frustratingly just below the limit of readability, so I can't even check if the gauge is right. But the thought of a beast like that pulling a big goods train up the 1 in 60s around New Ross.... Addendum - a bit more browsing and it looks like it just might be related to this: http://emu.msim.org.uk/web/pages/common/imagedisplay.php?irn=13527&reftable=ecatalogue&refirn=30214. Which, perhaps ironically, was for the South Maitland Railway in Australia. No I didn't plan that.

The 1921 independent socialist government of the Republic of Ireland (flag: a Tricolour with a Red Hand in the middle) was headed by James Connolly, James Larkin, Jack White and Michael Collins, Connolly's renunciation of Catholicism in 1910 having reconciled the majority of Unionist workers. The railways, run down after the Great War, the Mutiny of the Armies and the following Menshevik Revolution, were nationalised (as were those of Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the other states of the Union of Europe). They were organised on a regional basis, with national control of the main export goods and express passenger routes. Each of these regions, North West, North Central, North East, Central, South West, South East, and Cork, controlled its own infrastructure and rolling stock, including engineering and livery. From 1938 Brian O'Nolan was appointed Minister of Transport and outlawed priming. He introduced patent emulsion which transformed the performance of the locomotive stock. The world speed record for steam being set at 162mph by an Achill Bogie in 1947, after he appointed Oliver Bulleid as Chief Mechanical Engineer of the express system, who introduced smoky combustible (real) silver Diesels, turf burners, potato burners, Munster Bacon burners, and whiskey burners. There were steam helicopters for the island routes and donkeys on craic on the canals (should that be en croque?).

A little more research, and I find a problem with Clo Gaelach (Twomey): it doesn't have dotted consonants, necessary for pre- 1948 signs. Did they do any new ones after? And how widespread was it anyway? I see Mitchelstown was bilingual, but Cashel barely 30 miles away wasn't, neither in a noticeable Gaeltachtish sort of area. Was this a nationalistic enthusiasm that hit a civil servant talking about funding? Anyway, the solution seens to be Tuamach (I think that's Twomey?) which seems to be the same font extended.

Thanks a lot. Belbought will get a bilingual GSR nameboard.

Has anyone compared True Type fonts to get a best match for post- Independence station signage? (like this: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CAcQjRxqFQoTCIPfo4D22MgCFQnAFAodDFMEcA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.geograph.ie%2Fphoto%2F2432955&bvm=bv.105841590,d.cWw&psig=AFQjCNFNqCswYbCjdJwVZqFN_WzeWlA9Ew&ust=1445700975207221). Not being a typographer, I'm baffled by the choice available- they all look similar to me!

MER winter trailer 58 derailed and on its side after a shunting operation went wrong: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-33427559 http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/updated-mer-services-halted-by-overturned-tram-1-7345865 Only crew on board and no one hurt. Comment seems to indicate that the crossover was moved from the straight track in the station to the ferocious curves near the viaduct "for safety reasons".

Has anyone seen any photos of Bessbrook & Newry pointwork around goods sidings? I'm trying to work out how the plateway- style plain wheeled wagons crossed the conventional track.

A model in 4mm or 7mm scale could use the right battery technology too - nickel-zinc batteries are slowly being rediscovered. They don't seem to be as good or as robust as Drumm's batteries yet though. http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/nickel-zinc-aa-rechargeable-batteries-4-pack-n37ka

The J70 was probably K's. It was the cheapest kit available back in 70-small numbers, and I couldn't afford one. Guess that the 4-6-0 is a BR Standard. Anbrico trams? I half remember them too- a fairly modern looking 4 wheeler- Sheffield or Leeds? The track is of course Tri-ang, Series 6 or 7 I think.

Excellent as it is to have unpowered track, I think until battery technology goes through another cycle or two, it might be best to keep batteries minimal, just to keep the radio alive during track outages (so track cleaning still needed, if not quite so much), feeding the motor from the batteries only briefly and hopefully rarely. Big locos like O gauge standard gauge stuff are not so constrained, but a 4mm scale GSWR 90 or Schull and Skibbereen 4-4-0T will find it hard enough to stuff everything in. For smaller scales, track feed - DC or DCC could both be used and you could interoperate- to get the DC, maybe Bluetooth rather than wifi for the wireless, a DCC type motor controller. a small battery or supercap, I think you should get the lot into 90's side tanks, and one of Nigel Lawton's tiny motors inbetween... Bluetooth because you can get a one-to-one connection (HID or serial) so no address setup or resolution and easy connectivity to computers and tablets. Serial port communication means no fancy protocols to program, but plenty of bandwidth compared to DCC.

Short article from the Industrial Railway Society, 1965 here: http://www.irsociety.co.uk/Archives/8/ireland.htm

Thanks for the links, I've not seen New Irish Lines for many many years, and it's nice to see it flourishing. I wonder how they make their PDFs so big though, half the size of a Linux distro some of them. I'll have to subscribe just to save the bandwidth. I think Bogs of Bord na Mona would make a great tune- jig, reel or hornpipe, or even a song though?

I suspect the brake pipe is for continuity only, and that the wagon itself has only the handbrakes.

I thought everyone knew that CC1 was regauged to standard and sent to England to join the strategic reserve...

Lovely, the period can't be far off when I first encountered Irish railways. But then, there were still some green coaches, and unless memory plays me very false, some silver GM single enders. It was 1966- the stations had just been renamed after heroes of the liberation.

Worsley Works do a lot of etched brass for Irish 3ft gauge, in several scales. Including, I think 3mm scale, where 16.5mm is 5'6" (just a touch wide), and 9mm is 3' exactly. Now if we can just persuade Murphy Models to do a bit of shrinking...