Scots Mac

hi Nelson...thanks for that I will get them from Steve at railtec cheers DAVY

Hi Guys, yip, all nice paintjobs there indeed. I still have to do the more fernickety lining on my three 800s and on their tenders. Lining's a job that drives me nuts but its necessary.

Leo, I use car body spray paints if I can get a match thats close ,however so far thats mostly only been for undercoats with the irish models.All the finishing paintwork is brush applied enamel or matt ,finished off with satin varnish. Heirflick, I'll dig out the ore wagons I'm in the middle of doing for Tara wagons...... if I can find them..... !!?? ,they're kicking about in a box....... somewhere......

Hi Guys, should have said Nelson, I'm only interested in the period from 1950 onwards. So later steam era.

Now LEO..., As for the 3 Queens nameplates and cab plates are available in the Gaelic script for them all. So no problem there.

I only got into the irish scene at the back end of the summer. Since then I've been collecting models in a big way ,researching and trying to learn about the irish railways and building as I go. I never concentrate on one project at a time as I get bored and like to have a variety of jobs on the go.

As for the Ammonia tanks , I have still to paint the bogies and blacken the couplers but I am not going to decal them. Having watched film of them it seems that some of them latterly only had the basic paint job with the central orange line,so that'll do for me.Rolling stock isn't a huge deal to me, as long it looks kinda correct I'm fine with it. My first interest is locomotives,everything else is secondary.

I have also done a rake of 7 Lima ore wagons that look very much like the Tara mines wagons,except the Lima wagons have no buffers,but I will add buffers to them and will put roofs on them too. The Lima wagons have 12 panel sections whic is the same as the Tara mines wagons. I painted them oxide and they look the part with my modern irish diesels. I've also made a start to doing approximations of two different era CIE/IE weedkiller trains also for my diesels. And I'm also collecting various other wagons by Hornby etc., to make container trains too. As for the two buffer wagons that went either end of the ammonia trains I will do them with flat wagons with a tank container on each. Easy enough.

As for the 279 and 650 tanks ,no more work has been done to them yet. I spent my evening painting a Woolwich 2-6-0 into grey. I've attached a picture of the type Lima ore wagon I've used for the Tara Mines wagon. Lioma made them in various colourschemes. As you can see though they have 12 sections exactly as per the Tara wagons, close enough eh ??

Well Impressive eh ?

Cool Nelson... that makes life easy eh...... OK now you tell me...... your call...... tell me what numbers they should be and names I should give them. Were they all named? all castles ? and did these engines ever work trains over the CIE rails.?

heres the two of them

Hi Nelson,well you got me hooked on that black 4-4-0 ,I bought two last night on ebay ,both tender drives and both by Mainline . I got one for £35 and the other for £22. Both runners but the cheaper one was missing its tender top...no big deal I'll get one for it. I'll need to get your advice nelson on decals and lining for the Northen Irish stuff. Cheers Davy

All the best from Scotland Nollaig chridheil agus bliadhna mhath ur !!

Hi JH, I'll forward that on to Gary at 247 . Thanks again Davy

Hi Jh ,thanks for that, I'm in the middle of painting mine right now. Cheers DAVY

Hi UP, heres a couple of pics for you. It is a bit like the Bachmann easy track but the joins are hardly visible. I'll let the pictures do the talking. Check the Tenshodo loco too. Marklin do an American 4-6-2 but leave out trailing truck detail.Not the Japanese. Superb stuff.[ATTACH=CONFIG]10896[/ATTACH

Looks great Anthony but shouldn't the smokebox and chimney be grey too..... or did some of these Woolich engines get black smokeboxes ..... I have 2 of these one in Irish livery the other is English Southern which I want to do inn grey like yours but I thought it should be all over grey ??? thanks DAVY

Hi Sean what about some preserved steam ?

Hi John a slight point of note... when i wrote about black I was refering to the cabside number plates not the nameplates. The preserved 800 Maeve in Cultra has brass on black on her cabside plates and brass on blue nameplates. Anyway I have forwarded the information you sent me on to Gary at 247 so he now has the necessary information, a big thanks again for the help. As for a book on the 800s would be nice but as you say they were racehorses on a railway system that at the time was pretty much fit mostly only for handling plodding workhorses. From what I've read they'd have held their own with any 4-6-0 on the planet given the propr chance, whatever they were fine looking machines. The best Inchicore and Ireland ever produced.

Hi geordie, just noticed your post. I bought a batch of brand new Tenshodo Z scale steam locos and a Rokuhan diesel .They are superb quality and far better engineered than Marklin. The new Rokuhan track system is superb quality too. I wouldn't like to try to kitbash these into anything else though. Its still my imtemtion to build a wee Japanese Z layout one of these days. heres a pic for you. Hornby OO tank alongside a Tenshodo Japanese national railways C62 4-6-4 and D51 2-8-2. Davy

Hi Train model, sounds good to me, I'd rather drive a steam engine than any car any day .Cars ,even the fanciest fastest ones bore the pants off me ! I once got to take the regulator of an LMS black five in Motherwell engine shed here in Scotland.She was one of only three left in steam at the shed. That as when I was about 13/14 years old. about 1966 .... the driver let me reverse her from the water column back into her berth in front of the shed. Have never forgotten that ,amazing. No internal combustion machine comes close !!

Hi Heirflick, easy enough, and even if you make a mistake nine times out of ten it can always be fixed with glue,filler and paint. Nelson ,now you've got me lookin at your northern engines again. I'll need to have a look on ebay etc., and see exactly what you're refering to,I've had my head immersed in CIE steam the last few weeks so I'm more up to speed with them than the Ulster stuff. Cheers DAVY

heres a colour picture of 801 Macha in 1961,clearly showing red cabside number plates and nameplates. Also note at this time she no longer has a double chimney. Maeve was preserved but Macha seems to have been the last in service.

No ,plates are perfect, in the Gaelic script there is a dot above the C which substitutes for a following H. See the 3 originals here.....

Gary at 247 is a stickler for accuracy...... http://www.irishrailwayana.com/pa102a.htm

Hi Nelson, don't worry about hi-jacking "my" thread, we're all in the same boat eh ??,the more pics the merrier. Those engines look absoltely great.

What model is that 4-4-0 based on, ??...looks like an airfix drive unit in the tender ??? Really like that. The other engine,that would be one of the two LMS jintys sent over to Ulster and converted to 5ft3" gauge right ?. Know what, I have one of those kicking about in a box somewhere,I think its either Bachmann or Hornby..... oh well...theres another conversion I can do some time. I like that 4-4-0 in black. I don't like the midland red colour like the one in Cultra museum...is that the same kinda loco ?... it looks like it. Much better in black. Davy

Hi Guys heres better shots of the plates. I am in contact with Gary at 247. There is a bit of confusion about the 800 class nameplates and cabside plates. I've read that originally all three of the class were turned out with blue backed nameplates with cabside number plates brass on black. This would appear to be and always was the case with engine 800 ,the preserved loco Maeve. However Macha and Tailte are a bit of a mystery. I have certainly without doubt pinned down that Macha ,certainly by 1961 sported her number plates and cabside plates both backed in red as online colour pictures show.This is beyond doubt. She has a single chimney by this time. Another colour photo loco reported as Tailte is also sporting red name and number plates,however I'm wondering if this is mistaken identity as Tailte had a single chimney too but was withdrawn much earlier than Maeve or Macha. So Tailte remains a mystery as far as her name/numberplate colours go.

Hi Nelson, not worth posting the jeep progress at the moment as I've only started to cut round the cabs but I will post stuff as and when.Might be a while though befiore I get back round to the Northern stuff. I'll need to check out the U2 and Y class....any pics ? Good christmas to yourself too Nelson. heres a seasonal picture you might like. (I also have a garden railway,currently being changed from G scale to O scale but thats a whole other story) .This photograph was taken a few years ago one winter's morning when we had a very slight dusting of snow.the shallow snow cover made the scene almost scale-looking.The train is a G scale(1/29th) American B&O pacific and two heavyweight coaches.Loco and train added up to about 9 feet long. The scene is now history,everything ripped up and changed but I always liked this picture. Merry Xmas to you. DAVY

Hi Nelson, I intend to do some Northern Irish engines,in fact I've already made a start to two jeeps, and a 4-4-0.However the problem with the Northern Irish stuff for me is they look very much like the Scottish and English stuff I'm so used to. The GN blue colours are exactly Caledonian Railway, then theres Midland reds,LNWR lookin black etc,etc. The CIE stuff is just that bit different and sorry to say it but none of the Northern engines were as big or powerfull or as attractive in my eyes as the 3 Bredin 800s. As for twin motoring the locos it depends on how the two gear systems match up. If they do match up,granted the power may be overkill but for going thru pointwork etc,would be superb (when and if I get round to building a layout that is,hopefully next winter:trains:) Anyway all good fun .

Aw the best Nelson Davy

Hi Nelson thanks for that, just took these pics of one of the 800s (not finished yet !) if you compare it to prototype pics you'll see that the height of the tender is just about right in comparison to the loco cab and to my eyes says "CIE 800":) and not "LMS Scot or patriot":confused:. The tender base is actually a hornby motorised tender unit but I don't know whether I'll retain this or replace it with a non motorised base... the loco is powered too,I still need to see if they run well in tandem ,if so I'll probably twin motor all three of my 800s. If they don't I'll use non-powered tender bases and just leave them loco powered. Cheers Davy

Hi Guys, OK heres how I tackled the 800 tenders. The three locos I have converted to represent 800 B1a 4-6-0s were Rebuilt Patriots by Mainline. However the tenders that come with them just aren't right for the 800 class. I chose tender tops from the Hornby range. In this case from Hornby patriots. I bought them from ebay for £4 each. As I explained in my previous post I haven't made up my mind yet what tender base to use for these yet. The Hornby patriots were tender driven locos so these tender tops clip fit onto various Hornby powered tender bases and with modification will also fit onto mainline, etc.,etc., bases too. Cheers DAVY:-bd