jhb171achill

Very distinctive sound - I remember them brand new and they had a sort of high-pitched "whistling" sound - very different indeed to the hoarse sore-throat sound of an AEC or MED railcar which surrounded them on local services.........

Certainly looks like it, yes.

Off topic, I know, but Cyril Fry built a serious amount of LNWR stuff himself (obviously, NOTHING suitable RTR back then!) It has to remain in storage due to space constraints, but I am agitating for extra display space for it....

Get well soon, Ernie.

".....who, "Hot Box" O'Driscoll? They're pensioning him off on Tuesday fortnight. He started in Kenmare in 1915, so he's fifty years done. Last o'the oul stock....in fact, he's the last one of us who was there that day...."

A pristine B168 shunts two "tin vans" at Dugort Harbour in summer 1966. There's a storm brewing out there, but the driver has a flask of hot stewed tea....

"......Look at that, just three vans. We'll be done by lunchtime. Lot easier since yer man bought a lorry for the animal feed....who's driving today?....." . Dugort Harbour lost its passenger service in 1967. Between then and closure in 1975 there was but one goods train a day, and here it is one day in 1968....

A much more sensible thing! As one who also had this ridiculous medieval claptrap rammed down my throat in school, I saw it at the time as light years beyond crass, and utterly useless; in some cases, a 12-year-old me guessed, just clung onto by some schools to try to prove something very outdated. Throughout adult life, I tended not to alter that thinking - till now! A discussion on Latin produces a very nice image of a steam loco……and a nice GNR one at that! RESULT!

Extremely nicely done - VERY neat!

A bowl of labor diaboli is quite nice in some Italian places but if it's not cooked properly it can give you a very nasty dose of pax vobiscum. I hear it causes nasty side-effects and unpleasant secretions.

I'd say so. If I find any info I'll post here......

I’m not sure, Ken, but I’d be surprised if it was much different from your DWWR ones. It’s the only image I have of that one.

No. 4, yes.

Here is a typical cattle wagon of an earlier generation (1880s - 1920s). The shorter wheelbase was the norm on all railways back then, not just the DSER. This wagon is obviously of GSWR origin. Examples of many varieties of older wagons of this length were still in use in a few cases just about into the "black'n'tan" era - certainly in 1960/1. The massive wagon building programme of the 1955-65 period in Inchicore put paid to all old designs very quickly, though.

In later years at least one had the roof lookout removed….

On pages 124 and 126 of Taylor's book there are drawings of two of their standard designs of 30ft long six-wheelers. Those vans were built to the same overall external dimensions, so that's a start. They started life in ordinary wagon grey, but in later years got a darker grey shade (with the GSR) and a few - not all - of them ended their days in plain CIE green, of the later (lighter) shade. None were ever in the darker green.

If you’re a blues man, I’m sure you know my old friend Dermot Rooney from Belfast….

Last silver anything (locos or coaches) mid 60s. Last green 1967. Almost certainly no green loco ever hauled bubbles*, and very definitely no silver one did. No brown wagons till 1970, so nothing brown behind a silver or green anything…. (* and if it did, for maybe one day!)

Brown only post-1970…..

The spare van. . Arrival….

….and they’re (nowadays) pretty crude, from what I see…..

Thing is, for a West Cork layout, right until closure there were still quite a few real old antique short-wheelbase wagons on the system; the vans especially not at all unlike KMCE's DWWR ones - they probably dated back to the Cork & Bandon Railway! So if I was modelling West Cork, I think I'd be placing a significant order for the KMCE ones. Plus, of course, a pile of Provincial Wagons' stuff.

I would very much welcome something like this too. CIE appear to have started a major purge of ex-DSER stuff quite early on - from the late 1940s. Also, little DSER stuff seems to have migrated to other lines, so any information on such things would be very welcome indeed, and you are to be greatly commended for sharing the fruits of your research.

At the risk of starting an interminable wish list, to which I'd be well able to contribute wishes of my own, I have four of the KMCE wagons and am delighted with them; also I have a guard's van from JM design. In both cases I am highly impressed with the quality of the 3D printing - it's certainly come on in major leaps and bounds from the extremely crude early 3D models. Quite a few of the things you mention above - indigenous buildings, GSWR coaches, etc., would fill major gaps - but you ask about interest. I have often had conversations with people who would say "if a manufacturer made a model of X, I would buy four..." The issue, I think, is whether someone is prepared to put the work into making a print of any one thing - be it a loco body, coach, wagon or structure, with a potential market of maybe ten or twenty buyers, or even less for some more specific or specialised things. The KMCE wagons are something I might add to, but in single figures rather than, say, twenty of them - and certainly not because of limited satisfaction with them - more so limited space! A signal cabin, platform, or other structure - each buyer will want just one, or maybe two. Locos, probably likewise. Coaches and wagons will sell more than one to a number of buyers. (Count me in for GSWR bogies!) Maybe if someone with the technological skills, equipment, and who is prepared to go ahead with such a project was to simply request PMs from people who would be genuinely, and seriously interested in buying a 3D print of some favourite thing, a pattern might emerge. Like many here, I would have maybe half a dozen items that if available to a high standard, I would buy from someone who was prepared to make them up. I would do it myself if I had the skills and equipment.