jhb171achill

Triple wow from me! That is truly spectacular even in a larger scale, never mind N! You've the colours and subtle shades off to a T as well. Truly inspirational work.

Each livery was general. Until the advent of the silver & black with yellow ends on 071s, and their current all-over grey (a la GSWR / GSR!) no Irish diesel ever had a specific freight livery. The closest you’d get to specific liveries is the 201s in “Enterprise” livery, and what started as a Mk 4 livery became a general livery for that one class. But in silver, green, black, black’n’tan, and the orange and black liveries, there was no “division of liveries” at all.

From 1935 at least, and possibly a couple of years earlier, these two liveries, which had run concurrently with principal stock in the brown and cream and secondary, local, six-wheel and narrow gauge stock in the older all-over "dark lake" colour, were replaced by a livery virtually identical to that of the LMS in Britain, and by extension the NCC - except that in later years much stock on the NCC was unlined. The variation to this last livery was in secondary and narrow gauge stock which also, coincidentally, was unlined. This overall maroon spread to all GSR stock by degrees, though one MGWR coach was observed newly painted brown and cream as late as 1936 or thereabouts. When badly weathered, this colour could take on a brownish tint, due to brake dust sticking to it, just like most bogies on anything both then and now. When faded, the paint bleached to a salmony pinkish colour - for anyone who wants a derelict coach still in old GSR livery stuffed among the weeds at the back of a siding on a layout.......

This brown and cream appears to have started about 1928/9, and possibly when the Pullmans appeared; they initially carried this livery.

For a major railway company from 1925 to 1945 which operated the overwhelming majority of all of the railways within the Republic, remarkably little coherent info of use to modellers seems to be out there, other than the McMahon & Clements locomotive "green bible". The GSR had three distinct carriage liveries, with variations on two of them. First, 1925 onwards, a continuation of the GSWR's extremely dark maroon, or "crimson lake". Darker than the colours then in use by both the DSER and MGWR, and quite a change from the green of the CBSCR and the liveries of certain narrow gauge lines. The lining style shown above could vary according to the carriage design. This livery was PARTLY replaced in the very late 1920s, initially only on main line bogie coaches, though it seems that a small number of six-wheeled brake vehicles also got it, probably to look uniform on the Cork and Galway mails. This was a GWR-of-England inspired livery, by the look of it; chocolate brown, as opposed to any sort of "brownish" maroon, and cream, with black lining.

Questions: 1 They need to know what the possible demand might be. 2 Malahide & Greystones were (and still are) growing rapidly and thus more commuter traffic. 3 Who knows - they haven't been built yet, or delivered, let alone trialled. Far, far too early to tell. 4 You'd need to speak to an IE engineer who was involved at the time.

Fiddling about with photo techniques. This was done to produce a telephoto effect, by taking the picture from about 3ft away and zooming in. It does show, though, that doing a proper backscene attached to the wall is well overdue...... The twice-daily mixed approaches Dugort Harbour.

Tried this today - same hand-held iphone, to start with, but taken from a distance of about 3-4ft and zoomed in. Already a distinct improvement, and this is BEFORE I get a tripod out. I need to get proper backscenes secured to the wall!

Indeed! Fry put his initials and a date on most (though not all) of his models. Look at the ones above - on the ends of some of those carriages, and the locomotive “makers plate”. On the Dublin & Drogheda one, for example, you’ll see “C L F 5.44” (May 1944) and dome of the carriages are 1947.

Interesting thoughts, gentlemen, thanks. I will get a tripod out and do a few more shots in the next few days from a distance of maybe 2ft (the "2-ft rule" might have another use?), and see what comes of it.

The track and ballast looks just amazing. Very well done! (So does the rest of it, of course...!)

472 again, entering Dugort Harbour with empty cattle wagons.

Very much so! A masterpiece indeed. I sent a photo of a grubby one with the loco to him. As might be expected with a livery like that, especially when their first 18 months or so were in the company of the last steam locos, they got dirty very quickly in real life - I wanted this one to replicate that. The black'n'tan one I have will end up being only very lightly weathered, to suggest it hasn't been in black'n'tan very long.

Most of those particular ones in 1940s.

“……Ultimately, a camera with manual overide, so you can set a small apertures and a long exposure (five seconds or more), seems to work best.….” I wonder is there some way of imitating that process with an ordinary mobile phone?

The photos of your own layout(s) that you post here are absolutely superb - but so is the subject matter - inspirational scenic surroundings too. The way mine is, you've natural light on one side of the room only, as it is in an attic room with two velux skylights beside each other, but no natural light on the other three sides. The artificial lights are ceiling spotlights, which shine straight down above it. Neither are ideal, so I have a stock-in-trade four or five angles from which I take most images. Today as the daylight was just starting to fade I tried a combination - indeed, that was the case when I took the above. Using a proper camera it might have made some difference, but it was marginal with an iphone. I might get some sort of table lamp rigged up at a different angle some time, though it's going to be way down the priority list!

Indeed - of the pics I've posted of this layout, virtually every one has been initially cropped within an inch of its life, otherwise you'd see shelves, a Christmas tree, suitcases and gawd knows what other junk looming behind the train!

Finally for today (well, 1965), two "A"s at Dugort is a rare sight. A55 is on the midday passenger train, deputising for the usual 141 which is away double heading a GAA special, while A12 is deputising for the normal "C" on the goods, which is having its weekly servicing.

1963, and B121 "yanks" have appeared in Dugort Harbour. "Yes, it's got a hotplate. I can warm the tea in it. I tell ye, these things are the way ahead"

I'd love to get a job lot of little male figures with cameras and plastic "pac-a-mac" coats, to recreate a 1960s IRRS "Outing", as they were quaintly called, or one of those LCGB / SLS tours....! .............................................................................................................. "Straight out of Inchicore. Smell the new paint! They reckon they've all the problems fixed now." "Gimme a hand with these sacks..... oh, and you should stick a shilling on "Mayfly" in the 2:30 at Epsom...."

I've often seen photos taken professionally of high-end exhibition layouts in the regular monthly "comics" from brexitstan - and the level of realism, already stupendous, is enhanced even further by carefully posed, carefully lit professional photography. The end result can have the viewer wondering of they're looking at a layout or a real scene. I cannot replicate the lighting, nor the professional photography, and I suspect I'm not alone; but here are two similar pics taken just with a bog-standard iphone, which as far as I am concerned is as good as it's going to get! It's easy to focus on front or back, but not both. And the distortion of the lens, whatever way it's set up, means that things near the right and left hand of pictures have the vertical distorted. Any tips on how to improve would be very welcome! Two views of the same thing, the morning mixed from Castletown West to Dugort Harbour - one with the front in focus, one with the back in focus.

It's a sunny summer day (funny how the weather never changes at Dugort - can someone make seasonally variable backscenes?) in 1965. The goods appears with C201, a regular on the line, now fixed after the last time. . ..........and having shunted and done its business, it departs again.

It's 1959, and Dugort Harbour is still mostly steam-worked, bar an occasional green or silver "C". J15s rule the roost usually, though there's a 472 class saddle tank and a Midland 2.4.0 which appear also. Here, 472 rounds the curve with cattle empties. But we have visitors today, as the goods guard notices. "Here! Mikey! Who's that fool eejit UP the signal post?" "Ah, don't mind him, he's one o'them train spotters from Dublin. Mad as a bag'o'ferrets. Sure he was MEASURING that old van at the back of the long siding. MEASURING it, I tell ye. With a measuring tape. Jack sez he was up in Castletown taking pictures of the footbridge yesterday. A FOOTBRIDGE! An' writin' stuff down in a notebook...." . And a better view of ex-CBSCR No. 472 from the ground, the last of her class and moved from the West Cork system to be the pilot engine at Castletown West.

.....at 07:00. ".....I've left them in a string bag on the handlebar of your bicycle. The ones in the greaseproof paper are sandwich spread, and the ones in the BROWN paper are for Tommy, with no tomato....you got that?..."

Correct, that's what it was. Beautiful vehicle - I was in it on RPSI May tours, and also on the DCDR! I think that's 47M (originally). Doesn't look very "Midland" as it was heavily rebuilt either by the GSR or more likely CIE as a departmental tool van. It ended up in private hands and the owner agreed for it to go to Downpatrick, when other storage options ran out. Unfortunately it was in very rough condition. If that's the coach I think it is, I inspected it at Downpatrick years ago and found both damp rot and dry rot all over it. The chassis wasn't too bad, though, but the bodywork was by this stage unstable. One night at Downpatrick about 15 years ago or more, very strong winds simply made it collapse - that's how bad the body was. So it has ceased to be...............