jhb171achill

OK, folks, it's viable! I'll get onto Worsley and post details of progress here. If anyone else wants them, as long as they're in amounts of four (that's my understanding) they can be done too. Or contact Worsley directly yourself. Regarding the brake 3rd, I'd take one; Popeye is a second - anyone for six more?

Four now committed to, possibly five. Any takers for three or four more?

Hi folks I've been speaking with Allen Doherty of Worsley Works to enquire whether it is feasible to do a small run of this most essential 1950s CIE coach. The answer, of course, is yes - depending on numbers. There need to a minimum of only eight to allow him to break even. I want two, so that's only six left. I wonder would anyone here be interesting in committing to ordering a few, and letting Allen know? As stated, I'd take two, maybe three. I don't know what the price would be, but his kits are very reasonable indeed. If successful, the brake third which was so common would be another possibility.

Me too! I remember the shed road full of As and loose coupled trucks, and of course the Sligo Leitrim railcar and an old Midland six-wheel third in the shed. naturally, an enthusiast could hop down off the platform and wander at liberty all over the tracks..... I took a pic of a grubby A on a fertiliser train that way. And that great day on the RPSI May tour in 1978 when three engines were in steam there at once - 184, 186 & 4...... I got a Limerick - Waterford train in both directions, with all that convoluted shunting involving going round the back of the station and reversing umpteen times! Great days, ending with a steak in a laminate dining car with dribbly teapot on the way home.....with one of those brand-new 071 things.

I remember that - only time I travelled behind one, and only time I ever got a footplate run in one! It was an IRRS trip. Might get one for the layout..................

True, but in the case of the railways they tended to match it. That said, differing qualities of paint were another matter; you could paint two things the exact same colour at the same time, but if the paints used were of different qualities or compositions, one would fade differently to others. Especially in the 1950s, with wooden sided coaches, this gave rise to the urban myth that no two greens were the same. On the day they were painted they were all the same - one of the two shades used pre- and post-1955. But as they wore and weathered and faded, they did it differently, thus ending up all sorts of shades. On wooden bodied coaches, the older variety of green darkened, while the post-1955 colour became just very washed-out looking. If you look at Downpatrick's TPO and G611, you'll see this clearly. They were painted the correct shade when first restored, but they're not now! For once, its not due to preservationists getting the colour wrong (although G61X class were never green!) - it's just due to weathering.

Yes, I always wondered why they bothered repainting them in "supertrain" livery, yet the E class which remained in traffic for another 7/8 years remained in 1960s all-black. Far from being hitched onto any "super" train, to my knowledge no 101 pulled ANY passenger train even in the 1970s. As you say, PW only latterly.

Yes, I remember the old 101s in “pink” in the sound barrier! There was an old “tin van” in Heuston about 25 years ago which was going the same way. Pity it was scrapped - it was the last of them....

Excellent stuff!

Something I was discussing with the IRM boyos yesterday prompted me to ramble on about paint and how it weathers. It's been said here before and elsewhere that painting a small model in high gloss never looks right. Correct. Dulled down and matt colours look more realistic. But if we look at this a bit more, there's a bit more to it. Just as a model has size scaled down, so must colour! And, colour isn't always what it seems. In IRM Towers, there's a model of a BR genny van sitting on a shelf, heavily (and very accurately) weathered. Adjacent to it are several Mk 2s or 3s, bright pristine orange. Technically, they should be the same colour, but they're not. And this is prototypical. If two carriages are painted the same day, and one is rarely washed, while the other is well kept, they'll look the same shade - they are the same shade - but one is filthy while the other is clean. But if one is repainted recently, while the other hasn't seen a paintbrush in seven years, and has been poorly kept since, a difference in shade will be evident, unless you put a bit of T-cut on the tatty one. This type of thing gave rise in the past to numerous urban rumours to the effect that "ah, sure they just went to Woodies DIY and got whatever the nearest shade was". This was not so. Such a theory has been applied to CIE greens, GNR blue and CIE tan / orange. There were indeed variations in CIE greens and tans, but these were specific, not accidental. As most will know, there was the tan that 071s came in; this was an erroneous colour matching by GM in America, and "corrected" at first repaint in Inchicore. There was a marginally browner tan used from 1962 onwards, until the 1980s when a slightly more orange version appeared, and finally an even more orange one when , I think, 2-pack painting came in. The green era was the same. There were two varieties of green, with short-lived experimental one somewhere in between about 1952. In the 1950s, secondary stock wasn't well kept, so the green faded a lot on some stock. This gave a flatter, almost bluish-tinted hue after time. The key is in pigments. More lead was used in older paints, so if left long enough and allowed to fade, they'd fade differently to the same colour today, produced by today's different pigments, chemicals and compounds. Hence - for painting models - the shiny CIE dark green seen on well-kept coaches in the railway scenes in the "Quiet Man" film, and on preserved CIE buses, would on secondary wooden coaches in the 1960s appear less "green" and much duller. Equally, tans on later CIE liveries - scrub down a preserved vehicle and what you see as possible six different shades of tan is more accurately six shades of weathering and fading; if a time machine allowed you to see each repaint as new, they'd be the same. The GNR, however, always had the same blue...they carefully mixed their own formulas in their workshop at Dundalk, meticulously watched over by the manager, the late Marcus Bailie-Gage!

Sam I'm assuming this is 00 gauge; if it isn't everything has to be scratchbuilt! First, your design. I can't help feeling that if you were to simplify the sidings etc in and around the station, you'd have more room to do things. There are a lot of sets of points there - each one takes up space. I'm assuming that the blue road is the Derry Road - if so, an amendment in design might see it disappearing into a tunnel or something and curving left to go up the side of the layout, joining eventually onto the yellow marshalling yard. This would enable a Derry service, which was running up to early 1965. If you prefer later, fair enough. The red sidings - might it be an idea to just make 2 or 3 longer sidings, instead of a self-contained run-round? There are plenty of run-round facilities in the station. An over-complicated track layout can actually restrict movements, and especially storage of wagons / empty carriages, etc. I'm presuming that you're looking at a model of the older pre-1970 station buildings with their three platforms. By your era, one was no longer in use. Now, to the rolling stock. Portadown, obviously, will have both CIE and UTA / NIR stock. Let's break this down. 1. Goods The UTA abolished goods in 1965, so any time after that it's CIE stock only; this is good news, as more CIE stuff is available than UTA. In the period you're looking at, and from my own personal memories as well as books, a typical train coming into Portadown would have 30-40 four wheel wagons, at least half of which were standard CIE "H" vans. Provincial Models make these kits - easy to assemble, and you'll need a fair few! PalVans were common too, as were CIE "bubble" cement wagons and open wagons; these latter being about a third wooden-bodied, and two-thirds Bullied corrugated opens. You can buy all sorts of off-the-shelf wooden-bodied five-plank opens and repaint them. Provincial, again, make ex-GNR ones; CIE would have had a few of these too; and Provincial also make the essential CIE corrugated open. Liveries of all this: all grey up to 1970, after which brown starts making an appearance, and bubbles (initially standard wagon grey all over) start becoming orange and grey. Logos: "Flying snails" still on about a third of goods vans, with the CIE "broken wheel roundel" on the rest. On grey PalVans and H vans, the roundel is tan, with white letters in it; apart from that, all logos and lettering on everything is white. Once bubbles are repainted orange, the lettering and logo on this is black. A grey wagon has grey ironwork and chassis; a brown one has brown ironwork and chassis. Black ironwork and chassis are simply not accurate at all for Ireland, with a few notable exceptions (none of which apply in your world!); leave black chassis to Hornby BR models! Any residual stock of UTA era still hanging about will be Courtaulds (ex-NCC) wagons used on ballast trains - a browny red colour, with "U T" still stencilled on them - see pics in the excellent book you refer to, "Along UTA lines". See also "The Ulster Transport Authority in Colour" by Derek Young. Also a few old GNR ballast hoppers and a GNR guard's van, the same type as "Ivan" at Whitehead. These would, by your era, only be used for ballast trains, but wold often be stored at Portadown. If you have these, you'll need either a NIR "DH" class 0.6.0 diesel shunter, or an NCC "Jeep" to haul them. If you're modelling a GNR goods brake van, fer gawd's sake don't paint it like "Ivan", which is utterly inaccurate! Black ironwork - no. Black chassis - no. Cream inside balcony - no. That's three; as the late Mr Paisley might have opined, "Nevaaar Nevaaar Nevaaar"! These things were grey all over, always, including all ironwork and balcony interior - though they WERE cream INSIDE, or possibly cream upper and mid-brown lower! White or cream wagon roofs are, like (so Madam tells me) as much a "no-no" as tartan socks with open sandals......! Someone showed me a couple of pictures one time of (I think) an old match truck off a breakdown crane or something, and a GNR or NCC guard's van in early NIR days. The pictures were black and white, and clearly showed all of the ironwork in a much darker colour than the grey body. In the photo, it certainly looked black. But a black and white photo tells us nothing about colour in general, still less any extent to which it is weathered or worn or dirty. The reality was that in these pictures the ironwork was rusted within an inch of its life, with little or nothing or the original paint left. Moreover, the paint on the wooden bits was badly faded. It looked (in black and white) like the light grey and black ironwork seen (again, totally incorrectly) on the NCC guard's van on the DCDR. But is wasn't. If you like this contrast, then a Provincial model of this (I'm not on commission from Leslie, honest!) would look very appropriate hanging about your Portadown, so badly weathered that its actual livery is almost impossible to tell. Parcels and mail were an important part of life in your era. While "out of print" now, John Mayne's CIE "tin vans" are something I'd look out for, as these will be seen on the CIE "Enterprise" in your times. Irish Freight Models do one too - again not available now, as I understand, but you never know what might turn up. It's an easy enough thing to scratchbuild too. Tin vans could be dropped off the goods train with the morning papers from Dublin - and they featured in the early morning newspaper train themselves, along with just about anything else - "H" vans, old ex-GNR "P" bogie vans (there's one at Whitehead). Latterly, NIR converted a few old GNR railcars and ec-UTA "MED" centre cars as parcels vans. These were painted all maroon. Containerisation was just coming in, during your era. Irish Railway Models do the cement bubble, as I'm sure you know - an outstanding model. They plan to have other items in the future from the "early modern era" (1970s). In your time, containesr were on 4-wheel CIE longer wheelbase flat wagons. Guinness was carried in round grey cylindrical containers, usually in open wagons of either wooden or corrugate type. Kits are available of CIE brake vans - essential for your goods trains. Grey until about 1970 / 1, brown after that. 2. Locomotives / motive power Steam is king! The UTA never bought a single diesel locomotive - they inherited a few, notably the unique BCDR Bo-Bo, No. 28, which spent its entire UTA life shunting in Belfast. It never pulled a train anywhere in your era. It's a tragedy that it wasn't preserved - it was scrapped in 1972 or 3. You're looking at Jeeps, jeeps and more jeeps. By 1965, what was left of ex-GNR locos were withdrawn; i think the last was 0.6.0 No. 47 or 49, which I remember seeing shunting at Adelaide about then. It sat in the open with another like it for several years until they were scrapped on site. If you want to test time a little, you could go for 1963/4, when a few ex-GNR types ("S" class No. 60 & 171, and a handful of UG and SG3 0.6.0s) were still in use. Now, you could be purist and build these from scratch, or sell your house to pay for half a dozen professionally made ones. Or, if you weren't fussy about accuracy, get a LMS Stanier 2.6.4T or two and botch them as UTA / NIR. There are several British 0.6.0s which, if budgets are limited and eyesight not acute, might be altered to at least resemble a UG or SG3. Look up the excellent products of 00 Works - they did a run of ready-to-run UGs, but again, they're currently "out of print". For CIE, you're in the land - for those times - almost entirely of the 121 and 141 class, obviously in the original black'n'tan livery. These were produced by Murphy Models and occasionally pop up for sale here. The "supertrain" livery appeared from 1972 onwards, but black'n'tan was still about for a good few years after that. I photographed many locos around CIE still in this livery in 1975-8. But for UTA and NIR overall, there's no avoiding railcars. Here. we are looking at ex-GNR AEC and BUT cars. Kits of these are available, but would require a level of skill to put together; don't be put off; many here have started with zero skills and become superb brass-kit-makers. Silverfox do a re-liveried British Craven railcar, which looks quite acceptable; I'd darken the roof colour a bit though, being pathologically obsessed with liveries, as I am. You'd need to scratch build a 70 class set for the UTA / NIR "Enterprise". If you want to model the NIR 1970 "Enterprise", you'll need one of Silverfox's Hunslet diesels, or scratchbuild one. The carriages are BR Mk. 2 design (as seen in Whitehead!) and standard BR types can be got and repainted; some will need slight alterations of doors etc. 3. Carriages SSM do some lovely coach kits. You will need CIE laminates and Park Royals for the "Enterprise". All brass. For UTA types, you need a Jeep for Sunday School excursions, but carriages - SSM "K15" ex-GNR open third - these were commonplace on GVS - Dundalk. Obviously, on the break-up of the GNR in 1958, CIE got some and so did the UTA. So, a couple in UTA green and another within your CIE set in black'n'tan might be interesting. You can buy some standard Hornby / Bachmann LMS stock and if you look at (I think) 238 at Whietehead - the NCC vehicle with the wood panelling - that's what you're matching with, as the NCC got some English carriages over after their own were destroyed by German bombs in York Road in the 1940s. By the 1960s, the UTA mixed them up to a small extent; while mostly ex-GNR types were to be seen on the GNR lines, and NCC types north of York Road, the odd interloper could be seen, especially on excursion trains. K15s were also used as centre cars for AEC sets. Without a steam engine, though, in particular a Jeep, there's little point in having much of a stock of UTA steam-era carriages. Look at the ruins of 114 at Whietehead - carriages of this type were used on GVS - Portadown trains as centre cars, as the large mail compartment was used for carrying mail. I think NIR stopped carrying mail on this route about 1972/3. For a very short while, between 1970 and 1974, a Hunslet could be seen on very occasional excursion duty, with a set of retained carriages consisting of the following - - a few ex-GNR carriages (one being a 114-lookalike, No. 595; brake open 3rd / mail) - ex-NCC stock (mostly now steel panelled, like several at Whitehead) - maybe only in 1973/4, a couple of ex-GNR AEC and BUT power cars, now "de-engined" and used as passenger stock. NIR had a total of maybe a dozen of these altogether, which they retained simply for occasional excursions. The sight of a set of nine of these, which I saw in Lisburn once, behind a brand new maroon Hunslet, was odd indeed. Few photos have survived, as they were rarely used, and often at short notice. If you do this, you won't need a steam engine! (But you WILL need a Hunslet!). This rake of coaches were in a special "loco hauled but not Enterprise" livery of all over maroon, with a 3" light grey line at waist level. In other words, the same as the Enterprise livery, but with maroon lower instead of blue! That's about all i can think of now...... hope it's of help. Look up the available stuff from Irish Freight Models, SSM, Silverfox Models, Murphy Models, JM Design, Provincial Wagons, 00 Works, and others listed on this site which I might have inadvertently forgotten.

I use a DDT which I connect to a left-handed SUV inside a SWQAXTX, though it can interfere with G-23W (if the TV is on). I use Z23 power-connected T/7s, aligned with Saturn and connected to a 28% KLJ9. That does be the extent of my abilities...... I think I'm getting old........! serious point: I'm a great believer that the skills involved with old manual methods for anything are often superior to electronic widgetry that can go wrong and be unfixable.....

Update on that; having left Chateau IRM, I proceeded to the Faraway Lands of my colleague, Barry Carse. Like myself, BC is of the opinion that the mesh doors were not in general use; his belief is that possibly only one was like that initially, my thoughts being similar. I would say that it may well be that perhaps one or two migh have been. But having seen a few on the production line, it is definite that the vast majority were built new with solid doors, and we would also say that whatever one or two were initially fitted with them, lost them almost immediately. I never heard of them in traffic like that - but I can't say they didn't. I saw a line of new ones one time - I cannot remember where, and as was so often the case, I had no camera with me. I suspect it was North Wall or Inchicore. They were "straight out if the IRM box", and all had solid doors. All had the CIE roundel on the second door from left when new, though door swoops during their lives could vary that. Once, I saw one with logos on two doors - the 2nd and 3rd doors! Occasionally, one with no logo. After 1987, of course, when IE came into being, logos were gone on virtually all wagon repaints, the exceptions being some PW and departmental stock. No ferts ever carried the IE "set of points" logo. Regarding the colour of the CIE logo, the cream or buff colour shown in so many photos was a white one badly weathered. Cream-coloured CIE yokes existed, and were applied to buses, but these were transfers. The plywood panelling on freight stock - anything from ferts to "H" vans - was too rough to take transfers. All logos on wagons were always painted or stencilled, and from the onset on the brown wagon livery about 1970/1, only white was used. Sometimes wagon numbers were renewed on ferts, but older doors fitted to replace, maybe, a damaged one. If the replacement door had a logo, it might be old and weathered a light brown or nondescript colour, while the wagon had a cleaner number. It might look as if they're different colours, but under the grime they weren't. Thus, on a model, there would be a clear distinction between a crisp and clear buff-coloured logo, and a weathered one originally white. Nothing white on any railway stayed that way long. This, indeed, prompts me to utter some ramblings about paint weathering in general - if I get time, I'll post something separate later today.....

Fresh from an afternoon visit today to IRM Towers (thanks for the sticky buns, folks!) I can confirm, as if it’s needed, how truly superb this range of models are, and the huge planning that goes into making them.... Naturally, I melted Glenderg’s and Garfield’s heads about my own pet wish lists!

It’s easy to tell. Tasmanian trains are upside down; I’ve photographed many of them.....

It Is indeed possible, though if so I'd say only a very short time. This is very likely to be the reason that uniquely, as far as I'm aware, numbers were carried on wagon ends.

That's the way to do it, Tony! Pity you can't get all the way by rail to Omagh these days.....

There’s one for IRM; a RTR “weird German diesel” in black’n’tan.....

The ones with the mesh doors were experimental. Not sure how many were built like that, but not many, and they didn't go into general service like that. This was an era of several types of experimental wagons, like the long-wheelbase four wheeled "sundries van", and another type seen in this video with opening upwards side doors. Interesting video; like Bullied's sometimes odd ideas, another "might have been". As an aside, imagine a layout of might-have-beens; turf burners in general use, all sorts of oddball freight stock, rebuilt steam locos in into the 1970s, modern versions of Drumm trains, and express 4.6.2T locos (the proposed 820 class, of which possibly five were planned)......and weird German diesels all over the GNR!

Having several SSM products myself, I can say they’re excellent looking. They do require skill to put together - mine were not assembled by me, otherwise they mightn’t look as well.... Excellent range of models. I would recommend them.

I’d be happy too with anything - I’d eventually have a mixture of best available now, for example, plus the best available in future.

Wonder what happened to all those models seen round 7:15?

Definitely a dud, Broithe! The original was entirely upside down, and the correct way to read it was by standing on your head! Yes, Achill station is a modeller's dream..... maybe some day!

New home found

Yes, it's a GNR signal. The C & VBT only really had one significant station building - at Castlederg. It was (is) a red-brick two storey building, similar in style to Clogher Valley, or even Cavan & Leitrim architectural style.