jhb171achill

Curved ends would have limited them to a few W & L types. Good that they’re flat-ended. Important thing: Irish railways didn’t use 4-wheelers at all during the era (approx 1880-1915) when body designs of this type were in vogue. Thus, the only useful ones for Irish lines are the six-wheeled ones, though they’d need footboards for all lines. A pair of the bodies of the 4-wheeled ones would make a nice “generic” bogie coach.

Has anyone tried something like modelling clay smeared over the sleepers, with very fine ballast (like N scale gravel) rubbed into it? Just leaving rails showing like in the photo of the industrial siding above?

If they’re going to be like the drawings show, they’re closest to 1880s GSWR in design. BCDR: wrong window profile MGWR: wrong roof, window and body sides profile GNR(I) & DSER: wrong everything profile BNCR: BNCR stock had flat sides, so unsuitable for NCC overall. Oddball stuff: The Waterford & Wexford Railway had a couple of carriages which would be similar in generic design to these. With most today having little or no knowledge of the eclectic mix of stock the West Cork system had, one might run one on a layout based on the CBSCR without attracting too much comment. The CBSCR had several short bogie coaches of a design not that unlike these. A further thought - do they have full length foot boards? All but a very few one-off exceptions of 6-wheelers in Ireland had these. In Britain many didn’t.

Excellent news. I’d probably go for a couple, though I’d prefer Irish prototypes.

Exactly! I’ll have six, if so.

Yes, mixed feelings indeed. I’d rather see a greenway on a railway line than a widened road or a housing estate called Buckingham Lawns (in rural Ireland), or some such other stupid, inane, pretentious and inappropriate name. But: once the sanctimonious Lycra cycling dictatorship get in there, it would be easier to defeat the taliban than get the railway reopened, should a necessity arise. In reality, this “necessity” is exceptionally unlikely to arise, but I might be inclined to suggest that Foynes might be one to keep railborne. I do think that when they reopened Midleton, they should have gone on to Youghal.....

MORE detail!!!! Wow!

You shouldn’t pay to go into dodgy places like that. They’ll shaft you.

What happens here? You can dress up as a thief and rob all the houses. That's a boring one, as the Gardaí don't arrive. Or you can rob cars and joyride, and they'll appear and say "Is this your vaaa-HIKKLE, sir?" Or you can dress up as a Garda, and have coffee in a replica Blarney Woollen Mills cafe! Since it's in Italy you have to wave your arms every time you speak. The veteran politician Dick Spring might have been a dangerous person to sit beside.

I know this is VERY pedantic..... but I can't help wondering why they offer a GSR loco with red con-rods! Looks absolutely ridiculous....like a fertiliser wagon with tartan ends and pink bogies. I had garden railways in my last house, battery powered. I'd be tempted to re-jig the current (small) garden just to accommodate one of those locos (with grey con-rods!). Equally, no C & L loco was ever black. Ex-T & D No. 6 had a late repaint and looks grey in some photos, black in others - but no other narrow gauge steam engine was black. I simply note this as a small bit of historical info. From Accucraft these will be amazing. I will seek Garfield's advice as to whether a dozen or more ferts might be a better investment(!).....

I know a fella near the border who’ll lend us a JCB, if we split it three ways..... that’ll be six locomotives each, or thereabouts..

I would make it a bit more mixed, Tony, , maybe some litter about, a few small weeds, etc. I think a little grey wouldn't go amiss too . You have a nice looking ground texture which blends in well. Maybe a few things like oil drums sitting about, or a pile of some sort of stuff awaiting loading....... Rome wasn't built in a day and as others have said , it's more than ready for showing.

Folks, anyone who hasn’t visited this place ought to. It’s a superb museum, all the more so because it was all privately funded. You’re guaranteed a super-friendly reception too.

Absolutely excellent stuff! Well done! Love the wagons lying about awaiting unloading, just like the real thing.

Possibly a Fry model? Must check the list, though I don't remember seeing one among the actual models.

Well done Ernie, and Leslie! If I had the money I'd have gone for them too, though a bidding war would have been to nobody's advantage. Richard was very helpful to me with several research projects in the past.

Hi Ken Yes - main paintwork (large surfaces like wooden-boarded buildings like signal cabins), corrugated PW huts - cream. Doors, frames, etc., a leaf green colour quite like what would become CIE green. Railings and ironwork in stations, fencing etc, the same green usually. I have an idea occasionally dark grey or black but I could be wrong. Bridges were painted in red lead primer, and over that were painted a dark silvery grey.

Pure art! Excellent!

Same colour, normal orange. See photos above with carriages and an A class for comparison. All orange, all weathered! A point for the purist; the bogies painted black with blue and green bits is a modern variation. When operating with the CIE containers, B & I or Bells, the bogies were all brown. Presumably variations of both are included?

They were always orange, never yellow. As they aged, they began to look yellowish, as per the photo above taken at Mallow. Some looked slightly brownish, like the derelict one at Whitehead. But always orange, same as on carriages and locomotives, rather than the post-1990 brighter shade. Answering the other post about colour, this is exactly what they looked like in traffic. Initially painted the same orange colour as the lower half of carriages, they received less attention than carriages did, so they faded to the above. Outside my era but I might need one or two!

A well-known presenter on this forum, and excellent modeller, confided several years ago that one of his iconic layouts was possibly going to be in 145 shades of grey. The reason was uncertainty about correct liveries for the models, but his research led to the (accurate) full colour version!

Thanks, Eoin. I'll check what decals of Des' I already have, as I bought a load of them some time ago at the Stillorgan show, I think. The one I'm looking at is in the original BnT livery, so the numerals are (a) the large ones on the sides, and (b) not shaded.

The RPSI Whitehead set is painted a colour close to UTA green, though it wasn't matched as such when devised. UTA green was darker than CIE. The Bachmann green isn't far off the mark - while inaccurate for a new-paint, like the cie orange / tan, weathering could dull it down. The Bachmann green is close enough to the weathered version that many of us remember.

Greetings I recently got another Murphy 141. I have two already, carrying different numbers, but the one I recently got is a duplicated B141. I want to change it to B145 or B147. The numbers on the ends are so small that I'll deal with these by judicial weathering; in real life, numbers often became obscured. I remember seeing one locomotive at Claremorris with the number on one end being completely unreadable. My question is this: regarding the numbers on the sides, what's the best way to remove the final "1", and with what transfers might a "5" (or whatever) be added instead?

I don't know if this is possible, but if anyone can download my "flying snail" icon to the left, it is from a good quality daylight photograph of an actual snail on actual CIE paint. My late father got a transfer and mounted it on a board painted with paint in Inchicore. This is the shade used on any steam locos that were green, on buses and road vehicles 1945-62, on railway station paintwork until about 1960/2, and on carriages and horseboxes 1945-55. After 1955, any NEW carriages and repainted older ones, plus diesel locomotives, would get the lighter shade.