jhb171achill

I'll check that out, Tony, many thanks.

Folks I attach a track plan of a station very vaguely based on some sort of combination of Westport Quay and Valentia Harbour - the basis for my current venture. The idea is to have it signalled for passenger working / ETS. I have an idea of what signals should be where; the loco siding would in this case be just a hand point off the goods road at the top of the diagram, presumably, and there would be a home signal at the platform end for departures. But what of shunting signals? And positioning of point rodding? Thoughts on a €50 note to the usual address......?

Cheap wagons! A few 5-plank yokes which will be good enough for a repaint and a level of weathering of truly ghastly level! If you search about at rejects an the like, they can be as cheap as £5 each.... Also a few accessories like a road van suitable for repainting as a P & T van of the fifties or sixties. I want two of these to meet mail trains... There are also several wooden-planked British goods vans which are a very good approximation to some GSR goods vans built in the 1940s. Again, I'm looking for as cheap as chips.

Folks and folkesses (if any!) I have been trying several times to order stuff from Hattons online, to no avail. Every time I try to save a list of things I've ticked to buy, a message comes up to say "sorry....blah blah blah....fault reported to webmaster....etc". It doesn't work. I spent some considerable time trying to buy quite a god lot of stuff, yet their website - which at best is interminably slow - just doesn't work. Any thoughts, or alternatives with as large a range as they have? I emailed at one stage - no answer. I doubt if they have a "webmaster" - if so, he's Rip van Winkle as he's been asleep for a long time.

A good accessory for a model J15 is a crew: driver and fireman in overalls, plus a tall figure with a black beret and long brown overcoat - Bob Clements hitching a lift as he often did! Once I get the present layout up and running, various well known characters will appear about the place in the form of little figures.....

Well, it's the season after all.......!

Looks as close as anything to many standard styles, particulary GSWR. In this guise, it fits perfectly into its surroundings. Maybe Glenmore is an ex-DSER location, or maybe it's ex GSWR, like Rosslare - Waterford, Palace East - Bagenalstown, or somewhere between Waterford and either Mallow or Gowal Limni!

A single one (193 from memory?) was repainted all-grey about 1961/2, only months before withdrawal. Uniquely, it had a black smokebox and chimney, but was otherwise "sheep-dipped" grey. None were lined in any way, ever, but many had black edging around the crimson buffer beam. No other black at any stage.

He also made two stationary steam engines, and started on a locomotive (only boiler & cylinders); the standard of workmanship on the latter was exceptional, and he parts moved very smoothly. He was an excellent wood-caver and turner too. He built a model also of a GSWR convertible ("soft-top") goods van, to a scale of about an inch and a quarter to the foot. It remains in actual GSWR paint. Apart from the above model (which he made as a toy for my father about 1920-ish), I don't have any of the other stuff, which a relative has. So at least it survives! It would be my hope that some day it can all be displayed alongside Maedb in Cultra.

Good evening all I have had a lengthy phone call tonight with Roderick of the excellent 00 Works, who as most will know is planning a launch of a RTR J15. After several previous conversations over the livery, I took some more photos of my grandfather's model, ninety years old at the moment. This was a coarse-scale 00 gauge model, but the photos are to show the grey paint which is original. Before photographing it in daylight, I took the precaution of checking that the paint hadn't faded or become discoloured as old paint can. The test proved positive, as they say, by filing away gently at a small section on the tender. So - this is what the GSWR replaced their lined black with, starting around 1915-8, and which the GSR and CIE continued with unaltered until the end of steam. I'm posting this for general interest as well as for Roderick's information - I can confirm that he has gone the IRM-style extraordinary lengths to ensure accuracy in all areas, a difficult thing with a long-lived cl;ass with so many examples - so these locos will be eagerly awaited. I'm sure I don't need to add that like any new model, it will come as it would have looked "out of the paint shop"; buyers can weather down - as the prototype would have had - to whatever extent preferred. The grey was known to darken in time, usually as a result of a combination of rare cleaning, big intervals between repaints, dirt and oily rags used for cleaning. Exact matching with colour card size will follow. It is - rightly - OO Works' intention to get this historically important (if dull!) livery properly right. The pictures follow earlier postings of mine, of the same engine in different light, including artificial.

I'm not sure where I got that from, harry - it was probably a joke!

This is outstanding work, set in an area I know very well....

Superb work. Question - as I have some of these on order - what radius will it comfortably go round?

Very nice work. I am not sure of exact chassis detail, but I have a vague idea that there's a decent shot of one in the National Photographic Archive collection of the late Jimmy O'Dea. That's maybe the photo reproduced above.....! Livery wise - GSR later (LMS shade) maroon, though some have said that at least one might have been varnished wood. I cannot confirm or deny that. CIE painted them the standard dark green, complete with (rather large, for the size of them) "eau-de-nil" lines and snail. None ever got the lighter green. I am afraid I can't provide any info on the interior colours either, though it is probable that they had darkish red upholstery if any, and light brown-painted interiors. I will delve into the Catacombs here to see if I can dig up anything else.

Interesting to speculate what exactly all eighteen of these beasts will do with the DFDS cancelled. How many are in traffic on a daily basis to cope with what few containers are left, the sticks and the Tara? On that note, how many 201s does it take, on a daily basis, to look after the Enterprise and the Mk 4s?

Brilliant stuff - a model of this entire train might be interesting - anyone? This is historic - possibly this is the last ever train over the line. The Greenway zealots will be out in force now.

Superb! Pays to wait........!

Yes, that was Felthouse Junction.

I'm sayin' nathin........ ......though Felthouse and Chareville were once.........!

Rest in peace, Jim. Sadly missed.

That Curragh layout is an absolute gem.

One (I think 193) became grey with, uniquely for ANY CIE loco, a black firebox and chimney but grey elsewhere. I'm aware that Roderick has done painstaking research on these locos, not just on livery but on a bewildering array of the many detail differences involved in Ireland's largest class by far. I would have no hesitation in highly recommending it, and Roderick deserves our support. I've my order in and may get two. I already have a very nice SSM one - an excellent model which in my case is weathered within an inch of its life. It will share beet specials at Dugort Harbour with its OO Works companion(s). I suspect that no more than two or three J15s were black, and these only for a very short time between maybe 1958 and 62.

Where?

Absolutely! An oil tank would need to be put in the tender, and this makes me realise that I'm unaware of ever seeing a photo of above or inside an Irish oil-burner's tender. Anyone else?

But, like myself, you're discovering it again, Tony! .......which is good news!