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2nd April 1973 until further notice..... hard to believe that the black'n'tan era was now in numbered days as the new "Supertrain" livery - then only on a few A and 121 classes, was ushering in the "orange and black" ("Supertrain") era. And yet, forty five years ago when this was published, G class locos were still at work shunting Tuam Beet factory sidings and hauling passenger trains on the Loughrea branch. B101s could still pop up here and there, mostly on PW and goods, and mostly south - Waterford, Limerick and Cork areas. Despite their almost total absence on passenger trains, soon a few would also get "Supertrain" livery; their classmates would go to their graves in black'n'tan. Loose coupled vans ruled the roost on goods trains. All-fitted bogie goods trains were a rarity; not that long before they had been non-existent. Fert bogies, however, were to be seen. Sugar beet was in single wagons. Bubbles were orange, but a few were still grey! 071s were a future fantasy, though shortly rumours would abound that CIE were getting new engines.... And life was good,and T Rex were No. 1 in the Top Twenty. And if I could get this algebra homework finished, I would have more time to play with my layout...... It just doesn't seem like 45 years to me.

Yes, and in six days time it'll be the 57th anniversary of the closure of the West Clare - the very last public narrow gauge line....

No, that's the 1945-55 one as far as carriages are concerned; see RPSI wooden heritage set or the C class at Downpatrick for the later version. Any green steam engines, plus all CIE buses, retained the above until the end of the green era in 1963.

That's the thing. The markets are so different, and possibly even the modelling culture, that few comparisons are valid. This is most certainly the case in preservation. Assumptions are often made that the ITG, DCDR or RPSI could do this, or even "ought"* to do that, because, well,the Strathspeys, Severn Valley, Ffestiniog and Swanage Railways do. 98% of the time, such comparisons are at best naive, at worst abject nonsense - because you're not even beginning to compare like with like. On this island we have 6.5 million people. Our neighbouring island has twelve or thirteen times that. Different market, and very different history of interest in allspects of railway, real and model. So - welcome to ECM's N gauge endeavours; new to us, though old hat to BR fans, not that this fact is in itself of the remotest relevance. And good luck to IRM, sorry, Accurascale! You folks are flying the innovative flag - keep it up! ( * "ought"....... I hear the chorus of active preservationists, "well if you think we OUGHT to, then you get your wallet out and your sleeves rolled up and do it yourself! We're running a train at the weekend, and the brakes have to be checked, the dining car stocked, and the jax cleaned!"... and who would blame them! )

Possibly one of our excellent makers-of-things here might oblige.... am I right in thinking that it's not necessary to do a large batch of these things? We have white snails for wagons, and yellow ones for the fronts of 121s and grey / yellow tour buses. There's unlikely to be an enormous market for those, so maybe it's feasible to do small amounts of something? Just a thought.

Another aspect to this; unless I'm missing something, nobody seems to do the "eau-de-nil" light green snails for the sides of carriages, diesel locos and steam engines. If I am mistaken, and someone does, maybe someone might enlighten me. To transfer manufacturers - the gold lining on light green snails on buses, older carriages, and steam engine tenders - is it practical to make things this small in one colour and lined in another? I'm just curious - in reality, such a tender is likely to be heavily weathered anyway and lining would probably not be visible anyway.

Thought these might be of interest; mid 1930s.

Ah! The Esteemed Leader & Minister of Domestic Matters.......

SWMBO???

Perfećt, Noel, many thanks.

Wow!!!!!!!!! This is the start!!! RTR N gauge will be a dream come true for many!

As a teenager, even if good quality RTR was available, my budget wouldn't have stretched to it, so BR Mk 1s bought second hand, and repainted black'n'tan would have had to do!

Unfortunately, to these people it's just a "toy train". As Eoin says, they don't know what they have.

Many many years ago, Model Irish Railways of Portadown sold little tins of authentic-shade CIE tan. Anyone know what happened them, or if an appropriate CIE shade can be bought now?

Well done, Popeye, that shows up well the vagaries of different films. I am currently examining a photographic collection which, if restorable, will go in a future book. But the slides have deteriorated so badly that a green "A" class is a bluey grey, while a carriage behind it, which would be in the older darker green, looks a dark purpley brown.... This slide, despite great historic interest, is sadly way beyond any restoration. Memory of witnesses can be equally unreliable, but someone with a keen artistic eye will be the best judge of all.

NIR had that driving trailer thing (now at Downpatrick) which never saw one single day's use. At least it didn't cost zillions.....

Are they around that long? Suppose so..... Well, an A class or a 141 can quite happily rattle along for fifty years, so I know which I'm voting for......! Steam engines, even just adequately looked after, will give more than a century of good work.....

Obscene waste of money.

Sunday 11th Feb? I'll be there.....looking for bargains!

That would do, then, for models of GNR / UTA / NIR and CIE railcars of AEC origin... from that clip and from memory, it sounds sufficiently like the real thing, though all the horn-based squawks and squeaks don't sound realistic. The AECs had a quite distinctive two tone warning device. Sometimes the higher note was first, sometimes second. As a child it took me a while to work out why, until I saw how the driver operated it. There was a control lever which made one sound if pushed towards the driver, and the other if pushed away. If you sat in the first class section at the front of the railcar, you could see through into the cab and watch what the driver was doing.....

I had reason to look up Norman Johnston's excellent little book on the Fintona branch last night. It's a good while since I looked through it, and when I did, it was details of the station I was looking for, not the tram. So I had forgotten one illustration in it, of an excellent model of the Fintona tram, or "The Van", as the locals called it. The model is credited by the author to a certain - Tony McGartland! An excellent and very original piece. Now, how to fit a horse with DCC!

It brings back vivid memories to me of the whole UTA scene at that time. The railways had been badly run down. Stations were often dark and shoddy, and locos and goods stock worn looking and very scruffy. The interior of a solid, comfortable AEC railcar was the only respite. I never travelled on the Derry Road, to my great regret, as I was old enough to do so, but I remember the desolation in Portadown once the lifting trains had finished, and the air of utilitarian desolation in the old, by now largely redundant station, and that ghastly concrete replacement opened in 1970 (I think I got off a train there in its first week; I certainly remember using the old station not long earlier). I very much hope so.

Temperance? Temperance? No, I don't go for these new craft beers. Gimme a pint of stout any day. I like the cracked road surface. How did you make that?

I presume the RPSI has Fred's collection now?

Exactly. And if stone throwing scum WERE apprehended over there, one gets the impression that both police and judges would be a lot harder on them than here, where we hear how hard a life the poor vandal has had blah blah, to nauseating ad infinitum; an insult to those from less fortunate backgrounds who have tried to make a life for themselves.....