jhb171achill

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.....

I suppose it depends, Roxy, on what end result you want. Austrian, German or some other mainland European theme, or Welsh narrow gauge (with or without slate mines) is easy - there's loads of RTR stuff. If you want to go Irish, unless you want to scratchbuild everything to a scale of 3mm to the foot, you're better off with 00n3 (12mm gauge) track. It's a bit bigger, but not much, so almost as versatile in confined spaces. As I said, 4mm Irish on 009 track looks plain ridiculous. Recent debates on this forum have examined the HO / OO / 21mm gauges for Irish models, and there's a clear advantage in 21mm from an appearance perspective, but practicalities and most people's skills, time and budgets heavily favour 00, even though it's not technically accurate. Using 009 to represent anything Irish (or Manx) in 4mm scale is way, way worse! It's like putting the Flying Scotsman on scale 3ft gauge track, proportionately. There are many Irish kits available - a very good selection in fact. They are all 4mm, thus making 00n3 track as good as obligatory. And now you can get Peco Streamline in 00n3, which you couldn't when I started narrow-gauging, years ago. Had it been available I'd have gone for it, and my dream of a complex Donegal or West Clare system in the attic would have come to pass....

I thought of using 009 track, which of course is scale 2ft gauge-ish, to accommodate British and mainland Europe interests, but building to a scale of 3mm, but eventually compromised. I got several Irish kits but for their scale they looked better on 00n3 track. 4mm SCALE Irish stuff on 009 track just looks totally wrong (hardly surprisingly; it is!) So I switched to German / Austrian narrow gauge, with the advantages of good quality Peco 009 track and high quality RTR stuff from the likes of Roco, Liliput and Bachman. This survived two house moves and just as I was about to set it all up here, along come Messrs Worsley, Provincial, SSM, JM Design and others. Thus, the last of it is being taken in a padded box to the post office in about half an hour, while meantime Messrs ECM Trains and Baseboard Dave are in communication! Here, of course, is the real advantage of 009. With Austrian, I can fit a continuous circuit with a sizeable terminus and junction station. With 00, which I'm returning to after an absence of about forty years, I can have a small fiddle yard to shunting terminus.

I've done a lot of 009 over the years, and sitting downstairs right now is a box of it going to the 009 Society for sale (circulated here some weeks ago and much already sold....). A satisfying gauge to work with.