jhb171achill

The top two are more accurate; the bottom one is too deep a shade, by the look of it. The same tanny orange was used right through from 1962 until about 1990, when painting techniques changed, leading the slightly brighter shade seen latterly. Paint fades depending on the ingredients. If a mix had, say, brown and orange pigments in it, and the orange faded quicker, it was fade to having a more browny tint. CIE's tan paint tended to show a slightly more flat tan colour when badly worn - however - in traffic locos and coaching stock were generally looked after well, so you never got that variation on vehicles in traffic; they'd be repainted long before. Variations in new batches of paint were rare and so infitesimally small that you couldn't really discern them. In contrast, in the 1950s, many green carriages ended up extremely worn looking, and quite faded in some cases - but the greens were absolutely standard when new. Look at yer man in the photo above. He's waving Bachmann Mk 3s at the pilot in order to spoil his day, as he knows he's a steam man.

As far as RTR British stuff goes, these are as close to some CIE vans as anything, indeed, in my teens I had a good few of them on my then layout. Dip them in a pot of grey paint or brown (post-1970), stick on CIE logos (snail or roundel, depending on era) and you're there. However with corrugated ends, they resemble not so much actual "H" vans but ex-GNR cement vans which ran among them right into the 1970s to the end of loose-coupled goods traffic. Dundalk built a good lot of these in the 1951-4 period, and while few GNR goods wagons saw much continuity in CIE, these did. For authenticity, the numbers will be lower and suffixed by "N", thus instead of numbering it something like 18776, it'll be 109N.... I saw one at thurles with a very low number - 66N. It was by this stage (about 1977) awaiting scrapping, so I wish I had hacked off the CIE numberplate which by this stage had been affixed to it!

Thank you Railtec, that's very informative. I get the comment made above that you're busy - a very good complaint, no doubt. However, I wonder, for information, what would be involved in doing a run of standard "eau-de-nil" snails, with the gold lining. If it's too time-consuming or commercially unviable, naturally it ain't going to happen. maybe you need a minimum order of them to make it commercially sensible for you? With this, gold-lined light green coach lining for the older dark green livery would be good to have too; I must look up the dimensions of each line, for above and below windows. Certainly, I'd be interested in gold lined anything as above, should you decide to do some at any stage.

Many thanks, gentlemen. I wasn't aware of the railtec ones - I had looked up their website but either it was before they did them or else i accidentally overlooked them. Great stuff!

For general interest, but mostly for GNR1959, here's the working timetable for the Derry Road and elsewhere dated June 1959. Enjoy!

Shortly after the abolition of the time-honoured CIE green liveries, the "flying snail" was replaced by "roundels" or "broken wheels". I include this to show precise proportions for this device, as modern imitations are often wide of the mark. There were but two exceptions. When the 071s were first delivered, they had a non-standard browny tan instead of the orange-tan that was normal; this had been applied in the USA and along with it an all-white roundel of wrong design. Also, if you look at the IRM bubbles, you'll see a roundel which is not like this. The wheel is too large and the sections too far apart. But, as yet another way of showing how truly accurate IRM's products are, this is absolutely prototypical - the real things had a non-standard logo EXACTLY like IRM have produced....!

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!