jhb171achill

No matter what the colour, it shows how a simple repaint can change the character of a model entirely! Looks well.

Dare I say "Up the Dubs!"?

Looking good - great weathering job.

Excellent news!

The carriages will be interesting. One or two green laminates or Park Royals as railcar intermediates, but also perhaps a couple of 45' bogies of indeterminate origin! The brake would be either a brand new tin van or an elderly ex-MGWR six wheeled passenger brake or brake 3rd....

Very good point.

Really outstanding photos as always - but: I read elsewhere today someone complaining - rightly - that some photo-sharing site had taken down all their pictures, and a few years ago this happened on a grand scale with some other website, where people had put enormous effort in putting up quite huge collections of their photos. Maybe I'm many steps behind the pack here, but I presume that all who post on things like flickr or Dropbox or equivalents, have retained their valuable work on memory sticks and other forms of media? A few years ago, VHS video, despite its shakiness and graininess, was hailed as the way to go for the future. Now it, along with the mini-cassettes that followed, are ancient history and you can barely even get a VHS player now. With so many forms of media nowadays, and not one lasting more than a few years in popularity, it appears that it is good sense to retain one's photos in several forms together.....

In an off-board conversation with a highly respected colleague this afternoon, the matter came up of "brown or bauxite" in regard to CIE / IE wagons. Definitions on paper of what constitutes "bauxite" seem to vary, so let's put it like this. If we take the majority view that "bauxite" is a mid brown with a distinct reddish tint, then it is a new phenomenon as far as IE is concerned, and was never used at all by CIE. The reddish shade used now is of comparatively recent origin, most often seen now as a background for painted numerals on modern stock, which (like UTA in the sixties) rarely if ever is entirely repainted. Against a brown surface liberally coated in brake dust, it looks almost red. CIE used a mid brown, and this continued well into IE days, until - I would guess - early 2000s. Thus, anything before that, and certainly everything without exception which constitutes CIE goods stock was not bauxite, but brown. A good source of what this looked like can be seen on many pages of colour books of the period, or among Brian Flannigan's or Ernie ("irishswissernie") Brack's excellent flickr collections. If anyone is familiar with the bizarre collection of sidelined wagons at Limerick, there is this oddball-goods-brake van, converted for some purpose it appears never to have been used for, and with the ends removed. THAT is painted a bauxite colour - but no CIE wagon of any sort, let alone a guard's van, ever carried that colour, any more than it did LNER loco green! I hope this helps.

Lukas - are any of your Cravens in original livery? (Don't want the 1st class one). PM me?

Might there be some way to incorporate "short journeys" to and from the Omagh markets branch?

I am hopping up and down in agony, and an attack of the Multiple Conniptions and Screaming Fits is imminent, as I will have to miss this - I'll be entertaining American tourists that day in Killarney. Awwwesome.

I know it's a bit "off the wall" but perhaps something like the innards of an industrial complex where manoeverability is assisted by wagon turntables at right angles to the running line, e.g. at nearby Herdman's Mills at Sion Mills station. The classic GNR yellow brock structures would add to it. I think that this arrangement for shunting was in place until the line closed.

What you're looking at so far, Tony, looks really good and as others say you've put great effort into it. If you have room, even another fiddle yard through an archway, maybe under a bridge, gives an illusion of travel. If you had Omagh North, then a length of no more than a metre of track, then another goods yard (Foyle Road? Portadown?) it would provide interest in actually making up a train to go somewhere else. Just a thought.

Correct versions; details and colours for 20T vans and cattle trucks in the 1960s. Note - and this applies to post-1970 brown guard's vans too - the black bit above and below the "wasp stripes". Wasped guard's vans were never any other way, nor did they have the black and white stripes seen in Cultra. NOTE TO MODS: There's probably a much better location for this post!

A forthcoming book will show two (albeit very much in the background) sitting in Mallow on the down side. I've seen a better pic elsewhere, will delve. I'd imagine it was a short-lived arrangement.

Excellent info, many thanks. Now, next question. What's best for painting the sides of the rails?

Very much appreciated, Rich.

I want cake! Now!!!!

So, exceptions..... Albert Quay painted one old C & B coach in the older dark green with two unlined snails and no lining. West Clare stock never had lining in CIE days, either in dark or light green, and frequently had no snails either. They were painted in Limerick. C & L stock only had lining ABOVE window level. The rebuilt coach no. 1L was light green and had neither lining nor snail, nor did the darker green C & L coach no. 7 (I think; the "bus coach"). Some full brake 6-wheelers had no snail when in later lighter green. A single (Glanmire painted) J15 had a black smokebox, though it was otherwise in standard grey; this was only carried in its last 18 months in traffic. Obviously, on other standard grey locos, the smokebox was grey too. At least two, and possibly three, (fitted) "H" vans were standard carriage green with black chassis, for use as mail vans on Tralee-Mallow trains.

There were rules as such, burnthebox, but like today (think white logos on ICRs) there were the odd exception. Paint shades were as uniform as today. Wear and tear tended to dull some of them down, of course, and different lighting in photography made things look very different indeed at times. There was an old adage at Whitehead years ago, in regard to the GNR's loco blue, that "well, I've heard that they just went to the local blue paint shop and got whatever was there". Thankfully, this is abject nonsense, possibly propagated to justify the RPSI's earliest attempt at repainting 171 in a blue many shades too light. The same has been said of CIE green. Both Dundalk and Inchicore had actual paint laboratories (I knew the last surviving member of staff at Dundalk) who went to great lengths to ensure uniformity by looking at what additives the paint might have; they mixed colours themselves on site. In terms of logos, there would be a general rule that in 1945-55 (older, darker) CIE green, two snails were on bogie coaches and one on 6-wheelers. Post-1955, with lighter green, one was used always. Numerals were always on the left.....

Hattons it is then!

Many thanks, Glenderg. Due to amended Domestic Planning Permission, after some years of lobbying, there may be an 00 gauge thing made possible. I will have to count the shekels.

What's the difference between Peco's code 75 and code 100? Which looks more like 5ft 3? (To such extent as either might!) Which is better for running a model of 800 on? Is a curve of some 3ft 6 radius sufficient for a model of 800? Interrogation complete.

I couldn't agree more. It's been a fascinating place to gain inspiration and share information on all aspects of railway enthusiasm, not only models.

An actual GWR design was unlike anything Irish, so wouldn't do. The above looks like a brown and cream Mk 1, rather than an actual GWR coach. Mk 1's are really only suitable for genny vans. The outline is not only unlike anything Irish, but because British Railways Mk 1s are so commonly "out there" and obviously associated with Britain, they are an onbious "botch job" and don't fit in - in my humble opinion - with Ireland. If you WERE stuck and just wanted to paint one in CIE livery, I would retain the loo window vents but fill in the windows - at least. Now, the LMS style would much better suit both final NCC days / early UTA coaches, or GSR "Bredins" or 1950/1 CIE stock which was more or less "later Bredins". The circular window would have to go. Brake passenger coaches were more common in Britain than here, and there were no Bredin stock with half passenger accommodation and half van, and few steel-sided examples of the species until late 1960s conversions of earlier stock (for example the 32XX series CIE brake standards). Thus, I would use all-passenger stock for conversion to "roughly-CIE-looking" stuff. In place of the circular window, one might add a toplight vent like in the loos on laminate stock. Not an accurate representation of anything, of course, but a simple conversion that would fit in as well as anything not strictly correct.