jhb171achill

Hmmmm... the wheels on my one are too small and those are a bit big! I suppose, in either case, if we were to be content with an approximation, it would do. Yours, above, is probably a better bet indeed.

Haha excellent! I'm sure that many of us have been there too!

I've always admired Arigna Road's weeds, puddles and undulating surfaces. I think that a mirror-smooth uniformly coloured model road will always look more toy like. There's some American man who posts up youtube clips of scenery making which look as real as any photo. Doubtless, though, many of us might prefer to retain hard-earned funds for many of the good models available, rather than scenic materials!

I've put up (or upside down) a few of mine in the past, Warbonnet - will have a delve. My main point was that those of the esteemed gentlemen mentioned above 9and others) would probably be a great deal better quality!

I would re-align it, to be honest - it looks a bit more cluttered the way it is.

Their carriages look OK if you were doing a G scale continental line. You can get four for $100!

Interesting - thanks..... I'm thinking in terms of whether the chassis might serve for a rough equivalent of a T & D 2.6.0.....

Tis actually true; horse poo is a necessity! One for the weathering department......? A modern road on a layout set in 2016 or 1976 would need the odd puddle, worn white or double-yellow lines (not pristine ones!), oil and tyre marks and the occasional weed to look realistic - one might even say the odd bit of litter in the gutter. Same is true of days of yore.

An open letter, I suppose, to the likes of Finnyus, Hurricane, The Wanderer and others among the excellent photographic community that exists now.... Few as the photos were that I took (in the mid 1970s film was dear, as was processing, and I got pocket money rather than state employee's pay cheques), I always thought in terms of the potential use I might make of them if ever I decided to make models of any. Little did I know that I would go down the continental narrow gauge route, though if I hadn't, why would I try to make models when messrs SSM, Provincial, Murphy, Worsley, IRM and many others are doing a better job..... Anyway, my point is - it might be of interest if you folks of the upper-drawer photographic community had perhaps a data base of straight side-on and end views, above roof views, and detail views of each type of loco, coach, wagon and yellow machine variety over the years... We all know how beneficial a flat side-on view is to modellers. Maybe you have already; just a thought. Meanwhile, keep up the excellent and necessary work of recording every detail of the railway.

Excellent stuff, Hurricane and Finnyus!

I had battery mechanisms on a railcar and a locomotive in former garden railway days... I never found them to be that adequate. Maybe this type of battery mechanism is better? How long does it take to charge, and how long does a charge last at reasonable running speeds? I'm in a smaller-gardened "town house" since scaling down, but some sort of rudimentary outdoor tramway may come into consideration one day....

He doesn't understand the value of things, the definition of the word "rare", what £150 translates to in terms of people's wages, let alone his inaccurate grasp of geography!

As always, that just OOZES character - and realism.

3 x 2 is also possible, yes.... Very few were larger than that, very few smaller than the earlier dimensions, from observation of old photos. Cobbles would indeed have been large tonws; not only that, but the busier thoroughfares in them.

Correct. Big cities - rectangular cobblestones on streets, gravel surfaces on lesser roads. Country towns - gravel roads in streets, tarred from mid 30s. Tarmac may have been invented, as such, around 1900, but it was several decades before it came to almost all places in Ireland. Pavements - paving stones typically about 1ft X 2ft, or 1'6" x 2'6".

Yes. Tarmacced roads came to most rural Irish towns in the late 1930s, but paving stones for pavements with kerbstones were a good bit earlier. Gutters tended to be along by the edges of the kerbs and basically dipped troughs lined with cobble stones about the size of large potatoes

Excellent stuff as always, Mr Wanderer.

70!!! Wow!!!!

I'm not sure about a passenger brake as such, Andy. I do know there was at least one old GSWR passenger brake kicking about on the system, and a couple ex-MGWR, but it was a six wheeler and wouldn't have gone over that line. Colm Creedon's work has thrown up a few errors over the years. According to Ray Good, probably the greatest authority on the West Cork system, they used an old T & C goods brake van and this is seen on mixed trains. The details of the bogie stock would seem very much as you observe. As you know, a few of those short bogie vehicles had brake compartments in them, so it is probable that one or other of these was the normal brake power on passenger trains.

Exactly.

Hahaha excellent! I still, say, both when under and over the humbfluence of influol, that these "anti-social" morons should be just kicked out at the next station "get out and walk". If they've no money, they're 67 miles from home, and no jacket, and it's minus seven, and they don't know the way, all the better.

Aha, Glenderg! You obviously know the Grand Secret of Marks!!! I've never breathed weathering powders meself, yer onner, and I wasn't even there when I didn't breathe 'em, and it wasn't Glenderg who didn't sell 'em to me. I don't do hardcore stuff, I just sniff Humbrol matt CIE orange. And maybe a bit of UTA green.

I think I know who you mean, Neil - if it's who I think it is, I took it upon myself a few years ago to tell him not to come into the carriage I was in with a tour group. He demanded my name, which I gave him, and told me he was going to report me. Then he told me he ran the railway. I said to him, "so who are you going to report me to? Yourself?"...and I stood in his way and told him in no uncertain terms to get out of the carriage I was in, which he did. The IE train host thanked me, as he had been giving trouble elsewhere in the train. But that approach can be rarely used, of course. NO LEGAL WAY to enforce a BAN! What sort of stupid, crass, idiotic legal system is that! Is it any wonder that pond life get away with murder in public? It is - it has to be - the old Irish thing of an utter hatred of all sorts of authority. A rule enforced will always be seen as a jumped up "jobsworth" taking out petty grudges on a poor oul decent oul fella of the public. That's rubbish, abject utter rubbish. IE's management should be lobbying politicians, senior legal people and whoever to gain the authority to simply throw people out at the next station. So it's raining, and December, and you're off your skull on funny powders and cigarettes and you can't get home? Tough. If IE can't get that authority, they need to flood certain services (many DARTs) with large Polish ex-army security men. Incidentally, the LUAS needs more of these folks as well.

Out of interest, Wanderer, without all the gory details, what type of behaviour was typical? Given that a railway is a public place, do IE have it within their legal remit to ban anyone from travelling on trains outright? If so, is there any way at all of enforcing it? If not, why not? There should be a "one strike" approach to this. If you're thrown off a train or bus once, that's it. You can't go back on them. And - anyone on drugs is automatically banned.

I'd say in 20 years time, the sale of drawings, not models, will be the big thing; we will be able to get decent 3D printers of way higher quality for the price of a night out....