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There may have been problems with the HEP on the Loughrea line as the carriage used to be plugged into a land line at night to charge the storage heaters. On the other hand, this may just gave been when it was working with a G. It must have got cold in it pretty rapidly during the working day! And on the rare occasion they had a second coach on the train, no heating in that one at all!

So many model railcars - the "real" 2600s (AECs), 80s, etc... models never seem quite right. This one is amazing!

Worsley Works do a "G" scale kit for a CIE (West Clare) "F" class diesel. It is very accurate.

All set for Foynes now..... final emails / phone calls tomorrow. See ye there!

Must have a look - it IS certainly possible. The lighter green spanned 1955-63 and was concurrent with unpainted silver.

I couldn't swear to it, but while green tin vans were definitely to be seen, I'm unaware of ever seeing a PO 4w van in green - either in real life or in any record.

That IS the problem! 1958 Harcourt Street closure, 1976 G V Street closure......!!

All very true, Broithe.....however...... difficult, expensive or not, Dublin will absolutely have to have more public transport. There's no room above ground. The soon they start the better and the longer they leave it the more difficult it will get. Time for the traditional Dublin whinging to be silenced; we need this nationally, as a plan, so the normal standards of "me, self and I" and "compensation compensation compensation" will eventually have to be overtaken by national necessity... And I agree that the tunnel is a start.

DAMN! Can't go after all. Last minute thing cropped up; away all day! Anyone going - photos might be interesting for this site...

After almost a week in Vienna recently, I saw a city some 25% larger than Dublin with seamless, and in some cases 24 hour, tram, bus and underground railway lines. We have two tram lines, the red one not being all that speedy ("luas"?!) and Vienna has 177km of trams. There are some 6 or 8 separate underground lines covering all areas; we have none. Buses almost seem superfluous, and nobody ever takes their car into town. There's absolutely no need. Our roads are choked with buses and cars. Dublin's population will exceed that of Northern Ireland, i.e. will be 20% larger, within 15 years. this will make it equal to Vienna's. We NEED a system like this, and for that matter it might be of interest to readers to know that drivers of trains, trams and buses in Vienna - where the cost of living is almost exactly the same as Dublin - earn some 65% of what they earn here. Just sayin'. Against this background, and doubtless many others like it, all this fuss about one tunnel is just pathetic. Oh yes; Austria has a similiar number of taxpayers to Ireland.

Not sure, John. In layout planning terms, for those interested, such a manoeuvre could provide interest. While I am not sure about beet trains, certainly in the past it was not at all unknown for trains to be split into sections to go over lines with lighter load limits or steep gradients. I have seen - somewhere - a photo of a battered looking J15 trundling along the Cork main line of all places, some time in the late 50s or early 1960s, with an overload of one "H" van and a 20T brake van. that's a bit extreme, but obviously it did happen; this was in pre-photoshop days! In the forthcoming book, there's a shot at Gortatlea of one of the last Tralee mail trains. it consists of a single 141 and a single mail van.

And a bit more. Check the Farish website and those of other "N" manufacturers. Open wagons and some LMS covered vans are close enough to 1950s GNR(I) stock which ended up with CIE and was in use well into the seventies. Just sheep-dip in grey or brown (post-'72). Mk 2AB coaches will be just a repaint of BR equivalents. I'm sure someone manufactures Mk 3's; same. There's an LMS 0.6.0 tender engine which could be mildly altered to resemble an NCC equivalent, and I am sure I've seen LMS / BR Stanier tanks changed to approximately resemble UTA / NIR "WT" class. Lining - especially by hand - will always look grotesquely overscale in "N" gauge, so a choice of livery where lining is either non-existent, or weathered to invisibility (think "Jeeps"!) might aid realism. As others have said, a credible 800 can be made out of a "Royal Scot". I am sure with a bit of botching, a credible likeness to a J15 - almost essential for CIE steam era - or a "Woolwich", or even a 400 class if modelling the Cork main line, could be achieved. Plain unlined grey for all but the 800 would be an advantage!

I got a price to post a 141 - in its original box - from Dublin to the north today; postage was €4.55 or so. I know postage is generally much cheaper in the south anyway, especially for boxes / parcels, but there's a fair difference between that and £20 sterling!

I wasn't even aware of that stuff. Worsley Works will also have kits for Cravens, Park Royals, laminates and various NCC bogie stock (suitable right up to early '70s NIR era, "Hunslet" hauled on Portrush Sunday School trains!) and GSWR six wheelers, suitable for CIE use up to about 1961. With so many of us now living in ever-smaller houses and apartments, maybe "N" gauge Irish is a potential growth area?

Ah!! Karl, I didn't realise there was a complete circuit. in that case, none of my queries above apply at all, as you can reverse anything in. I thought it was a fiddle yard type of thing. With that sort of layout above, you have various options. A passenger platform would be one. The loop in the oil area is optional. One on the main line road might be more prototypical and also more useful. The double loop station at the top could be like a South Wexford station, so passengers could be accommodated.

On that scale, would I be right in thinking that 3D printing might be a way forward?

On that scale, would I be right in thinking that 3D printing might be a way forward?

Isn't it strange that trains were limited to 30, in the fledgling H&S-obsessed world! Twenty five years earlier I remember 35 and 40 - and loose coupled at that - as commonplace.

Those are all grey, as far as I can see; the chassis seem the same colour. When they were repainted orange, the chassis remained grey, but this might show up as a separate colour. Once repainted in orange, the CIE logos became black and these can't be seen in this picture. It's not a very clear picture as far as the wagons are concerned, so we can't be sure. As far as the changeover from grey to orange is concerned, it would have been about 1970, as far as I remember.

WOW!!! Topical as always! I'm quite sure that the run-down of the Nenagh branch, however, will NOT be mirrored at Tara Junction!

Does the track go beyond what's shown? The thing is, the headshunt has to be long enough for at least one locomotive plus wagon. If there's only room for one wagon behind the loco, they'll have to be shunted in and out one by one, which apart from being cumbersome is obviously not prototypical. Ideally, you'd need room for 5 or 6 wagons behind the loco, or a length of headshunt some metre or so long.

I'd imagine Amazon, DiveController, or direct from the publisher. Yes, David, it would be available from publisher, as would Rails Through the West. Thanks for your good wishes, folks.

Just an update; the launch will be performed by Lady Geraldine Dunraven, and it all kicks off at 2pm in the Flying Boat Museum in Foynes. Barry and I will be there along with Malcolm Johnston of Colourpoint Publishing. It promises to be a great afternoon! Hopefully I'll see a few of this community there! All invited.

Incidentally, how does that layout design software work? Would a techno-philistine like me be able to use it?

Is there even enough room up there (top left) to hold a loco and one wagon at a time to push into the siding for the fuel unloading area?