jhb171achill

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?

In their original all grey livery, they were more often seen as just part of a general goods train, marshalled along with open wagons (corrugated by that stage, mostly) and "H" and a few other vans. By orange days, this was still the case, but now running ion block trains. By the time the ivory and black appeared, and the later "non-livery" of pure caked layers of cement (!) they were running in blocks.

Hopefully I can go......

That is a stunning concept. Very best of luck with it!

That's a beautiful model. Good to see the lettering done as accurately as possible on that scale; many a good model, well painted, has its overall appearance spoiled by lettering / numerals in the wrong font, or (often) way too big.

Very few got yellow buffer beams - it was a short lived experiment. Regarding the dark green on "A"'s, my own sources indicate that only the one had it - certainly a dozen would be very unlikely. I noticed at the toy fair in Stillorgan some C and A classes somewhere for sale in dark green, and a G - the G also having a grey roof. These are also inaccurate - just for the record! :-)

The reality is that it's low on the financial priority list and has been for decades. Thus, IE are only paying lip service to any sort of service provision. The line is run to suit crewing rosters, not the public. The existing public service on not only the Nenagh branch, but also Limerick - Waterford (and through Galway to Waterford) is useless to the travelling public. Either they lift the never ending speed limits and have proper line speeds and a decent service, or they should put it out of its misery.

Jhb171senior recalled an experiment with about a third of a kilometre of concrete sleepered track on the INW about 1954... somewhere near Inniskeen, I think.

The slagging starts: unless you're from Britain, an "MPD" is a type of UTA railcar, not a locomotive shed..,

Among the earliest concrete sleepers were in the 1950s on the GNR main line. A rural area in the west of Ireland is unlikely to have had concrete in sidings until very recently. As said by others, points were wooden, even among a sea of concrete track, until the last few years. The timber points are accurate for your timescale.

I have one, also 141 - see "for sale" section for details / price.

Amazing - excellent stuff as always