jhb171achill

Is it an 0.3.0?

There will be photos of Fenit Pier in colour in a forthcoming book..... including a steam crane in action on the pier.....

Can I be the first to order a few "H" vans?

The Park Royals were indeed a great job, and its to their great credit that they are doing anything Irish and RTR. But a little care on such a basic thing as outward appearance ought to be a no-brainer.

There's "mpdfan" over on Irish Railway News site who is well placed to comment on the Derry stuff. Unfortunately, as far as I know, it's locked up, uninsured and uncared for - well done, Derry City Council......

Everybody - Vote for GSR800!

Garfield, can you PM me the spies' contact details? And the factory boss?

The anticipation mounts; who'll be the first to post a picture of them!

And rightly so, GSR; I think I'll write to the papers.

Saw that on the Emerald Isle Express! I have occasionally seen that in the past - I don't think it's unique.

Makes perfect sense, DiveController. Some colours - blue probably being the best example - can look very different in different light. CIE green has its moments, but those of us of a certain vintage who remember it will have seen the real thing in many variations of daylight, and daylight is the final arbiter of any colour. Thus, it's probably easier for me (and a certain Mr O'Rourke!) to judge accuracy. But with so much information about nowadays and many good colour photos coming out of the woodwork, putting a white line on a green coach is just lazy, careless. What would people's reaction be if the white line on the Black and Tan one was light green!

Ah for heavens sake. That's plain elementary! The white is wrong and the green looks a bit too bright. Surely to goodness we should be past simple errors like this, but they got the GNR railcar livery quite wrong too. Pity, as the model looks so good otherwise. The font for the carriage numerals on both liveries isn't right either.

Looks fantastic, but is the line on the green ones white or light green?

Replacement of signs with GSR standard enamel was simply a mater of money. They would allocate a budget for a line and all stations would get it, while there were none on another line, just originals. Then, another small budget would allow replacements on a piecemeal basis for a while; on yet another line, therefore, they'd only replace those they had to - e.g. ones which got damaged or rotted. The Clifden, Achill and Killala lines never got a single one between them, and while the Foynes line mostly did, I don't think there were any between Ballingrane and Tralee. Sligo - Limerick was a mixed bag, mostly pre-GSR! Narrow gauge lines were also a mixed bag.

I'll have a look tomorrow, Broithe. I'll be in Killarney tomorrow and the next night. Funny, the majority of all the unicorns I've ever seen are after leaving the Killarney Grand in the wee hours. The scariest thing I've ever encountered in Killarney is "The Wanderer"......

Wow! Excellent work - VERY realistic!

hahahaha excellent! Our good moderators and ballast wagon vendors will be raising eyes to heaven. Just as well there are no unicorns there.

How many shekels to the euro?

There's a wee man in the carriage with a handset....

That must be it, Mayner; interesting and worth researching. On of the BCR directors was in communication with the then-new Isle of Man Railway. Possibly they were swopping ideas. there was never any formal communication, as such, as far as is known. A layout showing either Cork's Albert Street CBPR terminus with 3ft gauge city commuter trains on a double track line, or a potential 3ft gauge terminus adjacent (probably) to Belfast GVS would be interesting. A narrow gauge line up through Ardoyne would have had some savage gradients, and given the long distance to Burtonport, a large fleet of LLSR tender-like locos would have been necessary for goods. What of passenger trains? A sort of narrow-gauge "Jeep" or NCC 3ft gauge compound? NCC-style bogie carriages like those on the B & L line would be needed..... Probably bogie goods stock at an early stage. And the UTA would have shut the entire lot in pretty short order...

I'll order 119 of those, Bosk! But only with DCC, and full air conditioning.

An obscure set of papers in the Isle of Man archive outlines very brief details suggesting that one time the short and short-lived Belfast Central Railway toyed with setting down dual gauge track, with an eye to the extension of a possibly proposed Ulster-based 3ft gauge system of possibly up to 200 miles in length. This is distinct from the once-proposed (and nearly started!) Ulster & Connaught Railway. Anyone know where this was meant to go, presumably from Belfast? I've never heard of it, but the mention of it goes back to the 1890s.

Some were indeed, Richrua! Others were en route from Timoleague Unicorn Farm in West Cork to Spa Halt, on the Ballynahinch branch of the BCDR..... Maybe I should get out more?

That is an amazing operation!

Probably the most famous is the man on the white horse in the Wellington Cutting between Bessbrook and Dundalk. My father remember a PW gang all running away scared from the, while on night time PW work, in 1947/8. Locomen had report sightings right back to the earliest days of the railway.