jhb171achill

I meant A39. I'd have to confess to being amongst those who might see 458 as "the ugly duckling"! (....running for cover in case Tony throws a railcar at me....)

You did. It was Scahalane. He's putting finishing touches to the inside of the building......

Will the new beauty be on duty? And - I'm presuming it's the standard timetable, perhaps without the 1700 departure?

Beautiful looking beast in original condition. Must have been some sight.

Depends. If there's chocolate, or a Heritage Railway magazine in it, "right now" is always the answer. The rest await the aunts, uncles and turkey.

Is there a bar in it, murrayec?

I remember years ago at Whitehead (and some readers of this will have current experience both there and at Downpatrick), the convoluted puzzles which arose in order to get something at the far end of a siding out, and shunted somewhere else, with inadequate headshunt room. Nightmare. It's not always as simple as it looks, though practice makes perfect.....

Dear Santa....... .....!

w o w !!!!!!

I might do, J'mad. It would take somewhat lionger to get photos of all variations, but we'll see. Initially, drawings. Virtually all liveries were applied to more than one type of vehicle, so a decsription of the livery, rather than all the vehicles, would be a start.

I gorged myself on those the other evening at a family get-together when the younger folk had "cooked".... Who's for a gingerbread De Dietrich set?

Brilliant, Glenderg. PM me your email address and I'll ping you in a few days with whatever ideas I put together.

As long as the venue for the exhibition had a bar nearby, it's a good exhibition. If far away, it's a bad exhibition. That's my technically considered opinion.... :-)

Ahhhhhhh I completely forgot the cat!!!!!!! Likewise, happy Christmas to one and all....

A very Happy Christmas and New Year to all here and their families.

1. Loco runs round, backs up against passenger stock and pushes them clear of points towards Dromod - 3 moves. 2. Loco runs through loop and backs against liner, pushing it back against carriages - 2 moves. 3. Pulls whole lot forward (Dublin direction) through yard loop, stops to uncouple carriages, and sets off for Dublin - 1 move. Is that what happened, at a guess?

They were indeed called "bags" and still are. True, it doesn't seem logical.....! I don't know the origin. Anyone?

Brilliant, folks, thanks for your suggestions, that's very useful. I'll mull over it and see what I can do. I'll prepare it standing on my head so that the illustrations are the right way up!

As an actual book, Kirley, I doubt if it would be commercially viable, but if it was, all the better. I would initially plan to just post it all in a section here. If someone could show me a side elevation of, say, various laminates, that might be a start. I would hope to find a way of "colouring it in" for display here.

I sympathise, Weshty. Every SINGLE post I ever put up here contains some predictive gobbledygook - even worse than the content of my posts.... There's barely one post I don't have to edit...

Imagine the Belmond train travelling to Valentia, Clifden, Clonakilty, Achill, or Bundoran!

Folks, as a result of a couple of expressions of interest, I cast the net wider; is anyone interested in some sort of definitive reference for all known CIE liveries? If so, I would be happy to put this all together, but I'd need the assistance of someone who can help with outline drawings of all sorts of locomotives, carriages and wagons. Any takers? Perhaps you might PM me?

The were UK equivalents too, junctionmad. With the all brown, and I suppose a nod to preservationists if and when preserved examples become due for repaint; correct versions have brown chassis and brown roofs as well, just as grey wagons had grey roof and chassis as well. Like CIE steam engines, it was "sheep dip" procedure!

Correct, flange, I should have clarified that. Few H vans had vacuum bags - I think is as one on a single occasion, though (a) I could be wrong, and (b) it might have been a one-off for some specific purpose. For a modeller, all grey is the rule prior to 1970, bubbles included. There were extremely few exceptions, though one which springs to mind was the short lived red on Ranks grain wagons, which were hardly commonplace! Post 1970, brown graduates from start to about 60% (maybe 70%?) of working stock by 1976. From then on, it's virtually all bulk containers, bogie fert etc. All brown.

Personally, as one of the majority of exhibition attenders - the viewers, rather than exhibitors - I like to see a "round'n'round", as the trains are in operation. But once I get my own thing up, running and built (I moved house last year), I'd be onto accurate operation. I think that even for those of us with an interest in absolute accuracy, it would be hard to concentrate on a layout operated thus at an exhibition, and it wouldn't be easy, if possible at all, for an exhibitor to concentrate hard on correct operation, while talking to and interacting with the public. To do it properly you'd need one person to operate and another to talk! Now - as I've said numerous times - I've the greatest expect for all aspects and opinions; that's just my tuppence worth. My point is - to answer the question, I think the exhibitor has to have final word, or at least a major say, as he's sitting there not getting paid! Most exhibitions seem to have a good mix, with everything from highly accurate models to "Thomas"! Glenderg raises the realistic scenario of a train sitting five minutes in a station. Here's one old-fashioned, original, and highly effective solution. The late jhb171 Senior had a huge old coarse scale O gauge layout in his youth. Now, we're going back to the mid to late 1920s here. His own father, who was a very skilled modeller indeed (unlike me), adapted an old clock to run at higher speed - 12 times normal speed. You could see the hands going round. While scenery was absent, the railway was run to strict timetable. It had a double track main line with a single track branch, and another single track loop of some sort. There were slow and fast up and down passenger trains, light engines, shunting procedures, two large goods yards, and slow and semi-fast goods services. Even shunting engines had duty rosters, like in real life. He would wind the clockwork locomotives, and wind the (clockwork!) clock, and set it all going. The clock ticked away, completing a 24 hour day cycle in two hours. By the time I was old enough to appreciate it, the clock had become worn out, and his LMS 4.4.0 tinplate locomotive was reckoned to have run over 1000 actual miles.... It's all gone to Tinplate Heaven now.. But a "faster clock" idea might be of interest to a modern modeller determined to have absolute operational accuracy, and surely must be possible to replicate using all the modern gadgetology that exists.... (....there must be an "app".....)!