jhb171achill

I've a bit of old silent colour cine film of an E bumbling about Heuston station in 1977....must look for it!

And triangular would impress the health and safety police even more.

You'd think that after all this time, some bridge somewhere would say "enough!", and strike a truck....

Very often retired ex-mainline stock was used. Even in the early days, former main line 2-2-2's ended their days thus. However, in steam days there were indeed numerous classes of shutters on the big companies lines. In diesel days there were fewer, and after the demise of the E class almost thirty years ago, it's been "normal" locos. I suppose it depends on the location or era that you are modelling. Shutters have fared well in preservation. Downpatrick has two ex-sugar company steam locos and two CIE "E" class, as well as a "G". Two other "G" class are there two, courtesy of the ITG. Whitehead has the Derry shutter "Harvey", the Guinness engine and the rare Planet shutter from Irish Shell. Cultra has the Donegal narrow gauge "Phoenix", Derry no. 1, and an even narrower gauge Guinness diesel. Several 1ft 10 in gauge Guinness steam locos have survived too....

That really is the very best modelling you'll get! Very well done sir! Would love to see a beast like that running!

Probably something the same as a sign in a fast food joint I used to know, which was run by two ladies. It said "women's faults are many, but men have only two. Everything they say and everything they do"...... I never dared ask them what it meant, but a decent burger with extra onions and a portion of chips was 36p........

Leslie, your sins must be few; to own a collection like that strikes me as more akin to entry into heaven than hell........!

Top class stuff, Leslie - and yes, the mahogany does look the business all right!

Was hoping to make the launch myself, but I'll be in Germany! I know Alan put a huge lot of work into it. I hope it is a great success.

Meant to add, I very much like 33lima's models.

I saw the initial draft of it pre publishing and it is a work of art. Very detailed and complete, it will certainly be the definitive academic history of this line.

The Silverfox one.... The GNR version is entirely the wrong colour too, and the numerals and crests are also out of proportion and the wrong font.... A little research would have helped, whether it was an accurate model or an approximation.

Murrayec, you'd be ahead of me on that, as I said earlier the exact painting techniques and methods of diluting or mixing paint wouldn't be my thing. The exact references you would have are of benefit to modellers. My contributions would be to point people in the direction of information, or of examples I know to be accurate. If you are able to provide paint number references, i.e. the equivalent of an actual "menu", then that's the job done.

Excellent stuff

The manufacturer described it as a Craven? Or have I got that wrong?

BSGSV - yes, to answer your question, my point re weathering / matt finish / watering down initially - was that if watering down gives this effect, then that's the way to do it. I would have quite a bit of info about liveries, but actual painting techniques wouldn't be my forte, I'm afraid. To answer re the actual shade of the brilliant green, the RPSI set in Dublin is very much as I remember it, but also very much as old photos of good colour quality would indicate.

That's superb! Weathering looks very well, as does your brown van... Keep it coming!

Excellent stuff Richard!

Meant to add, and is indeed appropriate for another post.... Harty's influence in the "Bredins". It was common practice in the past (and quite wrongly so, in my opinion) for the head of department to take credit for work he had overseen. Best example - all the bridges "built by" I K Brunel, or all the locomotives (personally?) built by Robert Stephenson, and did Gandon or Mulvany actually "build" all sorts of fine buildings? Reality is, Bredin had a team of draughtsman, as did his predecessors and others like him. The most famous thing attributed to Bredin is of course Maedb and her sisters. If you examine drawings of these locos and indeed the "Bredin" coaches, you will not find the initials of Edgar Craven Bredin on them, you will find initials of others. Not to dismiss Bredin by any means; he wasn't the head of the department for nothing. He oversaw, and I suppose as they say now "facilitated" the transfer from an idea, via a plan, to a running locomotive. His Chief Draughtsman was also heavily involved in the accompanying coaches, the second batch of the Drumm Battery trains, and many locomotive rebuilds.

Fascinating stuff! And nothing will cheese me off, BSGSV, other than the price of Guinness in temple bar, so don't worry! My initial point was that there were the two main shades, details of which may be had. I had mentioned in earlier posts that in not just this, but many livery issues, there are sometimes variations. Just look at current "Enterprise" variations on 201 class locos and DVTs. The "Apple green" variation was a somewhat halfway house; it never became official policy as such, and yet was applied to a fair number of vehicles. I never saw it - but other shades of various colours I refer to from time to time relate to matters I can either verify myself or clarify by references to very reliable sources. Thus, these posts are designed to assist those who would want to portray great accuracy. Naturally, as others have pointed out, what a modeller wants is only his business. The legendary Drew Donaldson disliked Inchicore's loco grey, and liked lined green so much that he painted all his models in a lined green livery. Needless to say, few of the prototypes ever carried it, but they looked superb nonetheless. Others referred above to the difficulties of matching colours for models. True - I have fallen victim to this myself. But it also happens in 12ins to the foot scale, for example when a paint supplier to a railway went out of business or changed specifications. Legend had it that Dundalk applied forty shades of blue to its locos over a 25 year period, though there is no evidence to authentically back this up. Indeed, they had paint mixing chemists at the works there to ensure consistency. I knew one; he's long gone to his rest now. But some of these green variants were doubtless caused by this. In my time at Whitehead, the old sleeping coach there - now the Operation Manager & PW office at Downpatrick - needed a lick of paint. A job lot of cheap maroon had been bought to do a quick job on several coaches. It was trialled on this vehicle; the result, as many saw for some years, was that it looked purple, not maroon. Luckily the running set hadn't been touched and all the paint was sent back to the supplier. Otherwise, you would almost certainly have had two RPSI coaches running around like this for some years. The research always continues. Whatever stuff I find I will share.

Surely you had some comeback to the source of whoever packed it, or An Post?

Nelson - sometimes I think I must sound like a long playing record in plugging the IRRS ;-) However, I think you would find all sorts of stuff there which would be of great interest to you. There are many IRRS members who regularly read and contribute to this board, so you will find lots of help and guidance should you visit. You mention photos - there are lots!

Think I'll stay in the Hilton instead....

BSGSV, a very interesting article indeed, thanks. To answer a few points. The early experiment with a lighter green was indeed the same light green used a few years later. It probably looked like "Apple green" beside the existing dark shade, but evidently was liked as it was to becoms standard. The variations you mention (and I've seen pics if one or two of them somewhere) tended to be short lived one-offs, a bit like the legendary painting of a UTA "Jeep" in green. The RPSI liveries are their own. The Whitehead based Mk. 2 set is in a close approximation to UTA green, not CIE. The lining is the RPSI's own invention, and was initially devised by yours truly, the idea being that the coaches ought to look roughly UTA, but were not in fact! UTA green, when in use an weathered, tended to dull down to be like this is now, in traffic. The CIE shades did too, as did the various versions of the later CIE "tan". I defer to the knowledge of those whose knowledge and experience of paint thinning and weathering on models is far superior to mine! The two shades of green I referred to initially were the only two "official" versions, despite clear evidence of the odd alternative experiment. In addition to coaches, loco 801 was briefly painted in a slightly lighter shade in the early 50s, but quickly reverted to the shade on 800, the standard. 801 also carried red backgrounds to its number and nameplates from this time a la 461; the only CIE loco ever to do so. 800 and 802 had blue; all other green CIE locos had painted numerals and no names.

Leading up the amalgamation in 1925, the DSER used maroon, the CBSCR Olive green, the GSWR a very dark brownish maroon, as seen on Downpatrick's 836 and the RPSI's 1097 which is also on the DCDR now. The MGWR had traditionally painted carriages brown, apart from a brief flurry with blue and white for a few years about 1905. However the company had abandoned this after about 1918 and was in the process of painting its stock in maroon. The GSR adopted a very deep maroon at first. This was probably the same as GSWR coach paint, but spread to all constituent companies, including narrow gauge. Lining was somewhat simpler than pre 1925. In the late 20s, a brown and cream livery with shades virtually identical to Britain's Great Western Rly started to be used, but was largely confined to bogie and main line stock, though I have seen at least one shot showing a six wheel passenger brake thus clad. The darker shade seemed to continue on lesser stock alongside it, and no narrow gauge stock was painted this way. Lining was a single black line under cantrail, above windows and below them at the division between the brown below and the cream above. From 1935, when the "Bredins" were first introduced, the same shade of maroon as the LMS in Britain or the NCC was used, indeed with the same lining style. All future reprints of all stock were in this shade, which lasted well into early CIE days. Some secondary stock had no lining, including many (but not all) six wheelers. Narrow gauge stock tended to have no lining at all. After 1945, CIE green began to take over, but maroon coaches would have operated alongside them probably until about 1949/50, possibly in a few cases longer.