Noel

Somebody paid for the machine and the private property it is located on (lease/rent/capital), probably also paying commercial rates. There's no such thing as a free lunch. In the old days free water and air pumps were seen as a marketing draw to bring people unto a retail site (ie filling station probably with a shop). Perhaps the pay per use hardware is more robust and therefore up to public abuse. Why do people want to blow up anything?

Those were the days

Had many a memorable jump seat on those old 100 series, they had steam gauge analogue cockpit instrumentation but at least had INS so no need for astro sights. Had 5 engines slung under the wings on occasion.

Stunning result. Less is more. The business for authenticity.

Absolutely Fabulous. I was fortunate a few years ago to sit in one of the 3 surviving cars that were made for the movie.

Yes only old Lima stuff with the pizza cutter wheels couldn't run on code 75

We often go down to Killarney for a few days eBike cycling around the lakes and the large national parks, we usually get the train down and 5min taxi out to the Lake Hotel for our cycling base, as its right next-door to Muckross Park, and 10min cycle into town of races to the National Park. One year we got a taxi from the train, and the driver quizzed us as to why the hell had we chosen to visit Killarney on the May bank holiday weekend because the lakes of Killarney rally was on. He exclaimed the locals evacuate that weekend so bad is the noise in the town and all the anti-social behaviour from some of rally followers with their baseball caps & coke can exhaust amplified Impreza pretends roaming and cruising the town complete with shopping trolly spoilers on the rear. I said we didn't know it was on and he barked the 'crowd' who come down to watch it all thought they are Colin McRae but in truth none of them could reverse a trailer into a silage pit. I said it can't be that bad, he barked the gurriers were so bad, 200 extra Garda had been sent down from Dublin to stop the idiots from wrapping themselves around telegraph poles and killing pedestrians. I expressed surprise. He enquired what we'd be doing and when I told me we came down for a cycling weekend, he replied "I tell ou now for sure, ou will be kilt schton ded if ou go out on wan of dem dam byeschicles, kilt schton ded I tell ou". Needless to say we were perfectly safe cycling inside the two national parks along the lake shore, but could hear the whine of the professional rally drivers in the distance. We didn't hear any of the shopping trollies raving their 1.2 engines at night as we were staying outside the town. I said to the taxi driver, surely all these young rally supporters bring good tourist revenue into the town, he said "Not a bit of it, sure day schleep in deyr kiars, and only buy chips and cans of beer to eat, no money for the gwuest houses or hutels". Anyway we weren't kept awake by any of it, but notice d the heavy traffic cruising the town the day we left.

I've had no problems with MM 121 or 141 running on Peco code 75 track. Apologies I have no experience running on other track systems.

This is fabulous. Track construction on another scale. Impressive and entertaining

Yes, we live down a farm lane and they leave stuff over the wall up on the road entrance. Fortunately inexpensive items. The most annoying thing is rain damage, once discovered a delivery of an expensive electronics appliance that suffered rain damage, they had no signature so after considerable toing and froing our credit card company refunded us and the retailer got the hit, which I presume they subsequently passed on to the courier company. Had they even phoned us we could have had it taken indoors instead of being left out in torrential rain for 12hrs. No amount of cardboard prevents ingress of water to inner contents. Dropping the contents over even a low wall causes quite a percussive shock to parcels. The lazy drivers could phone, text, or just ring the bell, but impatient they drop and run, signing themselves some soft of squiggle.

Pilot did well landing dead stick on a rail line at night. Fortunately no over head power lines.

Looking good.

This is fantastic footage of the Irish steam era. Probably posted before, but for more recent members its a treasure.

It was really wonderful when in operation, It is a great pity, when our children were young we brought them to travel on it a number of times because a live steam locomotive was the main attraction. Don't think we'd have bothered had it been some sort of industrial yard diesel like a BNM or SVR. For the same reason we don't bother with rail tours anymore unless they are steam hauled (ie steamtrainsireland.com). Little interest in a modern diesel/electric loco, nor a DMU rail tour. I've no idea of the merits or feasibility of restoration, but I'd certainly visit Tralee again to bring our grand children on it.

Unfortunately/Fortunatley I cannot use magnetic couplings, because to operate I need to be able to uncouple wagons and rakes of coaches and shunt stock on the model layout. I moved our rolling stock over to Kadee's some years ago and have nearly completed the transition away from TLCs. Kadee's enable automatic uncoupling and delayed uncoupling that is impossible with magnetic couplings without the 'hand of god' from the great layout sky manhandling stock on the tracks. At least magnetic couplings are orders of magnitude easier to live with, than tension lock couplings and no slop along ranks of coaches and wagons.