Noel

It was a most pleasant surprise to learn I had won a raffle prize at the WMRC Easter Layout Exhibition. An Irish Freight Models kit of a CIE Bogie TPO. Thank you WMRC and especially IFM who kindly donated this kit as one of the prizes for the raffle. The purchase of the raffle tickets proved fortuitous as I was just about to order one of these unique kits anyway. Decals, wheels, grab rail wire, buffers and glazing sheet included. Only extras needed are a pair of Bachmann commonwealth bogies which I already had (salvage from 3173 GSV conversion). Nice crisp resin moulding with virtually no flash. Really looking forward to working on this over the coming weeks alongside the few other projects on the bench at various stages of undress Anyway a most pleasant and unexpected bonus from visiting the Wexford town exhibition for the first time. EDIT: Too excited to wait. First coat of primer on.

Love this real world 'men at'work' layout. 6 bogie fertiliser wagons seems the perfect length rake for large model layouts.

A small selection of photos from WMRC Layout Exhibition. An absolutely fabulous venue. Really enjoyed the exhibition, but what struck me more than the superb exhibits and trade stands was the friendliness of exhibitors and organisers who were delighted to engage with visitors and the public. The large cafe seemed a huge success and wonderful place for both visitors and exhibitors to enjoy hospitality, socialise, enjoy a rest break from touring the exhibits and have a chat over a snack or coffee. There were a number of layouts designed for children to operate. Below one of the 'Thomas' layouts being driven by children. Superb on site catering in the Station Cafe right beside the main exhibition hall. Great place for visitors to rest the legs. Fantastic venue reminds of the days decades ago when Dublin shows used to be in RDS halls. Large O gauge layout under construction - I understand WMRC had been working around the clock for the past few weeks to get this ambitious layout ready for the show. The baseboard and electronics integration was impressive. Looking forward to watching this layout evolve. N gauge layout - the detailed scenes and multiple landscape levels made this alive 'Rosslare Strand' layout was stunning Love the way this layout had two visually interesting sections at each end before track returned behind the back scene to fiddle yard, one with a cliff face and beach, the other with steep rocky faced cutting. Military trains caught my eye - Menacing Tiger tanks hiding in the under growth. Next three pics are of the fabulous cement factory layout. There were many more fab layouts which I spent time enjoying rather than taking photos. Superb hospitality and catering in the Station Cafe Great show, well worth the trip down. This was our first visit to this exhibition and to say we enjoyed it is an understatement. Great team effort and more than anything a really friendly and engaging bunch of folk participating. Seriously impressed with the organisation and especially the large venue. Great to see clubs come together with exhibits and show the hobby off so well to the public.

That is most impressive. This wonderful little country has come a long way.

Thank you Jason. That worked a treat and was fairly easy once I realised what was where. For the benefit of anybody else reading this in the future two pics below of the clips and gaps in the windows. I feel a respray into RPSI Blue'n'Cream may be in the offing as the tippex era is not my main cup of tea.

Got to see the the pre-production Tara wagon 'in the flesh' at the WMRC Exhibition and to say I was impressed would be an understatement. Another stunning RTR wagon from this stable. It is just a gorgeous full bodied wagon and yet for a bogie wagon is not too long which will look realistic on typical layout curves. Looking forward to these ones.

What is the sequence for opening an MM Craven? This is for the purpose of repainting internal seating, installing passengers, and installing coach lighting. If anybody has photos of the disassemble parts that would be great. Thanks in advance.

That's a most impressive master piece of modelling. The subtle finishes are so realistic.

Summary of steps used to weather my orange MM mk2 EGV. Not necessarily the most efficient nor the best way, but the way I tried after reading lots of helpful posts on here by some of the forums experienced and professional paint gyrus. Lots of scary fun but a most enjoyable way to spend an afternoon.

Mk2 update project complete. Weathered the rake of orange roofed MM mk2 coaches. Used a mix of powders and airbrush on EGV below. I made them a little dirtier than the prototypes which were regularly washed because I wanted to mask the shade of day-glo orange these guys come out of the box with the weathering. EGV sunny side in on Platform 2 at Woodvale Junction. EGV darkside out standing at platform 2. The powders helped define the doors, roof edges and panels before over spraying roof dirt, frame dirt and a little black here and there. I'm really enjoying this learning journey. Scary at times but worth the risks. I'll try and be a little more refined with the rake of black roofed mk2's.

Cheers Fran. Look forward to seeing you there on the Monday. Its the busiest of the two days anyway. You will be blown away by the truly massive O gauge layout. Forget A class, an IRM 0 gauge 141 might become the new holy grail.

Fabulous life scenes Noel

No rubbing as far as I can see. There is still some slop but significantly less than TLC. In forward motion the gaps can open slightly but close up like the photo when stationary or in reverse. I did some fairly exhaustive tests today forward and reverse over points and curves but so far no buffer locks nor derailments. Will try Cravens in the next week or so, but they will need Eoin's recommended fix to solve the NEM pocket error on both generations of MM Cravens.

Orange invasion of the 1980s. Rampant Mk2 infection spreads. Kadee mk2 running trials today. Oh the shame of such modernity but at least being close coupled they escape the firing squad. Quite impressed with this first excision into kadee land. Rescued by some sensible B&T sanity on platforms 4 and 5.

Multi shades of orange. Kadee installed on the orange roof mk2's with closer coupling compared to the black roof mk2 TLC gaps behind. Ran extensive mk2 kadee trials on all track sections on the upper level today in forward and reverse. So far so good. Hopefully this is the last time I will have to look at these stark orange roofs. Next up weathering powders.

Listen Eggstein you and your three amigo pals hatched a plan to eggstract enough of our nest egg to fund more than a few egg-squisite rakes of white cement yokes including some orange egg shells, so I have egg-sactly zero sympathy for you four poachers. Look into the whites of your eyes, Eggsamine your conscience, and think sunny side up. You now dare to scramble my eggsparations to remain entirely in the B&T era, avoid bogie salmonella and perpetuate more egg-stravagence. All I can say is your a hard boiled bunch of guys. Go scramble your own eggs!

Ok back to the mk2 air cons for a while. Successfully changed the tension lock couplings to kadee's tonight using advice from other threads on couplings and @BosKonay's suggestion of gluing the kadee's to the underside of the NEM362 pocket rather than plugging them in so that they would be the correct height as per the kadee coupling gauge (see below). I fitted a kadee no 20 at one end of each coach and no 19 at the other end, and then couple coaches so that the no 20 end of one couples to the no 19 of the adjacent coach. Running trails so far have proven successful in forward and reverse around bends and over point work. I wanted to get any manhandling work done before weathering. I failed initially to remove the tension lock couplings so to avoid damaging to the coach I dismantled it in an effort to remove the bogies so I could remove the coupling plates and use force to push out the old couplings, but I could not get the blasted bogies off. So change of plan, I used a scalpel to trim off the nibbles at the end of the tension lock couplings and hey presto they easily slide out of the NEM pockets. So for the rest of the mk2 coaches I didn't bother disassembly, instead just a few seconds with the scalpel and the tension locks popped out and are reusable in future. Now that all the other steps are complete its time to lightly weather a rake of these orange roofed mk2 air cons.

Hi David. Yes that dawned on me too just after I started out, but I am just enjoying the doodling while recycling these old toys from 1970. It's been fun cutting them up with little risk if it goes wrong as they were ancient and rather crude Tri-ang hornby wagons. Noel

I've posted a copy of this to my workbench also but for completeness of this thread I've add the photo here also. Found a way to easily get the tension lock couplings off Murphy Model mk2 aircon coaches without damaging them with force, and as per @BosKonay's recommendation glued a Kadee no 19 and no 20 under the NEM pocket of my mk2 coaches. Then I couple the no 20 end of one coach to the no 19 of the next, alternating each coach. So far has worked a treat in forward and reverse.

Back doodling with the pair pseudo ex-GSWR ballast ploughs converted from 1972 Tri-ang GWR brake vans. Jeepers these old plastic models were rough mouldings in their day, with loads of flash and mould line ridges that had to be filed and sanded down. Dog rough but then again they were designed to be thrown out of cots! Got the windows cut out and framed, removed the industrial revolution sized brass coupling rivets, got the massive metal tri-ang tension lock coupling removed and all the surplus plastic from the chassis including brake gear. Just fitted a NEM pocket that will take a Bachmann tension lock or a Kadee no 19, which is seen here test fitted with the kadee coupling gauge. Had to decide what size wheel i'd fit before aligning the NEM pocket for ride height. First coat of primer on the body, a few spots of filler needed. The chassis were made out of a very soft bendable plastic - cot proof I guess. Before going much further need to figure out how I'm going to fit the oil lamps and a flickering stove light. Chimneys to be moved and stanchions added to the veranda. Think I'm crazy trying to recycle this pair but its fun doodling occasionally with them.

Short cab ride on board B141. Its fun being this small. Rolling stock looks so much bigger. The reverse of "this is small but that is far away".

With IRM's track record we expected nothing less than the sublimely accurate and detailed product shown above. Congrats on getting the first UK product off the ground. The high standards you have achieved to date have pushed expectations to a new level. The team of four should be rightly proud of their achievements to date.

Looks like another truly exceptional product in the offing. Well done guys. Looking forward to the end of Q2.

I presume they were different colours based on reading past posts from folks like @jhb171achill , @Glenderg and others. There was some discussion on colours here: http://irishrailwaymodeller.com/topic/3996-mk-2-supertrain-coaches/?do=findComment&comment=62728 Richie has done a lot of resprays of mk3 and mk2 so he is probably best placed to answer. The thing is its impossible to tell from photos, varying light, white balance, etc. Even photos I've taken of the same coach a day apart in slightly different light conditions make the shade of orange look quite different. Forgive the humour, but the mk2d coaches seem day-glo bright orange enough for a ground marshal to use.