Noel

I fear "I may forever rot in the bogie of eternal stench" for facilitating such an infestation of modern rolling stock. I risk being expelled from the B&T members pavilion, and @jhb171achill may never forgive me. Perhaps its just a bad dream . . .

Phew thats a relief. The ultimate penance of Brass, Solder and Flux might have been more than I could bare. St Patrick, that's classic

Ok, but I shudder at the thought of what my penance might be . . .

183 hauls the 08:15 to Galway Somebody has spiked my food, first a weakness for Tara's, now this modern era scene. Where will it all end Ted? Will I be allowed back into the B&T members lounge?

Bless me father for I am about to sin. Believe it or not I have never ever even seen the prototypes of these wagons in real life, they are not buried anywhere in my nostalgia memory, the word 'Tara' only triggers school day memories of broaches, and to add insult to injury these wagons have bogies, fitted brakes and are far too modern for my era - BUT 'bless me father' for I am weak, and going to have to have a rake of these, they look so dam good I can no longer contain my modelling lust . . . will I forever "rot in the the bogie of eternal stench" for my deviation? Shall loose coupled two axle wagons ever forgive me for wandering from the path of fish plate purity?

Thanks chaps. It bothered me overnight and had to be redone. I will sleep better tonight.

Thanks Eoin. I had thought of that for future evolutions, and also the future option hooking up the strip to track pickups via bridge rectifier, resistor (16-20v AC to 3v DC) and a capacitor for flicker free operation. Tail lamp should be ok direct onto the strip as it is already a 3v bus. The MM coaches will need a little treatment for light bleed at the roof/side joint and also through the thin roof (i.e. coat of dark paint inside or tape). I'm pleased though with how the lights look in daylight operation which is what I intended rather than simulated night ops with the room lighting off. Now that the EGV roof is sorted its time to start some gentle weathering.

In yards ballast shoulders rarely existed because the surface was relatively flat as per your photo above. So either direct to baseboard, or lay the cork across the entire baseboard which has the advantage of taking track pins a little easier than ply.

Coach lighting. Train Tech CL2 'Warm White' coach lighting strip installed. I prefer the warm yellow tint to the modern white/blue tint option. May need to tidy up a little light bleed. I like the low light levels on these units. These train tech modules are so simple to install. I will just do a few coaches for the time being and see how long the batteries last with the motion sensor switching. I plan to try a DIY version using DCC track power on some cravens.

Train Tech CL2 'warm white' coach light strips and some passengers being installed. Some are seated figure, others are less expensive standing figures with their legs removed as they won't be visible from outside the coach.

One of my colour test cards with various shades of tan and orange. I tend to spray or hand paint test samples on top of the same grey primer I use on a models as it can have a significant bearing on the final colour. You have to be careful with colours because even these test cards can look quite different under different light conditions and with different cameras. White balance on cameras can really mess around with colours.

Take two. Closer if not a perfect match, but this seems about as close as I'm going to get. The lower roof is 120:1 ratio Vallejo yellow to red, the upper roof if MM out of the box. At least the EGV roof will be closer to the colour of the sides. Side by side

Agree. Yes it's too dark, will redo it later.

Ready for weathering. EGV black roof repainted orange. The shade is not an exact match but close enough for my eyes prior to roof weathering.

Sounds good. I think Fran covered this a few weeks ago, but one of the suggestions made was that in future buffer lengths might be based on 'coupled up' lengths when 'buffered up' to next wagon (i.e. slightly compressed) mode rather than a stand alone wagon where buffers would naturally be fully extended and therefore longer. This would enable more accurate prototypical scale distances between wagons and closer coupling like some Bachmann stock. Looking at the sample images for the Tara wagon this looks like it may be the case, is it?

Cheers. I'll let it cure overnight, pop it back on the EGV tomorrow and take a pic for comparison. It will be a little bit different, but once weathered hopefully it will all blend in together. I'm not changing anything on the standard mk2 coaches just weathering. So far I have always used a Tamiya mix for CIE tan/orange colours, this is the first time I've mixed Vallejo primary colours from their basic set of 8 'model air' colours for tan/orange.

An urgent remedy seems needed while they debug the hardware and find a mathematical traffic model that will work optimally with bus and other road traffic. I'm sure in time it will improve somewhat. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/call-for-alternative-transport-to-luas-during-rush-hour-1.3432987 Most of us are possibly closer to the same hymn sheet than we might think, and I'm sure can respect one another's differing opinions on the solutions needed. As Monty Pythons black knight might say, "tis but a scratch!"

MM Mk2 - Multi part mission. Convert a black roofed MM mk2d EGV to an orange roofed EGV (orange ones are rare as hens teeth) Weather a rake of orange roofed MM mk2d coaches - primary reason is to dull down the yellow shade of orange they come with out of the box Put some passengers inside the coaches Change the couplings to Kadee Optional - put lighting inside coaches Well lets see how far I get. I had been unable to acquire an orange roofed EGV so originally I bought a supertrain livery EGV with the intention of adding the tippex white stripes to convert it, but decided it would be easier to convert a black roofed EGV because it would be a quick simple respray of the removable roof, with no masking, whereas adding the tippex without reverse masking to a high standard would have been quite difficult, and wavey stripes are something that drive me nuts - OCD I know perhaps. First job was to figure out how to get the roof off without resorting to use of a vice grips or a block hammer, but @Glenderg came to the rescue with advice and the roof popped off easily with little force required (see clips below). Roof off ready for priming Because of the contrast between the black and orange on the roof I decided to prime it with Halfords plastic grey primer. With hindsight a white primer would have been better as I would have required less coats of the orange latter to fully hide the dark grey. I mixed Vallejo model air 71.002 (yellow) and 71.102 (red) by eye until I got the shade of tan/orange I was looking for. The ratio was 35:1 Yellow/Red because the red pigment was incredibly strong. Only 2 drops of red for every 70 drops of yellow to get this shade. I know it is more orange than the existing coaches but to my eye right or wrong the shade of orange looks more like I remember than the yellow dominant shade on MM Mk2d's. Hopefully the weathering will help it blend in on the EGV as I won't have to respray the orange roofed mk2's I have, just weather them, and the EGV roof will get a lot more weathering than the coaches. Well thats my theory anyway - the proof will be in the eating I guess when its all finished. The roof in the middle is the respayed EGV with the deeper shade of orange, the roof below is the original MM colour with the yellow tint. By way of comparison I put an MM 085 body shell beside the resprayed roof. They look somewhat closer to my eyes. Anyway photos are very subjective with indoor lighting with white balance issues on cameras so will rarely look like the prototypes outdoors. That's it for now. Next step is add passengers, perhaps lighting and then gently weather the rake one coach at a time.

Very impressive so far guys.

Good find Paul. They sell Vallejo and Tamiya paints at reasonable prices.

Yes I've only had it a year, but so far so good. It has a moisture trap and the size of the tank makes using it almost silent most of the time. I got the setup on Richie's recommendation and was very happy with it despite my recent boo-boo which turned out to be self inflicted.

White smoke! Thanks to a PM from Richie and info in his post link above, I figured out how to get the Murphy Model Mk2d coach roof off. It actually pops off fairly easily if you use a wooden tooth pick or narrow screw driver at one of the coach ends, a small section pops up and then you gently wiggle and twist the roof until the other snap fittings gently release and it pops off. It does not require any significant force. Now to repaint the black roof orange/tan and add some gentle weathering, but that'll be for another thread.

Hi Paul. I used one of these £77 TC88T compressors which as a moderate sized 3L reservoir and 1/5hp, so the motor is off most of the time because you are drawing air from the tank rather than direct from pump. You would need to add a hose and airbrush. Think they also do kits including compressor and airbrush. I used an original Veda 134S, but apparently the Veda guy didn't file his trademark and there are now a few of rip-offs of poor quality, so BartSharp have launched their own range comparable to the Veda. Compressor: https://bartsharp.co.uk/index.php/compressors/airbrush-compressors-and-complete-kits/tc88t-airbrush-compressor.html Airbrush: https://bartsharp.co.uk/index.php/bartsharp-airbrush/bartsharp-airbrush-130-dual-action-gravity-feed-airbrush.html Having a compressor with an air tank has been useful for me. Hope this helps. Noel

Sublime Eoin. You must have spent more than a few hours in Bolton streets engineering labs when your were supposed to be attending architecture lectures all those years ago.

Has anybody removed the roof off an MM Mk2d? Richie's post below mentions it popping off at the ends but mine also seem glued or friction fitted along the sides. I was hoping to put passengers in some coaches, add coach lighting, and respray the proper shade of tan/orange. If you had a photo of the inside of a roof that would be really helpful to see where they are attached. Thanks in advance. Noel http://irishrailwaymodeller.com/topic/3996-mk-2-supertrain-coaches/?page=4&tab=comments#comment-63248