Noel

Oh no it doesn't It's hideous and will never be allowed to run on the layout looking like that. Kevin, You are too kind, but perhaps the photos don't reveal just how awful it is. That would be grossly unfair to the moss I'll enjoy stripping it down, a coat of Halfords grey primer and then start again with actual orange paint. Another training exercise when time permits.

Sorry Dave. But look on the bright side, I haven't destroyed a Murphy Model IR/IE Mk2d! (yet) PS: Anyway those Police constables aren't Guards :) So no jurisdiction down our way. PS2: Any suggestions where can I get replacement metal wheels for the Lima Vent Vans without paying a kings ransom? They have a shorter axle (24.5mm) than Bachmann and Hornby (26.5mm). My Lima's have plastic wheels. The Lima vans now have a new lease of life and are only very lightly dusted, enough to get the shinny gloss off each plank of wood The old Hornby mk2a's on platform 5 were sacrificed to save me from making a mess of the lovely MM mk2d's on platform 3

The one that got away Go back to 'GO' do not collect $200. At least I didn't destroy an MM mk2d. This is when a novice gets it all wrong when I tried to weather this 1970s hornby mk2a Tried a 'wash' type of method on the roof and rubbed it off before a light dusting after, but it went horribly wrong. Also was all over the place with the air spray direction on the tumblehome. When I get time, will strip this again back to the plastic, and instead of trying to weather the orange plastic will try a full respray over a grey primer and attempt to mix up a proper super train tan/orange colour. No harm done, these coaches were scrap anyway but good guinea pig donors for my learning curve. So much to learn but it is fun experimenting.

Jason, those wagons and the paint job are absolutely superb. Hat's off to you. What do you use to seal them after painting. Noel

Cheers Popeye, Apologies I meant to say acrylic thinners, which I have been using, which I understand is basically purified water with an agent to help it mix and flow. Noel

Agree 100%. We use methylated spirits in our CMX. It is so heavy it needs two baby GM's in a consist to haul it without stalling over points. Aside from its weight it's success seems to be the drip-by-drip flow of cleaning agent onto the replaceable pads. It can also be pushed by hand.

Yummie, lovely mixed goods train. Love those scenes. The foliage is particularly striking. The goods shed is also excellent.

Thanks JB, thanks for the tip. I'm going to give the chassis under frames another coat. I'll need to find 'colour' photos if possible of H-Vans and their roofs as they would have been in the 60s and 70s. Cheers Obi Wan (Richie). Yea the mixing in the cup idea came from watching loads of youtube's especially Everard Junction and a few others. Thanks for the 1 second tip. Just today I picked up a few mixing bottles from JM (thanks btw) so in future will pre-mix thinners and paint. I have a tin of precision paints 'CIE Golden Brown' enamel, but I want to try and stick with acrylics so I'm going to try and mix a few colours to get a 1960s 'tan' colour for some resprays. Tried the 'wash' already on some Hornby Mk2a's and made a bit of a hash of it so its off to the 'coach cleaners' and start again. Thanks guys, its very novice, but its a start and more importantly I'm really having fun. Apprehensive about next up which is to attempt a MM 141, but I'll just have to risk it. After that some retaining walls, and then the orange roofed MM Mk2d's. Question: When sealing this lot with matt acrylic varnish, should I use it straight out of the jar, or thin it 50/50%? PS: I'm beginning to wonder if I should thin the acrylic paints 40/60% (paint/thinner) rather than 50/50.

The CMX is very expensive alright, but IMHO on large layouts especially with inaccessible track sections or hidden track it is worth every penny. It works incredibly well and only two or three runs over a section of track and it is perfect again. It would be ideal for club layouts.

Thats a great idea. From experience having a lot of weight on the block (and wagon) will improve its effectiveness. A means of adding a fabric pad that can be dampened with methylated spirits will help.

This weathering milarky is addictive! I'm a complete beginner but it is SO much fun experimenting and learning by trial and error. Lots more to learn. Tonight got 7 wagons lightly dusted and 6 coaches gently weathered (1xCraven, 3xPark Royals, 1xGSV, 1xMk2a). Found it easiest to take wagons off their base and remove wheels Still have to do the chassis on the van. I don't want wagons to look too dirty or like they are close to scrap heap, just in use and slightly weathered so they don't look like they came out of the box looking all shiny and new. Lima - Vans Silverfox - GSV (the weathering dulled the bright orange of these RTR models) Murphy Model - Craven Irish Freight Models - Park Royals (the weathering dulled the bright orange of these lovely RTR models) Assorted goods wagons very lightly dusted to get the toy shine off them GSV very lightly weathered Craven with the shine removed This really is addictive and the temptation is to keep going and add too much. Next trial will be a wash on mineral wagons, over sprayed with light dusting of grime. After that its the IFM laminates that need dulling down. Have made so many mistakes, and made more than a few messes with the airbrush, clogging it up on a few occasions, but with experimentation have found more ways to keep it spraying without dismantling to clean nozzle and needle every time it blocks. Two main lessons I have discovered so far are to spray little and often over the same areas, and don't let the airbrush sit for long between uses or the paint in the nozzle dries. So far I am mixing the thinners and paint directly in the cup using an eye dropper to mix approx 50/50% (thinners in cup first, then paint, then mix with paint brush handle, then back flush by blocking nozzle with finger to mix paint). I'm sure I am probably doing much this incorrectly but it is so much fun. Hopefully when I get more used to the airbrush I will have a go at weathering a rake of MM orange roofed mk2's. Torn between using a light dusting of roof dirt on the roofs, or using a wash, wipe it off, and then a dusting of roof dirt with the spray.

Yes superb European models. The prices aren't bad considering they include DCC sound decoder and are orders of magnitude better engineered and detail is in another league. Have a look at the bogie detail - its is staggering. 20 Years ago an Austrian pal of mine used to scoff at Bachmann and Hornby RTR, but I didn't fully understand why until I saw his layout and his models - even 20 years ago, simply on another planet for detail and engineering precision, but as you point out at a cost worthy of their quality. Less is more when it comes to quality, or as they say down our way, quality is better than quantity. I stopped buying Hornby around 25 years ago and switched to Bachmann because then they were two gears up on Hornby for detail, and just as important the Bachmann running quality seemed more for modellers rather than Hornby toy choo-choos.

Just build a bridge, its bonkers with the traffic volume using that road to have a level crossing from a traffic management point of view. Its not rocket science to design a bridge that will fit in the available space.

Bought some of these Bachmann early era tanker wagons on eBay over the past few years. Gave these three a very light dusting of weathering, just enough to take the shine off them. The under frames need more work and a bit of oil spill colouring, but its fun experimenting with the air brush. I have an awful lot to learn. Bachmann oil wagons after the shine was taken off them I am using some old Triang and Hornby wagons as test beds so I don't risk making a mess of the lovely Bachmann wagons.

Late 1970s Lima CIE Vans. One on the left has a very light weather dusting, one on the right is as bought. Some had metal wheels, others plastic. Bought these one by one with pocket and bob-a-job money from W J Owens in Bray which was a good model railway shop in the 1960s and 1970s.

Agree 100%. Even back then when they were released I thought they were junk heaps. At least the Lima CIE class 33 vaguely looked like an A class and was a decent moulding and paint job, and the Lima mk1 coaches at least had the right B&T colours, unlike the Hornby Hymek horror show with its ugly orange day-glo plastic and hideous shiny window frames on the mk2a's. I have that set since mid 70s and am in the process of using it as scrap for spray painting experiments and colour tests. I was so disgusted with the Hornby hymek colour I repainted it by hand as a youngster, mixing a few humbrol colours. The Lima mk1's in the background were not bad for their day. I paint brushed the horrible toy like shiny window frames on the hornby mk2's with black paint. Currently I'm bodging the coaches with various weathering and respray experiments before I eventually bin them. The hymek horror show has been sent to 'connaught' Still have an affectionate affinity for my pair of 1970s Lima class 33's in CIE livery vaguely supposed to be CIE A class super train. The drive system is typical utter Lima rubbish with scale start speeds of 25mph and scale top speeds of 200mph

Presume they are O gauge Dave. They look fab. One day I'd love to have an 800 class model with DCC sound, running on a precision chassis drive - dreams. Congrats to the building team.

That's what I keep telling you JM, back to the golden era of the 1960s, when Black'n'Tan was deriguour (imho the nicest livery the baby GMs ever had). I do agree with MFH and JB, I never liked the drab grey stone block work used in Irish stations, always preferred the warm bright brick colours used on many UK stations and here in places like Bray and Dundalk. I will be going against convention and using brown, beigh and red coloured brick for station buildings on the layout for a more attractive visual look.

Lucky escape for passing trains. Looks like a 3rd party may have caused it. Ballast looks very realistic too.

A funny story indeed JB, but sadly as you probably know too well from experiences with folks like your aunt's friend, when dementia strikes its heavy burden on a sufferer and their family, unfortunately, one could "make it up" all too often. Anyway back to happier things like playing toy choo-choo's Seeing wiggy1's layout has given me some good ideas how to handle arched sections on our layout and transitions in and out of hidden areas. Have bad dose of flu but going to attempt some plaster cloth later this week.

Not surprised

Nice sound from a pair of baby GMs starting off with a heavy ore train. Consist demo of Wheeltappers sound project running on LokSound DCC chip using 'Power Drive' which is a variation on ESU's Full Throttle. This layout had progressed nicely too. LokSound 'Power Drive' demo of double header baby GMs starting heavy haul EDIT: found youtube clip that embeds here EDIT: wiggy1 kindly just send me link to his youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/wiggyattheweekend/videos

The perfect train. Oh drool, wow, yummie, memories, this iconic type of train formation dominated Irish rails for over 60 years and bridged the steam and diesel eras beautifully. What a wonderful and typical mix of loose coupled un-braked goods wagons, fronted up by a black'n'tan livery, and properly punctuated by a brake van. A proper pick up goods train, routinely seen on every branch and main line in Ireland. The operational 'play ability' of such trains on a layout, shunting, assembling trains and dropping off and collecting single wagons passing stations offers hours of endless fun, add sound and your in B&T GM shunting heaven. Leslie's wagons look superb. Well done once again Patrick and thanks for posting. I am going to have to give up looking at photos of Patrick's beautiful layout for the forty days of lent.

Hi Folks Just to correct some incorrect credits in some of my recent video clips. I posted a number of 141/181 sound clips showing new LokSound projects supplied by DC-Kits which I had thought were built by 'legomanbiffo', but 'biff' has kindly advised me he did not produce them but gave full credit to 'wheeltappers' who did make the sound projects. http://www.wheeltappersdccsounds.co.uk They have two variants of many of their sound projects, standard versions and PD (Power Drive) versions, which is their implementation of ESU's Full Throttle system, but implemented slightly differently. Essentially this allows you to toggle the throttle between controlling speed, or freeze the speed/coast and control notching. Thanks to Graham (Irishthump) for detailing ESU's implementation of 'Full Throttle' on his posts and PMs. See links below to their Irish sounds, and super list of videos here: https://vimeo.com/user44816521 Irish Diesel Sounds: http://www.wheeltappersdccsounds.co.uk/styled-5/index.html Irish Steam Sounds: http://www.wheeltappersdccsounds.co.uk/styled-4/index.html We've never had so much choice for quality Irish DCC sound. Cheers Noel

Thanks Dave. Found a wiggy1 over on rmweb who seems an Irish DCC Sound genius and his fabulous layout has come a long way. Looks he may be part of the wheeltappers group http://www.wheeltappersdccsounds.co.uk who makes the Irish diesel sound projects for DC kits. I had no idea! I have two of his baby GM sound projects (LokSound) who I had incorrectly thought were legomanbiffo projects. Assuming it's the same chap based in UK he has been really helpful to me on methods to improve speaker effectiveness in baby GMs. I love his sound projects. Wow you learn something new every day. Noel