Noel

Aye-may-zing. What a stunning day of rugby. Yehaw Ireland way to go.

Wow. I'm going out to cut the grass. My heart can't cope with watching the Eng-Fra match.

Wales have won the 6N

Thanks Dave. Did they post enamels as well as acrylics to NI? Noel

Thanks David. I have a large stock of Humbrol paints which years ago I used to mix by eye to get the colours I was looking for when painting by brush. After receiving some excellent advise from folk on here and UK forums I have decided to try Acrylics for spraying which seem somewhat easier to work with in terms of vapour, spray gun cleaning and uk vendors will post to Ireland. I've been advised to use only Acrylic thinners rather that distilled water for thinning and mixing. Will try the 'The Art of Weathering' book despite my lexdisic slowness reading text. I generally prefer visuals and videos. Noel

Wow thats amazing. Looks like the first wagon was in trouble before it came into shot. The speed looked a bit high for crossing a double slip!!! Another railway using Black & Tan for locos! Don't understand how the loco didn't derail unless the weight helped or an axel failed on the wagon. It seemed to run on into the distance after the pile up. Hope nobody hurt. Thanks for posting.

Looking good Richrua. Nice job on the card kits too. Love the wagons and black and tan mix. Most LMS & GWR wagons look right at home behind 141 and 'A' class B&Ts. All that needed to convert many is CIE roundel decals. 'Imagination' is a great way to compose a layout. Look forward to seeing this one develop and running.

Amen. Nice PP Kirley, and you didn't even have original RAW files. There are some on here with really top class modelling skills, but their photography skills may not be quite at the same high level. At least these two pics of models are sharp in-focus unlike many others posted on the forum. My two bug bears are 'soft focus' and upside down images - giving me a headache. Tongue in cheek!

Looks more of a problem with the trailer beam loads rather than the axle loads. Metal fatigue or insufficient strength, or something else?

That's an expansion joint. (ie rails shorter when cold, longer when subjected to the heat of the sun, winter v summer, etc).

Now that's precision scratch building - class job.

Yes it reminds me of the dumb media who report a near miss instead of an air miss. Near miss = collision = crash = deceleration = g-forces = friction = heat = jet A1 in flames

Do you mean for shorter rolling stock? I was primarily thinking of the 1960s and early 70s when coaches were only 57-62ft compared to 78ft now and 2 axil un-braked loose coupled goods wagons were 1/3rd the length of a container flat. Goods wagons that size were pretty much the same from 1900 until about 1970. I'd love to have a rake of 12 open sugar beat wagons which were also used for coal and general goods freight (i.e. corrugated side panels). 12 of these would be nice at the right price

Well its not a particularly high speed train as it doesn't have interlaced bogies joining the coaches. The French and Germans are decades ahead of the rest of Europe when it comes to modern high speed intercity rail.

On a practical note, perhaps earlier era stock generally being short lends itself to the space restrictions of model layouts. Long modern coaches such as mk3/mk4/22k and long bogie freight stock take up a lot of space on a layout, need large radius curves and long platforms to look right.

Cork

Well when I was a child the definition of a train was an "engine" pulling "carriages" or "wagons" with a brake van at the end like a full stop completing a sentence. No engine, no train! ICRs, DMUs, Darts and Luas are just bland boring bendy buses stuck on rails.

Yes thats interesting, I also found myself leaning more towards black CIE era 141/181s than others. I never travelled behind IR/IE livery 141/181s, only super train and CIE black/tan, yet I ignored the 'supertrain' livery models just because I preferred the look of the later IR/IE tippex liveries - strange but true. The CIE black (&tan with white band) livery 141/181s look great hauling loose coupled goods wagons that I collected to run behind GWR/LMS steam locos before MM era.

Well it's a looooong time since I was at school, but I vaguely remember you can't create one wavelength of light from another (i.e. different colours using filters from a single wavelength on the spectrum). But I could be wrong. That's why so many low energy LED lighting system emit cold colours and cannot be corrected to warmer light colours using filters. Their colour tone has improved a lot in the past five years but you can't beat a few non-LED light bulbs for nice mood lighting at home. The first lot of LED spots we put in at home years ago had such a blue tint I replaced them after only three months. I noticed some model locos have nice warm colour spot lights whereas others are like blue lasers and don't look prototypical. This may help explain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_spectrum

You could reduce the brightness, but its not possible to change the colour (i.e. light wavelength) coming from an LED, unlike incandescent light bulbs which emit nearly the whole colour spectrum, hence filters work.

Agree the cab lighting is a bit like a bordello. However there are CVs on the MM rebadged ESU chips that can turn the brightness right down. It's still a cold blue light, would be better with more yellow in the mix. I've been using €25 four function Lenz Silver+ decoders on my 071s and don't miss the cab lights one bit.

Ah now its not all doom and gloom. Before MM, many of us were quite happy running models of UK steam outline that ran 50 or more years before many of us were even born! Trains we never saw running except in the movies and on TV!!! So we need a few good thriller and drama movies set in Ireland during the 60s, 70s, and 80s with trains as part of the story line. The craggy island express, etc.

IR only have half their loco fleet in service. The 201s are not even at half life, yet many lay rotting in sidings. Locos not needed for PAX traffic anymore, only the small bit of freight and permanent way maintenance. The 201 capital programme was an extraordinary waste of tax payers money given they were put out to pasture prematurely. I vaguely remember reading somewhere the 201s are over weight for many parts of the network and were hard on the track work. There is a good economic logic to railcars, savings in reduced manpower, turnaround time, reduced fleet maintenance costs, and less track work to be maintained, etc. But I think they might have been better phased in later when the Mk3s and 201s were near end of life in 15 years time. You don't see sophisticated economies retiring stock early until its earned every penny possible from capital investment. Another way of look at it is perhaps IE should have introduced ICRs back in 1996 and skipped the 201s before the Mk3 fleet got too big.

Good post, Agree. Operationally what we witnessed as youngsters on railways was a lot more interesting then todays rail car traffic operating like a boring pendulum swinging mindlessly back and forth.

Sure Dave, but I guess my point was really that most of us probably got 'hooked' back at a time when we were youngsters and toy trains were part of the scene, and nostalgia hooked us in. I wonder how 'new' blood will get attracted into the hobby in the future?