Noel

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.

Just to share my experience. I'be been told my approach to DCC was 'unorthodox' because I bought into the 'just two wires' concept when DCC was first launched years ago so my main layout Kingsbridge which started life as DC has just one pair of power wires (ie droppers) per oval and there are four long ovals of track running around the 16ftx12ft baseboards, with fishplates for conductivity between tracks. Its worked fine for me I have a few extras for sidings, and nearly all my locos are sound equipped by now. The track is in effect my DCC bus and I have no bus running under the base board each of four ovals is approx 54ft long. I adopted a slightly more 'orthodox' approach on our second more recent layout Gort which has about 20 droppers mainly because I used electro frog points instead of insulfrog and the breaks in track at baseboard joints needed power as well as the sidings. Most of the droppers were actually to the electro fog points and a few sections of isolated track. I didn't subscribe to the mantra of droppers to every single separate piece of track because in my experience fishplates were adequate and reliable, and I wanted simplicity and less wiring to do. I used DaveMcCabes DCC dropper PCB board to hook up the droppers under the boards to a Single DCC bus for the entire layout. (on photos below its the little 1"x2" PCB with screw connectors on the vertical baseboard bulkheads) On gort I used my good friend DaveMcCabe'd DCC dropper boards daisy chained to make up a bus. Dave @junctionmad designed these for WMRC little siddington. Dave advocated connecting every piece of track so I used these fab PCBs on Gort which made the wiring so much easier than soldering or crimping droppers to bus wires under the baseboard. Dave was an electronics genius and significant contributor to MERG. x x x Ultimately there's no absolute right nor absolute wrong, do what's right and practical for you. Get the trains running and drive trains. Enjoy watching your progress, keep up the good work.

No 18 NEM

Absolutely magnificent wagons, the best yet from IRM IMHO. Fabulous. Thank you. It was worth the wait. Kadee height is perfect and uncoupling works 100%. Nem pocket is slightly shorter than the tongs but a tiny spot of PVA will ensure no horizontal slop. Can't wait to weather these most unique and iconic of all Irish rolling stock. They had their first run this evening back and forth over point work.

Flats and beet wagons arrived yesterday. FYI, minor annoyance the courier dropped them over the 2'6" wall into the garden and made no attempt to contact us or get a signature, checked the CCTV, he just jumped out of the van, never even rang the bell nor phoned, popped the parcels on the ground over the wall, took a photo of them, then hopped back in his van and drove off. Fortunately the parcels were not pinched by passers by of which there are many on our tourist lane. We were perhaps lucky. Other couriers either ring the bell or phone so at least we know. Anyway the big picture is these are delightful models. Will play with them and drive trains at the weekend. Then once the couplings have been replaced with NEM Kadee's will spend some time weathering them. The Bulleid beet wagons will look especially good on Gort.

Found this today. How time flies, so much has happened since then.

Tony Mirolo, and Anthony Smyth come to mind, both precision geniuses.

Lovely attractive livery and paint job but the window and door arrangement was nothing like the Irish 26xx or 27xx class DMUs. The Models lacked precision chassis, DCC lighting and DCC sockets. Respraying Bachmann 150 class more likely to pass the 2ft rule, at least they have a commuter mid door arrangement rather than the 158 these models were based on. That was my personal favourite livery for the DMU biscuit tins of that era.

With great sadness I learned our fellow forumite @Junctionmad railway expert, electronics genius, master mariner, and my faithful pal Dave McCabe left this life on Monday after bravely battling a long illness with fortitude, dignity, gentleness and kindness. If you needed to get something done there was no better genius than Dave at making things happen. He was a dynamo and generous with his time, always happy to share his technical knowledge. Dave left a positive impact in every sphere of life he touched, from the space programme, to sailing, inland waterway community, navigation technology, railway modelling and in recent years his massive contribution to WMRC. Dave pioneered innovative baseboard technology, layout electronics using can bus, and signalling. Dave designed WMRCs massive ‘Little Siddington’ O gauge exhibition layout. Dave was also a hero of RNLI, having been a founder and first chair of RNLI Lough Ree life boat, and subsequently responsible for the permanent lifeboat station at Cowman point. Fairwell faithful friend, and fair sailing in the new life you now live. One perhaps we cannot fully comprehend, but may you be now sailing on a broad reach with 12kt of wind, the sun beaming on your broad kind smile. Care and prayer for your soul mate Siobhan, daughters Sarah, Jamie and son in-law Liam. Big friendly giant with such a huge heart, you will be missed. Meet you for a coffee in the next life. PS: Dave's handle here @Junctionmad came from his nostalgic love of Limerick Junction from years of travel back and forth to college in Limerick from his native Waterford. RPSI rail tour 2017 - Dave insisted on bringing his own linen table service complete with candelabra, much to the bemusement of people on the platform looking in, wondering what sort of ticket that table had.

Best wishes for the move. Understand. I will miss your amazing layout but thank goodness we have a wonderful archive here of your incredibly atmospheric creation. Best wishes for the future. Looking forward to what appears in the years ahead. Your layout has been an inspiration and has always been my favourite layout. Take care.

Hooray, excellent. Great news. Presume these will have standard height NEM pockets?

The two dublin shows with small usually crowded class rooms do not seem conducive to wider open spaces with less congested circulation. But I believe one of the dublin shows might be changing venue to more open space that facilities easier circulation. Personally I found the Wexford venue better from a space/noise perspective, and hospitality seating, etc.

DPD Ireland are by far the worst by our experience, Frequently leaving deliveries outside, too lazy to ring bell and get a signature, their local drivers routinely sign for deliveries that were left on the public road or out in the rain

That photo show lush green grass not brown dry hay, one might be forgiven for thinking that one in the photo was started deliberately given its proximity to the fence and that’s its upwind. Sparkes and cinders don’t blow against the wind. Might sound crazy, but the photo tells a story. I cannot imagine why anybody would light 5 or six small fires using accelerants. Are there any photos of damaged cabling or signalling equipment?

Bad luck and disappointing I'm sure for all on board and the RPSI. Were the line side fires actually caused by the passing of the steam loco, or was that media speculation, or other causes. April is a bit early in the year for ultra dry line side foliage, especially after all the rain these past 8 weeks. Has H&S gone totaly bezerk. The amount of times we're driven the car across the wicklow mountains while there were gorse fires burning on the road side that posed no risk to the car. Hope the H&S lunatics don't ruin rail tours and limit steam loco operations in the future.

MM 201 reruns due with next year

Short sighted. Commuters from wexford, gorey, Arklow, Wicklow encouraged to get off the roads and use public transport (ie rail), but the service is already too slow and now they want to axe it? Darwin!

Same body removal technique as the original models. Leave the walkway rails on, just temporarily unclip for both cab ends Pinch body sides with wooden sticks (eg ice cream sticks or the outside edge of wooden cloths pegs) to lever body upwards enough to get a thin flat screen driver underneath see send pic below. If you're careful you won't damage or dislodge the walkway rails and they'll clip back into both cabs once there are back on. Leave the cab that is connected to the body at the grill end connected to the body centre piece as it is removed, the other cab end slides up and off easily Just keep gently but firmly pinching the sides until you create a 1 or 1/2mm gap between the body and walkway, and then gentle lever up at each end until it can be pulled free by hand. When putting the body back on get the cabs the same way around and the body centre section of the ladder fits into the walkway holes. Once off just remove the 21-pin blanking plate and install the 21-pin decoder Then suggest off to test track to program the decoders address (eg 147 or 185). Test the loco runs ok before putting the body back on. PS: The loco is supplied with a built in speaker so you won't have to solder a speaker to the PCB like the original production run from 2008.

I'm told WheelTappers about to release ESU v5 sound decoders for the new MM re-run 141/181 locos. Apparently their web site is down at the moment. The projects support the full ESU prototypical full throttle software's driving features such as Coasting, Braking, train loads, various rail sounds and flange sequeal, cascading wagon train coupling snatching and cascading wagon to wagon buffer clashing, etc, as well as lighting arrangements for double header consists, shunting, etc. Personally I use wheeltapper decoder projects for sound because of their superior and more realistic driving characteristics. Prefer them to other vanilla ESU projects based on north american EMDs that lack coasting, long distance train braking that make driving so much more fun. Back in the 1970s we call this inertia braking with electronic DC controllers of the day. I'm sure MM may release their own sound decoders in time as they did for the 121s. For me as a model train operator the driving prototypically is as important as the actual sound quality if not more. PS: On the subject of Murphy Models I was in Marks Models yesterday collecting some MM stock and noticed the new tippex coaches are fabulous looking with the correct deeper shade of orange compared to the original 2008 mk2d production run which was rather yellow in tone.

‘Biscuit tins’ seems appropriate for 2[6-7]00 class DMUs. I suffered 7hrs on board one during a railtour once (cork-waterford) worst seats on rails, not suitable for intercity. Wont make that mistake, wont be going on a railtour again on any DMU, my back is still recovering. I thought the lilt livery was the nicest looking though. Bizarrely I commissioned a model some years ago in lilt livery but the supplier/builder vanished with my deposit. Last I was told in October by ‘a man’ was some 201s in IE livery reruns might be due Q1.25 and same for 071 re-runs in freight grey and NIR blue. That should put a stop stop the insane price gouging on eBay for Blue 111,112,113s.

Pallets of MM just arrived at Marks Models.