Noel

Sublime craftsmanship. Really neat and precise. The whole ensemble will look fabulous on your layout.

An opportunity to put pax (passengers) inside coaches while they are dismantled for respray. These are cheap packs of 100 people figures I bought off ebay a few years ago from China. Cost was about €3 inc postage. They are very poor compared to bachman figures buy inside a coach viewed through windows you won't be able to tell the difference from figures costing €1.5 each person. I snip the legs off from the waist and glue them to the seats as through glazing you'll never see their legs anyway. I like to put a few folks standing as if chatting to seated folk or walking down a coach looking for a seat. I repainted the seats while I was at it and the table tops as hate the bright plastic colours used in some models. Not bothered with lighting as these are mk3s which I don't really have much of an interest in. Last year I fitted some bachmann figures in Hornby 8 window mk3s and because the windows are so heavily tinted you cannot see the passengers anyway. A waste of time. Some day, I'll remove them and recycle into cravens. I didn't make that mistake with these donors as they have clear glazing. These 100 figures from ebay cost €3 inc postage, the figures in the photo above could have cost between €30-€40 had I used bachmann figures. What price to fit pax in a rake of coaches? Hornby shorties in conversion process. Just varnish over the decals now and refit the window glazing strips. Then weather once reattached to chassis and bogies. Couplings already changed to kadee and buffers added as shorties were part of HST sets that had no buffers, but the holes are there for them.

Imho, Trains are to be driven rather than wasted on display. The 141/181 packaging was my favourite. Didn't like the bachmann packaging of the mk2a's, left the coach sides exposed. IRM have a successful formula which I assume they'll stick to with the A class. The problem I had with 121s was the outer packaging boxes were badly padded out, the MM box and foam was pretty good, but if it gets percussively bashed against the sides of an outer cardboard box in transit, bits were bound to fall off, but the loco body was well protected and could have been dropped from a 2 story window and survived such was the thickness and density of the foam innards which had to be removed very very carefully so as not to pull a horn off with it.

Pity those MM/Bachmann mk2a coaches were one of the finest coaches ever produced right up there with the Cravens, but sure we have the new MM mk3s to look forward to including PP suburbans, what more could we wish for.

Oh but the digitals are so much easier to wire just three wires from the point overhead direct to the motor underneath, no long cable runs back to switches, etc. The Analog ones require much more wiring.

Ah a Dinamo supporter?

Classic.

Pleasantly surprised the Hornby Shortie donors (ie only 7 windows) were resprayable as the windows are a single stip of transparent plastic painted black leaving the windows clear (ie the windows are not separate pieces), so it almost unmask able practically, but the Hornby shorties donors I used were BR swallow livery which fortunately have a black band on the window strip, so easy, just pop the whole strip out, paint, and refit.

Happy St Patricks day to all. Celebrating nostalgia. And as its St Patricks day. The ballygowhatsit special.

Love this one to waterdord

More on the way

Are there too many places the 201s are weight restricted so the rebuilt and constantly over hauled 071s may have plenty of life in the old bogies yet? There aren't enough 201s operational to take on their duties anyway (ie the scrape line of 15x201s rotting away at inchicore)

Perhaps a St Patricks day display of some kind, many towns and villages around the country putting up green lighting, etc?

Certainly Right so Ted here's another. Not sure if these models are small or far far away!

Old CIE Era goods traffic

Indeed, but in the old days the transport system was joined up, one could buy a ticket to UK cites, you could get on a train anywhere in Ireland and get off on the quay platform at Dunlaoghaire or Rosslare, walk a few feet board a ferry to a UK port, walk a few feet onto a BR train and get to the destination city same day. Time tables were sync'd. Yes the shinny new ICRs may be warm, but no proper food service, no curtains, bucket seats that seem designed to keep osteopaths and chiropractors in business for decades, progress I suppose accelerated by low cost air travel and the decline of waterborne ferry travel. As a youngster back then you didn't need an iPad to watch netflix on a journey, all one had to do was look out the window in awe at all one saw, enough stimulation to keep a 10yo boy's mind wound by the fascinating scenes and noises experienced from a railway carriage. Yea in the 1980s some of the off beat services were pretty drab and more like the midnight express to bangladesh than the limerick shuttle to LJ. The missing link is good public transport to major rail stations (eg dart to heuston and dart to dublin airport).

https://fb.watch/4eHW_wyQrn/

Hi Rob, Yes in my head I'm still only 34, but my birth cert says otherwise, unless you were a few decades older you'd never have seen those old classics nor travelled on board. And yes the mk3s were introduced to Ireland 37 years ago, and to BR 48 years ago. Age usually dictates nostalgia memory. One day in the distant future even an awful Rotem 22k may end up on a preservation lot on display. You were fortunate to catch the end of the 141/181 era combined with mk3 coaches which were so much more comfortable to travel on than the yoyos. Its all a mater of 'eyes of beholder' and all that stuff. The earlier era not having fixed rake formations of anything seemed rather interesting because there was so much more shunting and marshalling stock compared to today, huge variety of rolling stock, lots of activity at nearly every passing station between Dublin and Cork, or Galway or Sligo, etc, enough to keep a 10yo boy peering out a coach window entertained combined with an assault on the senses as stock was buffered up under brakes, the whine and notching of locos running around and coupling up, coach windows, head stuck out coach door windows peering at the train as it rounds an inside bend, etc, seeing a train beside yours out the window begin to slowly move and then realise its the train you are on that is actually doing the moving. No particular time is right, only ones own memory paints the picture. TV and video can also colour shade memories, we've all seen so many GWR, LMS, LNER, SR and BR trains in period movies and TV dramas that they almost seem a real part of ones own memory creating a fondness for a steam era one never actually experienced first hand. Must be why Hornby still sell so many steam era train sets and steam locos today to people under 85 and half.

CIE era model trains. Extract from running session earlier. Enjoy. Thank for watching.

The canals handled that sort traffic. Crew Bonus earned by tapping wooden barrels behind the metal straps, and replugging after the level adjusted (for ballast don't you know).

Wow look at the glorious Bulleid open beet wagons behind it. The most numerous and important wagon in Irish railway history. The Acrylonitrile looks a little fisher price.

1m32s noticed the points are not set. See this before on some video of trains running through 'trailing' points that were not set. Interesting how they must be pushed open by the trains without breaking the spreader bars or other linkages. Not seen this before but heard of it. Presume the mechanism is designed to cope with the point blades being forced over.

Excellent Exactly, great idea. Dapol unpainted wagons are inexpensive and come with NEM pockets. Works with vans too. I've kit bashed three rakes of assorted two axle wagons like these over the past 5 years.

16:50 Ennis-Athenry about to depart as the down pick up goods to limerick has passed in the loop. It's late in the evening Drone shot 17:40 waiting for starter signal All quiet in the yard for the rest of the day, next movement due is tomorrow morning at 11:35 when the Sligo-Limerick goods is due to visit and exchange a few wagons.

I'd well believe it having seen the uptake of O gauge by members of WMRC since they built their massive Little Siddington layout. Many building or buying their on O gauge stock to run on LS, and now building their own compact O gauge layouts for home use (eg shunters yard, diesel depot, etc). I'd be on O gauge myself like a hot rash if I could get my hands on a single fine scale 141 or 181 model. Would only need a 10ft linear shunting layout to have years of operational running fun using RTR wagons from the likes of Dapol resprayed in CIE liveries. No need for coaching stock. A 141 is a beautifully short loco and would suit shunting 2 axle wagons with their 3 link couplings and opening wagon doors. Drool. There'll never be any Irish RTR O gauge stock for obvious economic reasons, but some time I might be able to twist the arm of a master like Eoin to commission a 141 body based on a dapol chassis. Saw a few nice 141s at the last model show I was at in Dublin some years ago. Do you export much to Cork (PDRC)?