Noel

Test fitting again earlier. Its recessed a very little into the side of the platform. The gap in the platform ramp is where the water tower will go. Now I can safely finish off this building knowing it will fit ok with the track alignment and platforms.

Very nice job. Pleasing result seems just right, not over cooked.

Hi Jonathan. Thank you very much. Agree, I think I have enough photos of the goods shed. Its the front head on facia of the station building I'm looking for (ie front track side elevation). So that I can do a drawing and transcribe to card. There are a number of photos online of the station at an acute angle from the track side, but no perpendicular photos. Not even in the planning documents from the rebuild of the line for the western rail corridor.

Yes very dower and dull altogether. Sterile looking.

Quick test fit for the goods shed at the station location. I'll just need to cut 5mm into the edge of the platform which will work out well as a wall about 4mm thick continues to the south of the shed on the platform back. Roof trusses on, will leave overnight Next up is the water tower which will be a tight fit at the end of the platform between the main line and the goods road.

After dry assembling and test fitting the goods shed to station track work, I wasn't happy and decided the gable ends had to be scrapped and remade because the arch was too wide for typical 2 axle goods wagons. So made another pair of gable ends, ready for building assembly tomorrow. If at first you don't succeed try try again. Luckily I had a spare sheet of the coarse stone finish. The gable ends on the left were the replacement versions, the right hand side are scrapped or may be used in the future for some other shed. Dry test fitting over the track and beside the platform showed immediately the the original archway doors were too big and in the wrong place, so off with their heads, had to be redone.

Thank you. Yes Gort the prototype has an unusually straight station section. I was tempted to put a gentle curve in but the essence of that scene is straight track. The next section to the south will have a gentle curve to the left over the bridge in the town centre and then veer off right behind the backscene for a return. Yes eyeball was used to line up the track.

Track laid, after its alignment had been dry tested with pins. Tested with rolling stock for lengths, shunting and uncoupling sites. Trackbed 3mm dense closed cell foam (self adhesive) on top of base board completly covered in a layer of 3mm dense closed cell foam. Hopefully this will reduce noise and perform as well as the old peco foam underlay. The double layers should ensure PVA ballast glue should never come into contact with the baseboard plywood surface, avoiding a sound bridge. Now have some more wiring to do underneath the base board especially for frog polarity switching at each point using Cobalt Analog point motors integrated frog polarity switch. There's a lot more to do, but happy the track is now finally a lock after much dry testing. Before ballasting will double check the station buildings, water tower and goods shed fit snugly.

Thank you Ernie I’ve seen those two and know about the window on the cattle dock side. Window on the cattle dock side.

Thank you. That’s a help, no sign of bricked up windows. If you had a front elevation of the station building that would be a great help. Many thanks.

Thank you Jonathan. Also if he had one front on of the old station building. I’m suspicious there may originally have been windows on the side of the goods shed long since bricked up with stone rather than bricks.

This is the goods shed building I'm hoping to build Photo linked to Eiretrains web site (C) Ciaran Cooney & Barry Carse. http://eiretrains.com/Photo_Gallery/Railway Stations G/Gort/IrishRailwayStations.html

Stone arches formed. It has been years since I played with plastic, quite therapeutic patiently cutting, sanding, filling and fettling bits of plastic card. Every time I look at a photo of the original building I realise there are more bits to make and more parts to fabricate. Spotted more holes to be drilled for door rails, etc

What a treasure. Superb job. Reeks of atmosphere.

Fabulous layout scenes.

Tony Mirolo and Anthony Smyth are masters of resprays and weathering. I think Tony does some of the resprays for Chris Dyer.

Its been a while since I worked with Balsa. Roof trusses. Ready for construction

A collectors gem @WRENNEIRE probably already has some in his Aladdin's cave! A bit of modelling history. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Model-Irish-Railways-CIE-Class-B-Iarnrod-Eireann-141/124496414735?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D225114%26meid%3D12562ff26c3d4c45b63e7dcd38f2bdc3%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D15%26mehot%3Dnone%26sd%3D284123013354%26itm%3D124496414735%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2380057&_trksid=p2380057.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3Adf614137-4ade-11eb-a0e2-4ebecbb045b2|parentrq%3Ab55eebc21760a0f05f85a950ffd2c837|iid%3A1

Some doodling with plastic card again. A new old building afoot.

Absolutely love the idea. And would definitely try it for small shunting layout where only a few rolling stock items might need to be converted. Would have a concern about the viability of converting all my MM and coaching and goods wagon stock to run on 21mm. Converting rolling stock especially locos seems to require specialist tools and specialist skills. Not for the feint hearted. Perhaps if there were replacement 21mm bogies manufactured for popular rolling stock (eg MM Cravens, Commonwealth bogies, etc), and replacement wheel sets for MM locos these could be more easily swapped in without need of specialist tools. MM locos seem quite a specialist conversion. For it to be viable to convert my existing layout I'd need flexitrack, medium L&R points, and L&R curved points as well as crossings and slips (tall order), wooden sleeper patterns and colour.

Spot on

Yes the MKL version (58449). Been there got that badge, but sorted by swapping with a 58419 for one of my MM 121s.

I've only used Lenz, NCE and Roco, and for an afternoon got to play with a prodigy advance and an eCos. Its a purely personal thing but I did like the ergonomics of the NCE cabs which facilitated eyes off one handed operation and suited my penchant for operating sound locos. I disliked using touch screen cabs due to the lack of tactile feedback with throttle inputs which required eyes on the cab screen using a touchscreen slider icon to control throttle. When I started out on DCC my mindset was still in DC mode and I really wanted cabs with either throttle sliders or rotary knobs (ie like DC had), instead of throttle buttons +/-, the NCE had both a rotary knob and Throttle +/- buttons as well as +4/-4 buttons which left both options open, but I quickly changed mindset and find I never use the throttle knob, just the INC and DEC buttons which is handy for blind eyes off one handed use leaving me free to watch the loco and operate points while shunting. All the different systems has their own pros and cons and will suit different personal tastes and driving styles. The Roco Z21 appealed as it allowed the use of smartphones as inexpensive wireless cabs, but with eye on touch screen throttle control. One advantage of smartphone cabs is the customisation of function button labels to match the sounds available on a particular loco. The Lenz cabs are compact and were once the gold standard, personally I just preferred the feel in hand of the NCE dog bone snapped cabs and the size and tactile feel of the buttons and controls. Great menu interface makes them really easy to setup and programme. The underlying base electronics behind DCC pre-dates Zero1 and is very much late 1970s technology, but modern decoders have powerful functionality if a rather primitive and slow comms protocol. IMHO concepts such as CVs should be invisible to users in this day and age and buried under a simple human interface. Tooling up on DCC is fun and stimulating though.

Or more likely the default values in your decoders were pre-set for CV3 and CV4 (acceleration/decelaration). Personally I prefer to use the default values for CV3/4 in sound decoders, and manually adjust the values for non-sound decoders to get trains to drive as prototypically as suits my personal driving style. If the momentum button was accidentally used resetting the decoder or reinstating CV3 & CV4 values should restore matters.

It was to enable the loco cab driver to alter the inertia (ie momentum) of a locomotive (ie increase the accelaration and braking distances). Years ago in the DC world we were all chasing DC controller that had 'inertia' simulation and a break knob. These just simulated acceleration and braking by electronically delaying the voltage increase as the regulator knob was turned up, and delayed the voltage drop using simulating braking. This was based on an electronics kit I made up in the 1970s when 'inertia' was all the rage, but is now a routine part of DCC systems (primarily but not exclusively via CV3 and CV4).