Noel

Ah that looks so much better. Smarter, tidier and will weather better.

Cheers. It'll be next week before I get into it. Yea some of the small wire fitted parts will be fiddly but I'm tooled up now to handle that so it won't be as tiresome as the first one I tried. Nice looking wagon kit and fits right into my era of loose coupled goods trains.

Interesting piece 'Master of mixed traffic - Forty years of Ireland's 'BIG' GMs' Spotted this over on ch-FB: https://www.railwaymagazine.co.uk/3745/from-our-archive-master-of-mixed-traffic-forty-years-of-irelands-big-gms/

Don't know @Wexford70. Think I saw one in inchicore last year when passing on a train to cork. It is one horrible livery but I have an MM one put away somewhere in a cupboard, had originally planned to weather it to make it look less ugly. Its still on the long finger.

Next up, a provincial wagons ex-GWSR brake van kit Goodies in the kit box Resin de-flashed, filed and parts ready for assembly and drilling of holes for wire parts. Might prime some of the parts now as I'd prefer the interior to be grey. This should keep me occupied for a while during the continued lock-down.

Classic rural welch branch terminus format.

Most old photos I've seen its a sort of beige colour, so I suspect it might have been back then.

Good to hear, not negative waves, just observing reality out there in the Irish economy as a result of CV19. Glad to hear its so going well for you guys. Especially impressed how well accurascale is doing in the UK market, your right there in the lions den making big waves and disrupting a sleepy market with a shock and awe assault on what finescale quality and precision really means. AS has exposed what UK modellers have had to put up with for decades from the big two.

Superb precision work. Will follow with interest.

Was just thinking the well is only so deep in the Irish market, with the A class coming after 121 and the Irish economy suffering CV-19 effect will the market demand be there for much more? After the kegs is project 42 not finished? Will yellow PW stuff sell well? There was no mention of weed spray coach to go with the tanker set? I'm sure all will be revealed at the appropriate time. Lets get the 121 and A class first, they will devour budgets. Not to mention the lovely deltic and CL 37 The one surplus commodity many of us have at the moment seems to be time. Great uncertainty but the IRM guys have wise heads.

Yes one irrelevant bit of trivial information is that the nautical paper chart still in use today was surveyed and drawn up by Captain William Bligh (of Bounty fame). His chart was so detailed and so accurate it never needed to be resurveyed and is still the marine charts used today (ie AC 1415), obviously with corrections for changes and additions over the years. He did the survey on a small open boat using a sextant on its side taking triangulated readings from land features and used a lead line for depths. The other snippet of trivia is that unlike the hollywood movies Bligh was not a cruel commander but in contrast was actually the victim but also a hero and master navigator who managed to safely get his officer crew home safely after they were forced off the bounty onto an open boat with a small sail and minimal provisions. He navigated them thousands of miles across oceans in that tiny boat and man managed their resources to keep them alive. His knowledge of the oceans, winds, currents and tides were legendary.

Well years ago scientists in Trinity doing genetic studies proved that most of the population outside of 'the pale' are not celts, but rather descended directly from basque's of the iberian peninsular. When descendants of homo erectus species migrated from Africa to northern Europe they took two routes one through the middle east and the other by sea around the iberian peninsular. Apparently this western route populated Ireland thousands of years before the rest of northern Europe. The Trinity study explains the skin complexion, facial shapes and body mannerisms west of the Shannon which are scarily alike people from the Basque region of Spain.

Yes its bizarre there were even some of these gun towers on the River Shannon near Banagher and MountShannon, who an earth were they afraid of coming up river? The Vikings managed it over a thousand years ago, but I can't imagine the French or Spanish wanting to get up to the inland bogs, there were no cities inland. Ships could easily get up as far as Limerick, but not really beyond due to Doonass falls. Killaloe was the ancient capital of Ireland but that was many centuries before Martello towers were even constructed in the 19th century.

The photo on the RTE web site of the car looks like the occupants of the car had a very lucky escape. Luckily it was struck by one of those fisher price toy 22k trams and not a loco. The vehicle looks like it might have been an EV, KIA E-soul, so doubly lucky no issues with battery pack and all the safety stuff must have worked. No photos of the front of the tram on the media so far. https://www.rte.ie/news/connacht/2020/0429/1135658-level-crossing-miss-castlebar/ also looks like it’s a manual unmanned crossing with a history of near hits.

I counted 8 or 9 locos

Fabulous. I could watch that all day.

I suspect the bottle of club orange was just to stop the boxes rolling off the table

Fab but it would take less time perhaps to scratch build or do kits. The learning curve for a CAD suite is very steep and lengthy.

Enjoy DJ, great collection of Irish stock, especially the baby GMs

Here are some servo operated ground signals printed by @Junctionmad on his 3D printer which he build himself from a kit. Signal gantry and servo operated signals 3D printed by @Junctionmad (Dave) Junction Signals

@Junctionmad is your man for advice of 3D printing and especially CAD. He has printed a lot of model railway stuff and especially researched the CAD element which is the main learning curve for 3D printing

Really looking forward to the postman delivering 5 more of these wonderful kits. Provincial Wagons double beet.

You are very kind good sir. But it is you provide the essential raw materials, we just assemble and decorate them. I really enjoyed working on this kit after avoiding it for nearly two years. It was sitting on my top shelf saying build me, build me but I was scared off for no reason, as it proved to be a straight forward build in the end. Must order some more. Only tools needed were a craft knife, a few micro files, tweezers, pliers/wires cutters, and hand drill with a few drill bits 0.5mm, 0.8mm, 1mm and 1.5mm, a small screwdriver, super glue and paint. This model does not require an airbrush to finish, a halfords rattle spray can of plastic grey primer will do and the rest can be hand painted using various weathering powders and railmatch sleeper grime for the under frame and wheels. Looking forward to building the other 4 double beet wagons and I discovered last night another Provincial Wagons kit hiding in my cave, an ex-GSWR 20ton brake van. Happy Days. Keep safe everybody, stay at home, do not relax precautions, complacency now could roll back all the good progress. Build some kits, paint some trains, lay some track. Stimulates the mind, and serves enjoyable time.

Those photos pure treasure Jonathan @jhb171achill. Some of those wagons looked very short, especially the DSER one. Transporting cattle in open wagons does sound daft (ie with covers off the convertibles) as for years road HGVs used to transport cattle were open 1970s and 1980s.

Old and new. Modern era containerisation did away with much of the old railway infrastructure needed to support the transport of goods all around the country by 2 axle pickup goods wagon trains. Within a few years the goods yards, sidings and goods sheds once busy were decaying and redundant, much of the more interesting track work at stations ripped up as part of logical rationalisations. Cement, beat and fertiliser traffic kept goods traffic going for a few years but now 'freight' as its now known has diminished and moved to road. All that's left is the odd timber train, a few liners a week plus tara mines.