Junctionmad

The main reason double heading of 121s occurred was of course the decision by drivers and Cie not to run them engine forward and as turntables fell out of use. They got hooked up in pairs , irespective of the drawbar requirements

Said a man with about 6 kits on the go , your secret is safe with me.

I convinced my parents at the age of 9 , to buy me a bike, and cycled the 6 miles to school, ( each way ) just to get away from those busses ... Shudder By the way , where did you get the kits from ? Dave

I don't agree Noel. If one looks across the water, one still sees lots of kits being produced and presumably built. Pure scratch building was always a minority sport. The existence of higher quality rtr , simply means that " ordinary " modellers can experience the realism , that for many years was the preserve of high quality builders. In fact with the arrival of resin castings, high quality etching and supplemented by 3D , and the demise of poorer quality rotary whitemetal, we could be entering a golden era of kits and scratch building. Even in the uk , only a fraction of the prototype is available in high quality rtr, so there will always be a demand from specialist suppliers to produce kits and components Compared to 30 years ago , when I last built kits , I would say there's a great interest and variety in today's kits and people who traditionally would never touch a whitemetal kit are building modern composite kits. I think it would be a huge shame to see any reliance on RTR over any other method, in this hobby. We would loose one of the essentials of the hobby , that you " build " something To give a concrete example , today , compared to 30 years ago , I can buy a whole series of components that allow me to fabricate very realistic track , complete with accurate tie bars , chair detail and good rail profiles. This suggests that track building is strong or even stronger then before

Personally I would never see kits competing with rtr. The fact IS a kit exists would in no way deter a. RTR manufacturer. There's two distinct markets.

Just be aware , to my knowledge , that is open cell insulation and is sensitive to UV degradation ( since it's designed to be out of sunlight ) I would have concerns over its longevity, I have stored some of this stuff in my garage in the dark and it's starts to crumble after about 5 years.

Ok , eaten bread and all that , we need a rtr A class. The most numerous engine On the system at the time

Given they had about a 200 mile range I doubt it.

Congrats Richie.

Have these picture collections made it into books or online ?

Ply and 2by 1 , is particular bad at generating in effect , a soundbox. But there have been a fair few discussions on the scalefour forum looking at direct track laying and in building the sound deadening into the base board. If you intend using PVA and ballast method , I don't think you preserve much of the sound insulation anyway , definitely the cork mat, PVA and ballast is practically the same as fixing to the base. Boards directly. A lot depends on the level of " finish " the OP wants to achieve

I always think there's a massive gap in our records of Irish railways , from First World War to nearly the end of steam. Possibly two wars and a nasty civil war etc meant that uk photographers stayed away. So........ , in purely railway terms, what would we have had if independence and the civil war didn't happen What would BR(I) have looked liked.... ( we'dhave liked the green livery !!! )

Indeed , my preference now, is to focus the sound deadening in the baseboard technology and lay track directly onto a smooth flat ridge-less surface . Ballast shoulders can be constructed by extra layers of timber ( balsa looks promising )

Yes, steam engines were designed with tolerances that suited hand assembly. Today r modern manufacturers are working to orders of magnitude more precise tolerances. But it was an example of the supreme art of the hand machining.

Hi joe123. Assuming you are not going down the road of PECO underlay, there are three options 1. Cork Mat 2. Closed cell PU foam 3. Direct to the baseboard No 3 seems to be preferred now amongst the P4 brigade, and emphasis has therefore shifted to sound deadening baseboards instead of track. No 1. Is the traditional method. Using approx 3mm cork , however the typical PVA and ballast method tends to make the whole thing rigid and the vast majority of the sound suppressing is lost. No 2 is a more modern alternative and as its non porous, the whole thing doesn't get glued up solid. I've tried pieces in test mode and it was pro and cons. I think for robust track like PECO code 100 it's very good. For finer scale Ie flimsier track , I don't like the amount of movement. Horses for courses

Not at all, little freight in the 80- 2005 block freight trains ran late into the wee hours , you could stand, say at Limerick Junction and watch all sorts of freight flows passing during the day. In fact, I think due to rostering, very little ran in the late night hours, certainly looking at various WTTs anyway. Give the historical realtively low passanger train frequency , it's easy enough to find day light paths for freight operations. Today it's trivial Dave

Janet cottrell has been very kind in providing me with some of the photos of claremorris signalling in high res scans. There's a lot more then up there to come I think

well living in wexford as I do , the whole friggin easy coast is festooned with ugly rock armour, whole beaches have disappeared under it, bah humbug

If you don't mind , how can u construct baseboards before you have a scale drawing Note I'd be very cautious about multiple levels in 10 by 8. Gradients need to be at very least 1:50 and preferably 1:75 - 1:100. Even at 1:50 you will need 3.5 metres to get 70 mm clearance ( in my case I'm splitting the gradients over both lines, ie one will go down as the other rises ) I would also suggest changing the plan to use 30" minimum radius curves and points or above as a minimum. This will allow better couplings if you so wish and the train formations ,especially with longer modern carriages will look far better. I wouldn't touch timber until you have a worked up scale drawing of all the key components. Trying to fit a design to a baseboard is a terrible situation compared to the other way round. By the way why make the wall sections so thin ? They look about 1'6" , but I could be wrong as u say the plan isn't scaled Since you have so much scenic area , perhaps you could build skeleton baseboards and allow the " countryside" to rise and fall along the distance, I always find layouts where everything is either level or above the rail datum to be very un-prototypical and easily fixed, if building your own baseboards Ps. I'd remove most of the straight track and use nice undulating flexi , the prototype rarely had straight anything , it also lets the track move through the countryside , type of thing. Also if you can try and incorporate transition curves into your design, have a look at Templot , if you feel up to it. It can be configured to emulate PECO and is the only layout designer which I would absolutely believe in regards dimension. It's unfortunately a very steep learning curve however , but you can use it for bits and pieces like laying out transition curves etc, rather then the whole layout Dave

There is quite substantial rock armour there, and it has been shown to be quite effective elsewhere. I wouldn't worry , till be grand , sure line speeds are so slow on that line , I can walk it faster

If the whole layout is 10x8 , the station looks way undersized. I suggest you try laying out the station on one of the PC based layout programs like any rail , scram , trax3 etc. This will force realistic size into the track diagram. Dave

The attachment links don't work for me ?

Any ways. All that shaped modular seating leaves me cold. A craven interior any day instead thank you.

I thought it was a good movie , great special effects etc. I didn't think the story was good and I didn't like the ending , it felt too much like a ..... Tune in next week for the concluding part...

Jeepers it must play havoc with rail side electrics , point motors , track circuits. The old stuff was reassuring mechanical !