Junctionmad

and of course you need license free sound files that match irish locos

Just an update mrsoundguy will supply the Zimo decoder with sound at 95 sterling. Sound is certainly very expensive ! Is there a cheaper route even using US engine sounds or something

I agree. The A class had a great distintive more growl like noise rather then. The more high pitched pure gm two stroke

Well if its available in Zimo that's actually better.

indeed, I worked on military projects when I lived in the states in the 80s , its a form of welfare and " regional grants" in reality . a lot of the construction plants are in poor states , often in the south

the feedback from rmweb, is that he hasn't bothered upgrading the UK sound files to V4 of the Zimo and hence requires V3,5, which is disappearing, maybe he has V4 versions of the irish sound files. have you an email for him ? Mind you I dont think v4 is actually shipping as Zimo keep delaying it.

cant see why they didn't get a custom A380 .

hmmm, my understanding is that he was working with modelshopbelfast, he used to supply the UK sounds through DCC concepts, but didn't update them to V4 and hence they got dropped. I dont believe he is supplying them directly Pity this avenue has closed, his website is very old

Where can these now be purchased ?

I would be most grateful for any help , joining the irrs is on my to-do list I must also publically thanks Alan O Rourke of newirishlines, who has been exceptionally helpful, along with the heritage section of IE , and several other contributors as well of course , as the many contributors here. If anyone in the future wishes my help I will be most willing provide aid with my own records.

Thanks. Yes re o dea , but I'm not an irrs member

Got one or two indirect pictures from private sources but still can't work out roof profile over toilets. I'll keep searching All help appreciated If anyone needs info on Claremorris I now have I'm excess of 350 pictures ( and or links ) from 1960 onwards

Yes and no, it just requires longer turnout operating units.

I had a grand uncle in bomber command. I remember talking to him as a kid. I asked him were they scared. He said yes, all the time, but they just got on with doing the job.

As I mentioned before I'm experimenting with epoxy foam core ply sandwich construction, I will revert later with the results of a test board I've made up, rather then expensive marine foam core, I'm using a ridig foam I got in b&G . Personally , having used a lot of MDF in various projects over the years , using a variety of grades of MDF , I still blow hot and cold on the subject. I find it heavy for its sze and it sags if unsupported ,more then good ply. Until I sold my last house I had a scoring panel saw, so I could machine it very easily. I still think it's hard to beat good birch ply. The trouble is , it's expensive I would contend , if you have reasonable carpentry skills and a modicum of good power tools , building a top class baseboard yourself isn't difficult.

Lets agree to disagree but i leave this snippet Your comments re mk3 is pure hindsight. Unless IR knew more then anyone else on the planet in 2000-2005 This country is far far from broke , it remains i beleive the 14 -16 wealthiest country in the world. It was and still is however very badly managed Any way on to more interesting topics

The simplest is braced plywood. I've see a lot of MDF and it has pros and cons. Stay away from sundela type stuff.

That IR logic is flawed , there is no doubt. Private operators in the UK see the value in sweating the assets. Even old locos have been refurbished and returned to service, when you have to lease your motive power , conpanies that provide cheaper alternatives using refurbished locos have a valuable place. In Ireland the periodic bonanza of capital in the railways has meant that waste and poor planing is the order of the day. This is not entirely the fault of CIE group. It has nothing to gain by refusing capital. There is no doubt that the rail car investment was not foreseen and the redirection of public money as a result of boom tubes led to on the hoof decisions. In my view a railcar only fleet will cause IR asset utilisation issues especially in passager numbers grow The difficulty in reassembling different configurations to match traffic Patterns amongst an increasingly stretched fleet , and the issues surrounding Such reconfiguration process , will leave IR in a very very difficult position.

Hi guys, My photo records are increasingly daily with the help of many people who have uncovered old photos One thing I'm trying to tie down is the layout and arrangement of secondary buildings immediately adjacent to the Northern ( ballina /Westport end of the main station building These have been extensively remodelled over the years and I have pics from the 60s , late 70s , and today and many are confusing Questions ( a) Immediate to the station building , but within the canopy, is a stone building, it now has a flat roof ( it's the toilets I think ) , it seemed to have a pitched gabled roof, of smaller size then the main roof at one stage ? (B) next , in the 70s-80s?? , there is a light coloured building with a chimney , which I beleive was used as a booking on building for drivers , any idea of what it looked like from the goods yard /road It seems to be corrugated iron construction ? © confusingly , I have a partly obscured picture ( why did everyone just photo engines ) , showing a hipped conservatory style roof at right angles over the toilet area or adjacent , ie with its gable facing the track , (D) there was a further motley collection of corrugated outhouses north of the station before the goods shed , I only have partial details , any one have better photos ? All help much appreciated Dave

One must look at the whole airline industry not just a small section. Aer lingus is an example of the " adding curtains " success. Worldwide business class pays for airlines. It's why they go to extraordinary lengths to provide for them. I think the " curtains" in my case is an analogy for comfort in general and tailoring to ones customers. The life of mk3 is amply demonstrated by their continued use in the uk , even mi2s are in use worldwide to this day. Of course, the irish know better then everyone else. ( as we did when we bought the metrovicks !!) The destruction of the mk 3 has all to do with " windfall" public money due to the government of the day ( greens ) which resulted in the wholesale change of strategy to railcars , dumping the 201 strategy so recently justified -funny that Remember all financial decisions in cie have b toning to do with real ecomonics. It's dept of transport. 201s thirsty. , of course fuel costs are the issue at cie. !!! Funny they weren't obviously " thirsty " a few years previous when bought them. Sounds like retrospective justification. Noiser , damn noticeable to me. I want my train carriage quiet. The ability to cater for greater and greater numbers of passengers packed into fewer and fewer carriages, makes sit down restaurant cars or dining at ones seat very very difficult to achieve. One can go down the elite route , but that's not popular in Ireland The point is to allow car drivers to access intercity services. That isn't possible with city centre stations. It can take longer to get to Hueston then the whole journey by car. You can increase train speeds to Mach 10 and that does t do anything to journey times The idea of trains terminating in a station with minuscule track configuration , pathing difficulties etc is questionable, it's not that the tunnel hasn't existed , it's more to do with ie accepting dart inter-connecter is doomed in any reasonable timescale. You cannot beat cars in a small under populated country served by what is now an excellent under utilised motorway network. To try and compete is to chase the impossible. What you can do is offer an " alternative " , like an aer lingus to Ryanair. Rather then speed, offer comfort, reliability , facilities. Cars are what people want at present , trains are seem as a necessary evil. Most take them because they can't use their cars. That's not competition. Rail dominated canal traffic because it offered unrivalled speed , cars dominate railways because it offers unrevised convenience. Rail cannot recover that aspect , it's gone. But look at the success of passenger liners today , bigger and better then ever before, with levels of luxury never seen on the high seas. , but a different market and clientele. Intercity Rail must discover a new niche Ps uk fares will be wrong when fewer passengers travel each year. .........waiting. Ie were reminded of its ridiculous fair structure in the strategic rail review 2013. It has failed to implement most of the recommendations . It has yet to implement variable rate fares to control excessive numbers at peak times True , but of this was really the policy , we have 200, 000 passengers travelling Waterford to limerick within€ 5.99 fares and 5 trains a day each way. Instead it's more of a subvention to prevent mass unemployment of rail workers , that happens to transport passengers occasionally No rail line is profitable in Ireland, in the normal sense of that term. This is true in many countries.

I agree , the 80s was IR failing , unfortunately so was the 40 s , 50 s , 60 s , the interwar years etc. As for meetings, humans are at best face to face , no amount of video conferencing will replace " looking them In The eye " , airlines business class depends on it.

Let's break down such logic The cheaper seats , and no curtains economic argument. Given that capital costs are " magicked " out of the air , by direct exchequer subvention, of course it makes no sense to incur additional operating costs despite whatever passenger benefits. ( since such costs are not capital ) Air travel is run for business class. , the economy passengers are along for the ride Since ie cannot be profitable by fares , there exists no advantage to getting more fare revenue from lower numbers of passages paying higher fares. Hence the perverted business logic that removes " niceties " and rewards converting everything to dart standard. ( there is of course political kudos by increasing passenger numbers by whatever means ) Not to mention that mk3 city gold was an outstanding success The lack of curtains and food has nothing to do with ecomonics and all to do with standardisation, lack of coaching stock flexibility and " cost -saving " Comfort Having travelled on mk2s mk3s , Italian compartment trains, I confirm all are more comfortable and quieter then 22ks. Again ie isn't interested in comfort , it simply is sawing legs from the cow to save costs. The inevitable will happen Good foods attracts high paying passengers , see eithad etc. ever travelled on Eurostar etc. M50 Station That's makes a lot more sense then dragging car drivers wishing to take inter city trains into the centre of a city , with few decent roads and expensive car parking. The sad thing , is that irish railways are in their death knell. Outside of commuter orientated services, the rest is utterly unjustified financially. Unless we see a massive attitude change in the irish government , rail will continue to be strangled slowly to death both inside and outside cie just my opinions

I find that hard to accept. The vast majority of irish lines were built late in the rail expansion era, and private money was much harder to find. Even though irish rsilways paid early dividends due to lower costs, these were rapidly ended by railways lack of financial performance in Ireland. High speed works over long distances, where significant reductions in journey times can result. This can be seen in say London to edinburgh , which has reduced journey tines on the ECMl to 4 hours. Ireland has no such distances or such large centres of population. Reducing Dublin cork tines by 5 or 10 minutes is meaningless in the context of overall point to point journey tine. Better the whole network was capable of 75 mph , then a few sections capable of 100 mph. Reliability and predictability are more important then simply journey times.

Irish railways were built predominantly to move agricultural produce to the uk. ( no more then why the royal and grand were built ) in that regard. Line Speed was a secondary concern . Rail freight was always doomed in modern Ireland, firstly distance economics dont apply, secondly freight doesn't vote. When you see IE setting " track access" at over 9 euros. , while in the uk they are whinging at £ 1.50 you see that Ie is loading the rail freight charges Ie won't get a penny for rsil freight , hence it will never have one again , the 80s and early 90s were merely the death throws of the " new " early 70s freight strategy, that ultimately lost cie millions.

It's clear that IE is driven by the strange ecomonics of public subsidised entities. Very little real " business case " logic actually exits. Hence decision based solely on " ring fenced " operating costs are actually non- sensical. Ie does not actually benefit from enhanced service which result in transfers to rail, it benefits by remaining within the financial parameters associated with its subsidies. To suggest the mk3 fleet was scrapped over seats is nonsense given the life expectantly of the mk3 in the UK , which is presumably subject to the same EU rules as IE is. iE is driven by cost reduction over service provision and is engaged in cutting legs from a cow to save feed costs. I agree with noël. To lure business passengers you need to provide facilities aligned to that groups needs , in that you are directly competing with modern cars , air conditioning , comfort , entertainment etc and modern best in class motorways, with enhanced service stops etc. I was involved with sections of the CTC upgrade I know partly how cie thinks. It's an unavoidable function of its lifeline. By the way chasing reductions in journey time is foolish. No train ( in Ireland ) can beat a modern car and motorway point to point times and point to point times are ALL that matters, not the time spent on a train. In that regard. Noel is correct centre city main stations were fine for dublin of the 19th century , when few people commuted anywhere and the centre city was the destination of business men and others. Today Dublin is greatly dispersed and I agree with the idea of an m50 station. The extra traffic would be a pimple on the m50 car traffic. It's clear that IE is adopting a Ryanair style of operation , strangely ryanair is beginning to abandon its own original strategy ( if it's cheap people will put up with anything ) having travelled recently on both 22k and 29k the service is basic, uncomfortable compared with the best of the past I personally think ie should have retained some of the flexibility loco hauled coaching stock provided, in additional to selective railcar deployment. In this logic, this is similar to uk and European rail usage patterns. The Milne report strongly argued against the destruction of rail assets and infrastructure. That message to this day goes unheard. In the end , accountants will recommend that cutting all four legs of the cows makes it more financially efficient, of course neglecting to understand that such an undertaking kills the cow and removes all milk production. But of course a zero cost cow is at it's very efficient. ( rule 0: never let an accountant run a business) Given the signalling issue, the approach constraints ,pathing, etc. I applaud IE can actually implement such expresses. But I fear it's a form of PR. Stunt. The passenger lift will be minimal and the resource consumption is significant.