MOGUL

There are a few prospects including Grain to Portlaoise(the Gain feeds traffic that ran from Foynes, NW and Waterford in the 90s/00s) and the woodchip that is imported from South America in this ugly old tub for burning in Edenderry. Another flow I have heard mentioned is the import of new rails for Irish Rail, but of course this already moves by rail from Belview to Portaloise, so hardly justifies the branch rebuild.

Hi Tom, While it sounds in principal like a logical idea, the reality is our warehouse staff are there to pick and pack orders and wouldn't be privy to the ins and outs of US customs to select the best option for the customers. I have over 10 years experience of customs clearances but the rate of change in the US system at the moment is so rapid it's hard to keep up with all the rates, rules and dates without it consuming a few hours of my week. Trump annoucing something, and that information actually being translated into something that a customs broker can implement are two very different things. So as I said, for now the best we can offer is that the customer can review the rules for themselves, and contact us to have us ship there order with whichever carrier would be the most cost effective for them.

I was just about to comment how the Rail Freight 2040 plan dates from 2022, and there is no sign of any container service to Foynes emerging three years on with the exception of the special purpose flow of containerised contaminated soil from Roche Clarecastle to Germany for thermal treatment. Realistically we already have enough or even too many container ports in the south of the country, with Rosslare, Waterford and Cork all competing with Dublin for business. Cork has managed to corner the marked for deep sea services with services from South America(operated by Maersk, and with Bananas and other fruits as the base load) and North America(ICL). Interestingly, Cork also saw a call from ACL recently on their North Atlantic Express service. However, in all likelihood the next decade will see the closure of Tivoli with all container handling ops being focused on Ringaskiddy which is in the wrong place for a rail connection. Waterford obviously has a good set up from a Rail perspective, with dockside rail access, however it currently has a very limited service of only two intra-EU vessels calling a week, and sometimes even less than that in the winter. Ironically, it had a deep sea feeder service for the first time in a decade back in the early 2020s, but by the time XPO and Irish Rail had their liner service up and running, this service was closed by the opertors BG freight line. A white paper/alternate rail freight 2040 plan has been on my to do list for a good while now, but life doesn't allow the luxury of time for such things at the moment!

Obviously, as you eluded to, offering a better range of carriers is only part of the solution for our US customers.. But unfortunatley there is no "easy" way to do what you have suggested and have our system automatically calculate what the tarriff would be if you select carrier A or carrier B. I would like to think that there may be an app developer out there building just such a plug in for our software, but it is still very early days on the whole, so they may not have made much progress as yet! It is also very much be a case of trying to hit a moving target, with the tarriffs and the rate of exchange between the dollar and our base currency of GBP being in a constant state of flux. The best option I'm afraid will be for customers to get in touch with us over support shortly before we have a product arrival(for pre-orders), or if they want to place an order(for in stock items obviously) and request which carrier from our available list they would like their parcel to be sent with.

TBH I doubt any retailers have swallowed the tarriffs entirely, ultimately no business can fully absorb 30-154% increase in costs.. We are currently working to improve our shipping, particularly to overseas market and will be able to offer Royal Mail, DHL Express or Fedex for our US customers. We will leave it up to the customers to pick which one they want and which one allows them to best avoid the tarriffs. Just to state again, we haven't increased our prices, you still pay us the same ex VAT price at the checkout, you now just have to pay 30%(for today anyway) to your government for the privelge of importing it. That ex VAT price is the same anyone outside the EU pays. Any goodwill we would gain from our small US customer base by offering discounts to US customers would be far out weighed by the ill feeling from people in our other markets who don't get the same. After all, we live in an age of VPNs, where you can easily view what customers in another market are paying, and a lot of those services actively promote this as a benefit of their service. The discounts on the beet wagons as was outlined at the time, was a special case as we wanted to reduce our stock holding prior to closing the Dublin warehouse. If those discounts were to be front loaded as you suggest, then the barely viable Irish projects, would become not viable and we would see a lot less Irish models on the market

A change of incoterms in itself isn’t necessarily a price change, but if the customer wanted to still pay the same price regardless of the VAT that had to be paid, then it’s a discount in another form.. It’s also very tricky when operating a pre-order model on a product with a 2/3 year production lead time to correctly charge under DDP when you have an administration that changes the tarriff rates more often than their bed sheets.

Yep, it has done quite well since my Great-Great-Grandfather and his co-founders got together over 140 years ago, and I'm sure they would be proud. Not sure why they would make of the current debate over Skorts though! Funnily enough, his son is responsible for the FT that hides it's articles behind paywalls, but that is a story for another day.

Yep, another benefit of having IRM stock available via Accurascale is that we can now offer it to our UK trade network, and Rails seem to have really got on board with and our now stocking nearly entire Bulleid range with the exception of the sold out tanks and Brown grain vans.

Hidden behind a paywall unfortunately, but any of the coverage of the US-UK trade deal seems to suggest that it is light on actual content beyond favouring a few sectors/products like the US beef sector, US bio-ethanol and the small British car manufacturing industry that still exists. It is highly unlikely that the UK will follow the US lead in launching a tit for tat Tarriff war with China, and even if it did, it is unlikely the EU would follow suit and also ramp up duties on Chinese goods. The decision to close the IRM warehouse in Dublin wasn't one taken lightly, and a good bit of crunching the numbers and thought was put into it before wielding the axe. But the volume just doesn't exist in the Irish market to support the costs of running a second warehouse to handle maybe a few hundred orders in a good month. We are now a little over 3 months in, and TBH the benefits have already exceeded what we thought would be possible when we started the review. Not only have we reduced the cost base(which helps fund tooling for future IRM models) but we have also now given IRM exposure to our UK customer base, many of whom weren't aware of it before the products and updates appeared on the Accurascale website. In addition to that, the ability to buy both IRM and Accurascale products in the same order, and have them shipped VAT paid throughout the EU 27(which wasn't something we offered on Accurascale before now) is a big plus for anyone outside the UK and Ireland. At this stage, I can't see us ever going back to having an Irish based warehouse unless railway modelling overtakes the GAA as the most popular past time in Ireland. My contribution to this thread has probably been a bit lacking the last while, but given the relatively small market in the US for all things OO gauge, losing sleep over the US tarriffs has been low on my list of priorities. This was something else we have discussed internally, and have examined all the options between offering DDP(all taxes and duties paid) shipping to the US and just stopping shipping to the US altogether like some of our competitors have done. But ultimately, the logical middle ground of doing nothing is what makes the most sense. Our RoW customers having been buying on a DAP/VAT free basis for years, including our US ones, and this has not changed in anyway on our side. The only difference is that one market has decided to change their import rules, and impose punitive levels of duty on our products due to their country of origin(the reasons for which have been explained in depth and don't need repeating). It would be unfair for us to offer a reduction equal to the level of duty to customers in that market as @James Regan has suggested and not to our customers in other overseas markets including yourself @Mayneror even in our home markets.

I bet the guy who brought the gulaschkanone was popular

241s surely?

Nuclear deterrence? The cornerstone of US policy for the past 70odd year since they became the first and only nation to actually use a nuclear weapon in anger.. or is it only ok when certain people have a nuclear arsenal. I know Ukraine probably wish they had kept theirs instead of trading them in for a US security guarantee( the Budapest memorandum ) that wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.. Anyway, as expected this thread has gone south fairly quickly..

But in the context of wagons the Mogul Zinc ore wagons were of course railway owned rather than private owner.. One of the Limerick based meat companies had some PO vans in the early 20th century, but I can’t remember if it’s shaws or Denny’s.. Will have to dig out my copy of the W&LR book for the details

The max was 36 empties and trains of that length did run from Waterford back to Platin

Hi Paul, Hope this helps IRM1192, Orange Pack 1 25106, 25194 and 25191 IRM1193, Orange Pack 2 25115, 25076 and 25182 IRM1194, Orange Pack 3 25122, 25091 and 25167 IRM1195, Ivory Pack 1 25172, 25138 and 25088 IRM1196, Ivory Pack 2 25104, 25073 and 25161 IRM1197, Ivory Pack 3 25156, 25144 and 25116

It’s Irish alright, from the early 70s batch known as the tar jumbos.. Pictures of them are thin on the ground but @Mol_PMBdid post this a few months back

I had a few of the Atlas editions Stobart collection in boxes, so they have now been dug out and de-branded to make them a little more anonymous and suitable for use on an Irish layout. Unfortunately prototype pics for Irish on track plant and road railers seem to be thin on the ground

13th June 1997 at Cork, so towards the end of BELL.. Always good to have a colour picture to work from!

As a shipping line, it’s likely BELL only had a small number of tanks in their fleet dedicated to one or two customers.. Any pics I’ve seen seem to be leased tanks with a BELL decal added. The easiest one of these to model is the Transamerica 20ft and add a small BELL logo to it. There are pics of the tank on a train in Cork that I posted on here somewhere but I can’t find them right now despite trying a good number of searches! I will try dig out the original pic again.. Maybe @murphaphor @Weshty would take a look at doing a sheet of these? In the meantime, here are some pics from my album that I have saved from the excellent Waterford maritime history Facebook group

Afraid not, those sold out long ago.. Although @Gabhal Luimnighwas selling a pack a few weeks back, not sure if he still has it

That was quick, the sandwich I made after listing that stock isn’t even finished in the toastie sandwich maker and already the orders are coming in

Ebayers gonna eBay unfortunately.. And yes, as DJ mentions answering multiple queries on our support channels, often from the same person is very time intensive and does take some time to get back to people while trying to also resolve the issues with our 3PL. I am hoping to get to peoples tickets in the next few days as time allows By way of an update, we have now resolved the issue with the VAT set up, done a few tests orders to confirm it works, and customer orders are now shipping, hopefully with no one getting payment requests from DPD.. I am working on updating the tracking on people’s orders on their IRM accounts at the moment, and hope to have this done by lunchtime tomorrow.. The system should email the tracking info as normal once I update your order Sorry to the delay everyone, but hopefully the wagons are worth the wait..

Hi Dave, drop us a message on support and I will sort that for you

Not really, that was a one off that slipped out of the warehouse and I know why it happened. We are working on the VAT situation in the background and will only be shipping orders once we are happy that people won’t be getting VAT requests. Should be all in place in the next few days and then the floodgates from the warehouse will really open

Can you drop us a line on support, and I can sort that for you..