MOGUL

4 hours ago, DJ Dangerous said:

Not quite THAT rich anyway!

4 hours ago, DJ Dangerous said:

Looking for some Irish outline Lima or Silver Fox Mk3 coaches; mainline / suburban / DVT’s, interested in them all!

If you wish to offload any, please drop me a message.

Those MK3PPs I sold you must have caused an itch..

Marks models in Greenogue had a pack of Lima mk3 execs last time I was out a few weeks ago.. might be worth giving them a call

On 5/3/2025 at 5:17 PM, Mol_PMB said:

I've been busy busy at work recently and not much time to focus on modelling, though a bit of time for research. Still interested in Fenit as a prototype, I've been delving into that rabbit hole.

I found this image of a rather interesting early bogie wagon, apparently a 30 ton high side open goods wagon for the Tralee & Fenit Harbour Commissioners, body 34' long, built by the Lancaster Railway Carriage & Wagon Co. Ltd. It doesn't carry a number; I wonder how many wagons the T&FHC had? There are some odd technical details such as the long 5-link coupling, the buffers spaced on blocks, handbrakes acting on all wheels. The top plank of the body seems to run the full length of the wagon. It appears to be iron or steel-framed with T-bulb section for the solebars. Bogies are a rather lightweight diamond-frame 3-piece type. Some details may have been lost in retouching the photo to hide the background.

Anyone know more about these or other T&FHC wagons?

 

Apologies if it has already been mentioned, but Ernie Shepherd's Waterford, Limerick and Western Railway book seems like a good place to answer this one and a few other loose ends in this thread related to the T&FR wagons and also tubular wagons in general. 

In the Rolling stock chapter, under private owners we find the following snippet that gives an insight into the Fenit Harbour Comissioners wagons. It would seem that the order for wagons and likely 299 came out of some disastifaction with how the the W&LR had been handling(or not) the available traffic landing at Fenit for onwards transit to Tralee. The harbour comissioners seem to have taken matters into their own hands, and decided to work the pier themselves with the W&LR then working the traffic from the station on to Tralee using T&FHC wagons. To allow for this, the harbour comissioners leased six open-centre covered wagons(convertibles) and twelve open wagons from the Bristol Wagon co in 1899. These were numbered 1-12 for the opens and 13-18 for the covered wagons. Upon passing to the GS&WR these were renumbered 4667-4684. I wonder if pictures might be out there of them in GS&WR days. Ernie then goes on to say "of even more interest(especially for us) is the fact that the commisoners leased two tubular 33ft 10in bogie open wagons, built by the Lancaster RCW in 1900" On passing to the GS&WR these became 4050 and 4051 with 4050 being altered into a covered fish van in 1903. So likely the wagon in @Mol_PMB's picture is one of these wagons, with the picture likely a manufacturers delivery one.

However, it is possible that this is not the wagon seen in the pics of Waterford, as it turns out that the W&LR themselves also operated tubular wagons(albeit for a short while as open wagons). These get a separate section in the Rolling stock chapter which gives a brief history of tubular wagons including the foundation of a workshop in Barrow in Furness in the UK to built them and their trial use by a number of UK lines. It seems that the W&LR decided to trial 6 of these wagons themselves, with a few to purchasing some(Interestingly some of the W&LRs earliest goods stock was of bogie design). Two wagons were delivered to Limerick in July 1891(one low sided and one high-sided), but at over a year had elapsed since the initial order, so the W&LR cancelled the order for the other 4. It would seem that the wagons and indeed the whole tubular wagon concept wasn't the most sucessfull, as the wagons were out of use until Sept 1892, and were then converted into covered vans for the carriage of Hops and Bran between Clonmel and Waterford. The tubular wagon co went into liqudation in 1895, so the W&LR bought the wagons off the liquidator. Like the T&FHC wagon, one of these wagons was 33ft 10in(W&LR No 1178,maybe a similar design) with the second slightly shorter 33ft 2in(W&LR No 1179)..

At they filled with danish butter cookies?

Nice to see this shared with the public. Like Heuston North it’s an excellent piece of modelling and tbh it’s hard to tell apart from the real deal!

21 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

So, bottom line, still nothing concrete!

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. 

23 hours ago, Ironroad said:

I fully appreciate the impracticality of modifying your software but that's not what I was suggesting.  In practical terms I'm suggesting that at the point of picking and dispatching orders to the US that the decision as to how to ship them is determined by the value in USD. 

IE Shipments valued between $335 and $800 go via the mail and all others go via courier. 

As to the currency question it has been made very clear to me that all orders with an US delivery address are valued by default in USD by Shopify at the point of placing an order, so that question is already addressed at the point of pick and dispatch.

As to testing this, I'm willing to be the guinea pig. So assuming shipment of  my Park Royal order worth $700 for which you requested payment last week is imminent, please send that order via the mail and let's see how it plays out. 

Thank you Tom

 

 

 

 

 

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. 

1 hour ago, Mol_PMB said:

With regard to intermodal at Foynes, the Irish Rail Freight Plan is at odds with the Shannon Foynes Port Co. (SFPC) strategy (see link below and related thread).

SFPC see Foynes as a bulk commodities port and their strategy to 2041 does not include intermodal provision.

https://sfpc.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/SFPC-MASTERPLAN-Final.pdf

 

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!

On 17/5/2025 at 5:50 AM, Ironroad said:

 

I was drafting the question I've posed as Andrew posted his comment on offering a choice of shipping options and I appreciate the merits of that. However, that choice is going to be determined by a formula so why not simply apply that formula.

The option to pay a flat tariff of $100 on shipments via the mail with a value of $800 or less, coupled with the option of paying a 30% tariff on shipments via couriers seems to make the concept of a 54% tariff irrelevant 

The only circumstance in which  customer might be inclined to accept paying a 54% tariff is on  parcel sent via the mail with a value of $185 or less.  At $185 the 54% tariff is $99.90. But if there is an option to receive that same parcel via a courier the tariff would be 30% or $55.50 and logically the customer would take this option.. (a potential difference in mail versus courier costs may also have a bearing ).

So it comes down to establishing the point where the customer suffers the least pain in deciding whether to ship via the mail service or via a courier and that point is $335, IE at and below this it makes sense to ship via a courier service and above this point up to $800 it makes sense to ship via the mail service.

So yes James, orders need to be in increments under $800 in value which I suspect most are and using this formula, you would pay 30% on any order valued $335 or less, and anything from 30% down to 12.5% on orders between $335 and $800 in value (ironically this provides an incentive for orders on the high end of this scale).

But it is a question for IRM/AS as to whether they can facilitate this.

By the way I think we have to assume at this stage that both US Customs and the US Postal Service have had sufficient opportunity to contemplate how this will all work. Nonetheless considering the daily volume of two million parcels they may be forced into some compromises perhaps with them being more focused on shipments directly from China, we shall see.

 

 

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. 

3 hours ago, James Regan said:

It’s good to see a well considered response given the amount of nonsense that has been peddled on here about tariffs by people claiming to understand them. 

The reference to DDP for example highlights the scenario where Accurascale would be adjusting the price to include tariffs contrary to some statements here, and some retailers are doing that.

The other part of the tariff that is complicated is that while the 30% rate may apply to shipping with DHL, shipping by royal mail/US mail may be subject to a 54% rate or a $100 flat fee for orders under $800 giving the opportunity for some arbitrage. It is unclear exactly how that would work but potentially an order of two locomotives for $700 could have an effective tariff rate of around 12-15%. We’ll see how that develops. Im not sure Accurascale provide the option to ship by mail but Rails certainly do. Thats one option.

While you may think pricing based on market is unfair to other markets it’s fairly common in business because the main driver is your competitiveness in a particular market. While the US market may not be particularly important to Accurascale’s businesss, these tariffs put your prices significantly above competitors and are likely to impact any sales you do have.  

I’m not suggesting you eat all the tariff but other companies have shown regard for their customers in dealing with this together. It’s something you may want to consider. While many of your models sell out and the issue is moot, you ended up giving major discounts on certain models like the beet wagons where the market is more limited. You could easily do that up front and generate goodwill at little cost. 

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

13 minutes ago, DJ Dangerous said:

I don’t think that DDP (Delivery Duty Paid) could really be considered a price adjustment by the seller.

DDP means that the tax / duty / tariff is collected by the seller, and paid to your government on your behalf.

The item price stays the same, the tax stays the same, what the customer pays in total stays the same, it’s just paid in a different way.

 

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.

1 hour ago, Horsetan said:

Hell will freeze over first

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. 

1 hour ago, DJ Dangerous said:

Absolute shit ton of Irish outline on the Rails website yesterday - probably the biggest Irish outline selection I’ve ever seen available!

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. 

15 hours ago, Mayner said:

Watching paint dry!

This Financial Times piece should put the cat among the pigeons, recent USA-UK trade "Deal" and its potentially repercussions for the British model train importers and distributors

https://www.ft.com/content/52f7be1c-e708-4b01-b486-7f189a52c842

"China has criticised a trade deal between the UK and US that could be used to squeeze Chinese products out of British supply chains, complicating London’s efforts to rebuild relations with Beijing". FT

Perhaps Accurascale consider on-shoring IRM sales and distribution to Ireland unless United States forces the EU into a similar "deal" 

Perhaps an opportunity for British  modeler to "get back to basics" resume modelling and support the local industry by scratch and kit building

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

18 hours ago, DJ Dangerous said:

The 301’s, I like the ring of that!

241s surely? 

7 minutes ago, James Regan said:

Indeed… meantime your Chinese friends are building warships and nuclear missiles…whatever for? We’ll see what ‘sensible’ leaders in Europe do then? 
https://www.cfr.org/blog/six-takeaways-pentagons-report-chinas-military

Change is coming…

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.. 

16 hours ago, DJ Dangerous said:

So six running numbers in total?

What sort of era would they have vanished?

From an RTR perspective, what would have handled them?

NCC Jinty?

Or a Mogul?

Everybody loves a @MOGUL!

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 

15 minutes ago, Fowler4f said:

How many would run in a train, did they have a brake van attached or as they were vac braked just run with tail lamps ? TIA.

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

39 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

Sorry, me again, another question. Do you have a list of the wagon numbers for each set? Looking at the photos on the website the same photos are used to illustrate all 3 packs of each livery.

• The orange ones pictured are 25172 (tank 172), 25104 (tank 55, the correct number offset for the early period before the tanks were renumbered to match the wagons) and 25156 (tank 156).
• The ivory ones pictured are 25122 (tank 122), 25106 (tank 106) and 25115 (tank 115).

Which set has these numbers and what other options have we got?

 

Many thanks,

Paul

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

On 6/4/2025 at 11:52 PM, Mayner said:

Its was a bitumen tank car, probably not of Irish or British origin. Possibly imported by an Irish bitumen imported/distributor.

The coupler pocked on the end of the chassis looks the wagon had some form of Centre buffer coupler draw gear similar in principal to that used in the States and elsewhere. Possibly from some Eastern European narrow gauge system that operated into the 90s

The tank is a lot shorter and the tank ends (cladding) quite different in appearance to the small number of Bitumen Tank wagons imported by ESSO in the late 60s. The Bitumen Tank wagons were basically to the same general design as the Heljan model, but with insulated tanks clad in aluminium,

https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/essobitumenrebuilt

C

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

3 hours ago, Arran said:

HI All

 

Right enough ? 

I will get onto some one i know here as thats an add on to the Trans spider tank we have .

 

I will get a costing on doing 100 of them like that .

 

Regards Arran

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

2 hours ago, Arran said:

• Well come up with the Info for a tank as i dont have it .

Balls back in t=your court chaps!!!

 

Regards Arran

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

21 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

Selling like hot cakes toasties!

I'm pleased there are some of the grain hoppers left over. You didn't happen to find any more of the black oil tanks, did you?

Afraid not, those sold out long ago..

Although @Gabhal Luimnighwas selling a pack a few weeks back, not sure if he still has it

12 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

Some IRM wagons have now reappeared in the AS warehouse, including:

• H vans
• Grain vans
• 4-wheel flat wagons
• Esso oil tanks

Get them while they last.

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