Sean

i mean wrong colour to be from belmond why are they yellow in the first place?

Any chance its a belmond bogie? wrong colour for that

Messing around with the half wagon concept when I should be engineering the traverser.....

Very much a spontaneous build that went from reading an Ian Holmes idea that really inspired the build to planning in railmodeller and cutting timber all in the space of a few hours....... I guess insomnia can be a good thing some times North Wall from above, still to be completed are a traverser exit left and a cassette exit right. the lighting sucks on my other layouts, to the point of annoyance unless I am in the train room at really specific times of the day with good sunlight, so for this I wanted to play around with the "staging" idea that is quite common with micros and have hung a bright LED at the top of the piece. not too obvious straight away but there is a 5/3/3 inglenook incorporated into the track plan. and a run around! exit left to traverser. This will be disguised by a road bridge overlooking the yard and is a regular vantage point for trainspotters on the prototype. exit to Alexdandra road(cassette) The idea here is that I want to model the spur with the tanker as disused in order to obscure the view of anything coming and going from the tramway. I want to have a mess around with cutting a tanker in half and mating it onto the backscene to give the idea that this is a longer siding of parked up wagons.

to answer my own question; DHL is the only option offered to ireland from hattons now

Apparently these issues are solved now, anyone tried yet?

why isnt this post about a dutch VAN?

as would be expected after a few weeks of neglect trains were not running well around the loop and derailments were common, as theres an n gauge layout blocking my view this was making me very paranoid of a catastrophic derailment into the window sill! so out came the n layout and today was spent reworking all of the background trackwork and getting it permenantly pinned down so trains are running beautifully now. Fingers crossed. the first radius siding has been given an exit route back into the loop so now i have a very nicely sized passing siding allowing me to keep 2 trains in service on the loop as i see fit. (Automation anyone?) VID_20230412011151.mp4 Enevitable this was gonna happen after talking fondly about it the aesthethic isnt 100% there for me for this despite them being awfully similar, and besides i really cannot justify the financial turmoil of starting to build up yet another rake.... LOL, on the other hand im HIGHLY tempted to grab a few of the last ballasts to pad this rake out fully VID_20230412011029.mp4 hmmmmmmmmmm

Still pondering it but ive a feeling we may see an RTR one sooner rather than later.

Any Carpets, Boss?

VID_20230409025924.mp4 This was my pet project for a couple of weeks before I decided to build this random extra module. Veteran 143 is in dummy hooked up to a newly delivered 129 to handle the mainline work. Both units are fitted with sound and a nice enough mix was achieved between the two locos. The volume is also set quite low in these units as my layout is set in a very small room and not alot of volume is needed particularly when I might have another loco running in the shunting yard that I would like to keep out of earshot until I actually go over to that yard. To complete this project ill need a dutch van with room for a speaker inside so we can have some generator sounds buzzing away as the train runs. Another advantage to keeping the volume this low is that the coach noise can still be heard and these all combined create a nice little ambience that I can assume is at a somewhat "scale" volume if I consider the click clack made by wagons to be a constraint of the overall mix. Anyway . Two very quick observations. I need to somehow get a taller backscene. I must start shooting things on the GoPro, as the microphone and camera sensors far outdo the quality of the potato phone that I usually shooot on.

my only regret is not buying a few packs of gypsums when they were still around as i love pulling a rake of these with a supertrain 121 going bonnet forward. very unprototypical but looks like somthing youd see on a small private railroad in america at a quarry or somthing.

I couldn't do the last of the ballasting without first doing the hill. Now that that's all done I've just completed the last bit of scattering to the left of the tracks and with that the module is basically done! I've still got to resurface the roads and I'll later add trees but officially I can now end construction and clean the rails in anticipation of some running over the weekend

hey ireland looks like that usually once a year

I wouldnt mind grabbing one. will they be stocked @BosKonay?

works for these guys , or they could glue one onto a dmu and preserve the whole lot as if it were headed for the emu depot that is not electrified.......

Ballasting in progress!

ive actually seen a few videos of some USA RR with that same livery of grey with yellow railings all over, found it very surprising but cool.

Just to clear up on a few points here, ive bought a heap of sound decoders lately from all of the irish manufacturers. All LS5 chips function the exact same, there is no difference bar the loaded software telling the chip how to function. I got 3x 121 chips, a 645 and a pair of 567's, all from different retailers I am very pleased with the the 645 and one of the 567's as they contain the high quality prime mover files and come with a very comprehensive function map and accompanying pdf to guide the user through things. all of the full throttle features are there and are enabled and seem to be implemented quite well. the braking suite is also there the second 567 that i got turned out to be a bit "meh" but it was the first one that i purchased so i probabaly missed the returns window on this one. this one has the non high fidelity prime mover sounds and the functions do not at all match up with the supplied pdf to the point that i suspect i might have been sent the wrong chip (although its definitely a 567 mover with irish sound effects). full throttle does not work on this one, I had no drive hold, idle or run8, unsure about braking as the function map is messed up. after probing the function map in JMRI I have been able to access drive hold and the braking features no problem however I cannot get to the idle and run8 functions without the use of a lokprogrammer as they seem to be tied intrinsically to sound slots in the project that i cannot access or may not be present. in fairness this works well now but i am not totally satisfied and will aim to have it reblown with a better sound file at some stage. Ive also gotten 2 A class chips and its my understanding that these sound projects were developed in house by a company sound engineer to suit the actual duel speaker set up that is shipped with the loco. These sound files are second to none and are well programmed with all of the full throttle features and a few that are unique to the loco already set up and good to go out of the box, these chips really do work great and seem to have captured the unique sound of an EMD motor blowing out through metrovick exhausts fairly well. as much as people dislike paying a little extra for pre flashed chips, its kinda hard to justify not recommending them considering the amount of work it would take to come close to this type of project by yourself.

its a 1/32 jobbie but i want to convert it into one of those reach stackers from the era

been a bit busy so i havent flooded the forum with my usual sleuth of updates but things have been moving along. I really enjoy making up micro modules in small amounts of time and then taking a break before moving onto the next one so the way the room is setup is playing well into that idea. made up this bridge using bits off the old layout, not really conforming to any prototype its just a bridge for now. That escalated quickly. nice aul mountainy stretch to throw a few models cars onto the road when all is done. just finished some ballasting and mud scattering in order to test the waters with this type of ballast, its a lot more forgiving than using n scale ballast and since this is technically a different part of the network, i decided ah sher lets use a fresher looking ballast than old tired looking stuff on here. Grass mat is a bit stained from the pva and water mix but i had always anticipated i would be covering most of it with scatter again anyway so it should be grand later on. This yoke started off as the dapol bungalow kit, but it never fit where i wanted it so after about 3 failed kitbashes i was left with this little shack. a crossing keepers shack. this weekend should focus on the somewhat boring but still oddly satisfying building of a field the right hand side is still mostly a blank canvas so the field will somewhat make things feel a little bit more complete before i spend ages painting and scattering the hillside.

no login since 2020; hes gooooone.

nicely done, how are you picking up power from the rails?