Sean

I'm looking to purchase a couple of loksound FX's for experimentation purposes, can anybody tell me a good retailer for this at the moment? eu preferable or pre paid customs if UK. I also do not have any kind of programmer at the moment, so ideally i would like to find a retailer who will program the chip before sending it out to me with one of the free projects. not asking for much am I? anyone able to point me in the right direction on this. Sean

when i was younger I always thought the EGV/Attatched to most trains was simply a luggage van and never gave too much heed to the idea that it might be doing a bit more than that. Typically this seems to have been a diesel generator and a steam boiler but to get a bit more specific, just what was fitted to these vans? Particularly the dutch rebuilt vans and mk2 EGV's I am interested in but lets open the discussion to a more broader one to emcompass all the irish power and heat vans which may be often overlooked until last when building a collection but are often essential for a prototypical rake. is there any information on the make and model of the type of generators that could have been fitted? i note that downpatricks site lists FG wilson generators as the source of power in their mk2 coaches,, however i cannot find much comparable information on whats in the southern stock of a similar vintage. Sean

Simple but interesting question today for the group. I see according to wikipedia we had the 567 and the 465 in service at the same time across the baby GM classes and as we all know double heading members of these classes was also a very common sight here in Ireland. my big question is simply, did matching the engine types matter at all or would it have been a common occurrence to hear the 567 and 645 running in consist on these trains?

have just been mostly testing things this week and getting the tracks cleaned up as well as learning the ins and outs of CV's but after a brief hiatus i did get some more building done that will shape the rest of the layout and the room. no videos yet as im still getting to grips with all the fun sound features like drive hold and making the notching sound more realistic. After a decent bit of consideration, Particularly the fact that i am still getting to grips with the concepts of compromise, extrapolation and minimalise in relation to model railways coupled with the idea that I would like the trains from the inglenook to have a destination to go to/from and that I kinda need somewhere to run passenger stock to/from with all the nice upcoming releases. This final board might just suit my needs perfectly until I have the confidence to expand it into a large running loop that goes around the whole room( thats a WHILE away though just a pipe dream for now) somehow against the odds i have managed to fit in a small passing siding on the main loop without breaking geometry, its usefulness is a little limited though however and might be better suited to a tight siding on the first radius that i could squeeze a rake of coaches around, time will tell on that one as i have now officially used up all of my track except for a pile of hornby points that will be put nowhere near this layout one thing i actually didnt want to compromise on however was the size of the running loop as overall this would limit the possibilitys of what can and cannot be done. so another country terminus was actually perfect. its also a coy place to station yet another pilot engine. and so the result is that i have actually gone back to the old westport track plan and rebuilt it over this side of the room as it offers several advantages, once a train has loaded up at the inglenook it can be driven here and a few cars can be switched in and out and the train can be sent back to the yard and shunted again in order to reset the game and one can repeat this as many times as they would like in a given running session. since this is the original quayside station again and no run around is available, 121's must run bonnet forward here to and from the quays in order to ensure the layout keeps operating smoothly. the main running loop shall be considered single track mainline and bonnet forward is not allowed during continuous running. the loop itself can accomodate 6 mk2's and a dutch van which would be a prototypical rake, however the only downside is that on my main running loop such a train gets to look as if it is chasing its tail (lol) hence the future plans to expand, I will mostly run prototypical half rakes unless there is a special event running which requires the use of a full rake.. looks a bit awkward with the computer but its actually okay, Im considering running a blue curtain along the back of this board in order to act as a backscene that i can open and close as is needed. One conclusion i have reached during this process is that at this scale I really am into the idea of building super detailed micro layouts rather than vast continuous runs of track, mostly for space/practicality and financial reasons. it can be very difficult to get even the most modest of running loops up and running in oo gauge, the idea of basing a larger layout around smaller modules also really works well for me and my average attention span. To that effect I am considering jacking up the n gauge layout approximately 6 inches so i can put a solid backscene along the front of the running loop and could model another scene along here. it would be a great place to squeeze in a micro "bog road" type layout that would overall actually only be a few feet long.

Its deadly, from the side with the billboard and the 071 picture angle due to the left turn and embankments its a real reminder of the arklow bridge. the shots where you are standing street level looking straight under the bridge is 100% esmonde street with the small few shops just to be seen underneath the bridge. I showed these photos to my parents a few months ago when you were at an earlier stage and they were able to tell me the location without any prompts, they are not railway people.

Ive been watching these for a little while and the euvirail review perfectly sums up how i feel about the current state of DCC sound. the only downside is that from what i have seen so far there does not seem to be any USA diesel sounds available so were very limited to what irish trains it will suit. another option ive been looking at for a while; https://soundtraxx.com/products/econami-digital-sound-decoders/eco-21pnem/ These should work out a lot cheaper but by the time you add in shipping and customs you are almost at the price of a loksound anyway so they are hard to justify. Hopefully it is a good thing in the long run but being a hornby DCC product who knows

Have you also used the arklow road bridge for inspiration? the one you go over before esmonde street if on a train going into gorey. as someone who passes under these bridges every day i really do think you have captured the essence of both of them excellently depending on what photo I am looking at.

certainly wouldn't be bad to upgrade such an order to DHL for ones own peace of mind. not worth it on small stuff but thats an exception id make

John this is exactly what happened with my two packages its a joke really... one of them took two weeks to get back to hattons and the other one only got back today! a full month in postal limbo, hattons are actually very decent about it, made my latest order via germany to avoid these headaches as the DHL fee isnt worth it for a single item for me. the packages did a LOT of sitting around doing nothing over that month before it got back to them as well.

what type of decoder are you using? it only works with esu decoders as far as i know.

that would imply that there are two of them...

Over the past month or so I have managed to get my hands on two different 567 loksounds for my 121 fleet. both were new and sealed in the little plastic shell that they come in. The first one came from an Irish retailer and i assume may have been a more recent batch. its definitely a 567, Has the irish horn and station sounds as youd expect, no real complaints with this except the functions do not at all match up to the function list supplied on the MM technical area of the site and idle and run 8 seem to be disabled, although manual notching works good once i worked out where the buttons for it were. The second one arrived this week from IRM so assumedly its older stock. once again its a 567 and all the relevant irish sounds are there except for this time the function list actually corresponds to the MM technical document. Interestingly enough the prime movers loaded onto these chips have a considerably different sound. the first one has a longer engine starting and shutdown sequence but i had always found the aux sounds such as compressor, air breaks and break squeal all to be just too loud and had planned to go in with the programmer to turn them down. The second one has a much shorter startup and shutdown sound and overall the audio mix seems to be a lot more balanced with a completely different and less annoying brake squeal. the prime mover also sounds like the microphone was placed differently and i am hearing a lot more of the throatiness and spit of the exhausts whilst the first chip seems to have more of a geartrain sound and the kinda whine i remembered from my childhood. the only physical difference between the 2 chips is the code printed on the sticker although im not sure if this actually signifies anything. does it? Anybody know what might be going on here? would the supplied sound project have been updated by the manufacturer at any point? despite being weird to me there doesn't seem to be anything actually wrong with anything and as a sound engineer this difference in sounds is quite useful to me. Whilst both are unmistakably 567 prime movers, the timbre of each locomotive is considerably different, and in a consist I am not hearing any degradation in sound from destructive phasing, infact as both speakers are recreating a different part of the prime mover they are summing together to provide a much better double heading sound than i had expected. It is very interesting to me.

Check the tracking on royal mail; mine showed up like this whilst on the royal mail site it shows them up as having being refused by customs. and returned the anpost tracking seems to stick up a generic message like this every time the item gets scanned within the country that doesnt actually tell the customer what is going on at all. one of the packages i was sent on feb 7th is now showing up as the item is no longer with anpost whilst on the royal mail tracking it shows "your item is now leaving the uk." despite it being back within the uk postal system somewhere. hattons recieved back my other package and refunded that one, this one has been in limbo since feb 16th but the tracking pattern was the exact same so it should be back with them soon..... at the same time i reordered on dhl and had the stuff within 48 hours which kinda made the outrageous price(for me at least) a little bit worth it. all customs bullshit was taken care of before the item even landed in Ireland and it was out for delivery on the next van after it landed.

I reckon the best course of action would be to buy up a few black ones and stash away the orange ones whilst you still can, youll miss them once theyve gone

+ as we roll into the 90's In an alternate timeline the rail spur has miraculously survived, mainly due to the primary school having being refused planning permission on the proposed site of the old station. With this IR seen opportunities to create a small barrack street style spur on the old station site and the railway survives for a few local businesses who visit the inglenook yard when they wish to convey goods over longer distances.This in particular includes many of the local publicans who still receive their kegs via rail..... the old station still had to be demolished to make way for this yard and thats where the inglenook sits now. the two warehouses in the background are now apartments. the mill has long closed off and has been fenced away to rot. a few customers particularly near to the quay are lucky enough to be able to take deliveries from the quay directly. only served by the sundries store. Typical deliveries to the quay will be a cage of kegs and a sundry container to be manually unloaded however occasionally these deliveries will be bound for a boat which will take them off to some of the local islands. Atmospheric shot, kega are the only suitable load i have at the moment for here but ill change that soon enough. modded the silo a bit to look more prototypical, not in a rush to finish it off really as i dont posess the skill to finish it to a standard that i would like just yet. All in good time. Harbour wall was a kit, meaning i had to cover up my nice waterwork, will be worth it to redo it in the longer term Back at the yard everything seems to be functioning well, I was however quite annoyed at having to mount one of the point motors on the top of the baseboard. That being said, I did a pretty good job at hiding it within a pair of containers. and i was able to work out how to handle the other three that ive got for the hard to reach points on the running loop. So thats it for now, as things are up and running im sure you can expect some running videos soon enough, and an update of what to expect from the mystery board, as plans always change in that regard!

Hattons fully digital point motor with CDU for £9 https://www.hattons.co.uk/554873/hattons_originals_hat_pm_01d_digital_solenoid_point_motor/stockdetail about the same price of a solenoid and switch normally. Also works on DC control and has terminals for LED connections

One thing immediately became clear to me upon returning to the train room was that I was never totally happy with the station plan and that if i wanted to motivate myself to finish the layout then certain parameters would have to change. the track plan had always been a bit of a compromise to use up old track and i knew well from the outset that it would never really be able to run modern rolling stock without sucking all of the fun out of things, hence setting the layout in an earlier time period. Not a problem except my collection of modern rolling stock grows whilst my collection of older trains slowly dwindles and this layout takes up a rather large portion of my room. so i would prefer compatibility with as much stock as possible. and so the P42 inglenook was born! whilst not based on any prototypical place the intention is to create a small rail yard based in the IR era which conforms to the rules of the inglenook shunting game. the bottom road is a through road to the running table putting all of the sidings on a back shunt. and off to the left the road heads down to the quay(which is still westport quay btw), whilst slightly awkward looking, this ensures that a pilot will always be assigned to the yard to build up outgoing trains and connect them to a road engine for pulling away. it will not be permitted to push any trains on or off of the running table, they must be hauled engine first, compounding the necessity for a pilot to be always stationed at this yard. for ease of build, reduced footprint and overall realism the 3-2-2 variant was chosen and 2 specific industries will serve the yard which will be based on a rural setting to serve short liner trains which were prototypical of the IR era. Industries were chosen based upon owned wagons and with short containers and beer in mind it actually became quite easy to come up with 5 unique wagons where a lot of the completed trains would actually look somewhat prototypical. 2 unique container loads 1 guinness loaded 1 guinness unloaded 1 bare flat which could belong to either industry, with the bare flat i thought the chances of getting a prototypical train load increase dramatically, the exceptional few cases where you might have a container on either end and a guinness in the middle or somthing are probabaly few and far between so its a happy medium for me for the moment. for the most part i will be seeing 3 car trains with the 2 industries properly coupled out with the odd train being an unprototypical mix. I can always reshuffle if i want a totally realistic train. So where is this going? its small so i can model it out quickly and focus on actually finishing it, along with the other modules which are not looking all that bad at the moment either. then i can start to focus on some actual proper detailing and maybe even a little weathering, this one is gonna stick around for a while now so I will continue to refine things on it and improve my skillset. because its essentially a small single loco layout I have finally been able to justify a single loksound because its just for this layout and not the whole fleet! (famous last words im sure because i really like the sound features now .) Finally, since its a shunting game, I want totally hands free running,I have invested in some uncouplling ramps and DCC point motors which will be added tonight, points are also the larger type. after that its definitely time to stop building and start playing trains for a while. it would be nice to restrict the speed of the shunting train so that i could give other people a go of the game without worrying about them crashing the trains or breaking any stock. Sadle with the ceiling height a backscene will not be possibile, but at the same time, with such ceiling proximity it probabaly isn't needed either. Next we are heading down to the quay for a look at recent developments. update might come tonight or i may postpone until the morning as that will allow me to take nicer photographs.

So rather predictably the next day that ballasting job turned out to be an absolute shit show although at this stage it didnt really matter as i had discovered the table was wide enough to take an oval of track! and along with that there is now space for an old forgotten layout to come out once again This will be the "train set" area of the room, for when i just want to chill and watch trains. more time had to be spent working out how to make a reliable link between boards, So now it IS merely just a bit of wood to bridge the 2 layouts and whilst it doesnt look pretty trains are running over it reliably, so it works and it is what it is until im motivated to build and model something a little prettier. with this I had been left with an open space behind the new branchline and after some consideration i thought it would be a good place to erect another board and start on a little PWD siding area. I had wanted a run around here, but at this stage i was rapidly running out of usable space, and track! this is why the spoil siding is curved at the end. 192 has been sent from dublin for PWD duties to be stationed here. Finally the rail spur to the new layout was started, nothing on this new board yet except for the trackwork, and since its a seperate project I will give it its own thread in due course Now with the boring stuff outta the way, future updates can focus on all that has gone on at westport quay and surrounding areas in recent times.

point motors; also hattons , and they still havent replied to my last email about the first one being returned. time to email again

with most of these brands its the exact same product but in a different can. and that includes the dealz/poundland stuff thats 1.49 a can, the dealz stuff however comes in an underfilled can with a terrible spray nozzle that clogs itself up for the fun of it. Rumor has it that if you take a spray nozzle from one of these more expensive cans and put it onto the dealz can then the quality achieved from the dealz jobbie is increased significantly.

had planned to make a bigger update but with the ongoing postal debacle I have been working on other aspects of the train room. a new fourth module has been born! and a little spontaneous modelling to boot. Initially just a lump of wood to connect to other layouts, the usual old problem has reared its head of millimeter differences in the different baseboards causing uneven areas in the trackbed that would eventually lead to derailments all round if the trackwork was simply pinned down to the uneven surfaces (Which i have learned the hard way in the past!) So a different approach has been attempted here and i think it is going to work out quite decently once the glue has dried. I have ballasted the track as if it were a real trackbed with a larger pile than usual and this has created the slight little gradient that the track is following and will take up any slack that would have otherwise been present on this board and the trains will be rolling over solid even trackage. I will probabaly end up doing some scenery on this additonal board now after i have taken the time to do this ballasting experiment but time will tell on that front. its not really a module as such as a means to bridge two locations together the little "street" with the mini running down it happened by accident however it is now staying as i think it would look quite well once the bridge has some railings and i put down tarmac underlays etc. after this bridge is where I will be connecting into the next baseboard, however this one does not actually exist yet as the layout in question is still only a figment of my imagination. but what about the third module i hear you ask? back to that soon . threw together a little fiddle yard then to make sure the new trackwork actually does all work properly, so far it seems solid but i havent ran a powered train over it yet. This fiddle yard will be replaced with another layout as soon as i commission the base board. also scored this table for free today which will eventually have an oval of track set up on it which will also be connected into both micro layouts. (all sounds very convoluted but im getting there now) and finally some new kids on the block, I figured that these PFA's will suit me fine as a 20 footer flat stand-in until IRM decide to produce one, Usually high level of IRM quality with these babies too however and a very impressive weight for such a bare chassis! definitely a huge upgrade from the home cut up plastic hornby chassis of yesteryear and i think they look quite smart behind a 121 with these CIE containers onboard. Sean

RIP Stripped for parts. Bigger and better coming soon

This item was unable to be exported due to one of the following reasons: Prohibited item Insufficient, incomplete or incorrect documentation It will now be returned to the sender. Please contact the sender for queries. no doubt it will be some bullshit relating to the cn22 considering it only had a few gaugemaster plastic kits inside and IRM bufferstops, one saving grace is that im after a few more point motors so hopefully hattons let me add to it before its sent back out, still super frustrating though as my patience usually has me waiting at the letterbox for days even before the thing is due to arrive. theres another package with point motors and uncoupling ramps coming through the same channels, so will be interesting to see if this one gets through safely, im expecting that it should and that this is a one off mishap. edit: according to anpost tracking the item was sorted at 11:07 with no mention at all of the cancelled export or customs which apparently happened nearly half an hour after this scan. the mind boggles, hopefully its an error and i actually see it this side of the weekend......

Impressed I am NOT. hattons too.

was getting a little worried reading this thread as i have stuff in transit. Feeling a lot better now, order was placed friday,