Sean

how about permenant way duties during this period? would this kind of configuration of pwd have been seen during my era? it would be possible to make up some barytes quite easily from the spoil boxes..... mixed liner, would love to get my hands on a few guinness kegs to use as a load for this. i reckon pallet cement and beets will be the traffic to serve the layout in question!

would you believe that is exactly what i had planned in an earlier drawing, the approach line was a bit shorter and the level crossing and road on the very right hand side of the layout. the bottom siding was going to run off the baseboard and onto another small little modular scene that i could change as i seen fit and served with a diesel shunter. sort of abandoned this idea due to space constraints as i have also sort of turned into a fish tank hoarder over the past year and thats a dangerous game within itself! the current plan allows the user to operate with or without the fiddle yard as space allows. got to love irm sunday delivery. now i can start planning siding clearences. can anybody tell me how much space i need to fit the rawie buffer stops?

So after another year im coming back to this, emails from IRM about the A class running out had got me thinking about the 00 layout again, and ive been messing around with the layout a good bit i railmodeller, finally this week i caved and bought one of the last 007's from the site, then i caved even further and bought the last spoil pack listed, hopefully i can afford another one from marks next week. combined with some tanker wagon kits and some home made 20 foot flats and cie containers that i already own along with MM130. the spoils will be converted into flats for liner traffic and the oil tankers will bring fuel once a week. there will be one other freight working which has yet to be determined. I am thinking timber or beet or bagged cement. (or a bit of everything as cash allows) liners will stay short but prototypical to smaller lines. a push pull set of coaches and a set of cravens will be available for passenger traffic. these form the basis for a solid set of rolling stock which suits the period just fine, early to mid 90's with the odd appearance from a brand new 201 and the odd heritage special organised by one of the preservation groups. the headshunt is long enough to accomodate 201. onto the track plan, i have coloured in the different elements for easier reference. i am basing the layout on a terminus in a yet to be decided location in the IR points era. the train enters by a fiddle yard on the left side and the view will be obstructed by some large building placed within the red area. the track crosses the road leading up to the station in blue and stops at the station, passenger traffic either runs round the train and exits, or simply push pull exits the layout. 130 hauling cravens must use turntable. I am hoping to motorise the dapol turntable for this project but thats neither here nor there at present i have a solid idea in the pipeline for that. the rectangles in the top right corner represent a fuelling point for the locos and the green box represents an old disused goods platform, inspiration for this taken from the old westport quay goods platform. the middle siding does not see much use since the end of loose coupled goods and will be suitably weathered, but it is occassionally used for overnight storage during busier periods. the bottom gray rectangle will be the freight yard and the track will be buried in the standing to give vehicles access to both sidings, have always loved this look so finally need to try that out. originally there was a gantry crane but i have removed this in favour of the large forklift type vehicles. this also allows me to model a number of different industries as time and money allows as the yard will not be defined to have one single purpose. to use the middle yard or siding the loco must first run around and then propel its rake into the destination siding. finally the small siding down by the turntable is simply a small loco spur to be used when a loco has to stand for some reason but it will give the operator scope to work 2 locomotives on the layout during a session. would it be better to move the fuelling area down to here also or is it better left situated where i have it now? perhaps i could plop an old engine shed here. Ive already got a nice baseboard for this, but i need to make space for it, so im going to take the oppertunity to upgrade it a bit and add a backscene and sides before i get started properly, should get a test track down pretty soon though as 007 is in the post! would love to know what people think of this idea as a whole? i want the actual operations on the layout to be as realistic as possible but there will definitely be some artistic license to running some non period stock also. Thanks Sean

would that be fert on flats on pallets or ferts loaded into the actual fert wagons? im getting some cool ideas now, gonna update my layout thread later tonight with some new designs as they fit these operating parameters well.

guys this info is all super invaluable and answers most of my questions in one go @seagoebox - those pics capture the essence of what i was hoping to could do just perfectly. I had struggled particularly to find images of containers being unloaded/loaded.... looks like i even have enough space to run a prototypical train.... what else was put onto 42 foot flats, were the pallets of fertiliser on those, or pulled in tow in the fert wagons? and finally what is actually meant by the term liner to a an uneducated lay person such as myself? if anybody can point me towards any particularly interesting videos of mixed liner trains that would be great. have seen a couple of interesting ones so far. for passenger action i think im sorted:

hey guys just planning a baseboard and when trying to decide what rolling stock to run i want to establish some sort of an era and model industries related to the stock im running. have a 121 with IR points livery, a supertrain with IR points A class on the way and also a 201 in early IE livery. This sets my era to the late 80's or early to mid 90's just as the 201 is being introduced.( i might make the time period a little ambiguous to allow running of both logos,were they ever in service together?) What freight workings were operational during this period? i have some 42 flats on the way and some containers, and some oil tanker kits to finish off. not really sure what else would have been running around these periods except for sugar beet. were the corrugated open wagons still in use at this point or was it exclusively moved to the tall beet wagons? were mixed rakes a thing anymore by this point or had it all gone to rakes of the same wagon? thanks in advance for any help. Sean

this and the flimsy handrails are my 2 biggest gripes with the 121, obviously both are as so for the above mentioned reason so its hard to complain.

with power restored on the line it was finally time to trial the up until now not run mk3 set. WhatsApp Video 2021-08-04 at 18.07.51.mp4 i reckon this is the next scene im gonna work at to get me settled back into things. WhatsApp Video 2021-08-04 at 18.07.52.mp4 mk3 set passes at speed as the dart awaits futher orders in the siding.

So nothing much has happened for the last few months as the layout had to take a back seat in order for me to get the thesis written, im definitely not scrapping this one, i like it too much last thing i got done was fitting isolating fishplates for my sectional running but i never got around to rewiring things so thats the next job on the cards, getting things operational again. for now though, heres some food for thought.

oof thats no good for a cheapskate like me!

Give me a week or 2 and im planning to order a 201. 141 and C class in n guage, fingers crossed they arent too crude. just been put off by the postage price so far.

thanks mike. this is one of the threads i read through before finally taking the plunge on n. have you got any experience with the shapeways kits? i want to try and get them working on a kato chassis.

Been a nice productive weekend here on the line. im falling in love with n guage and the speed at which projects can progress and what can be gotten into the space. mk3's landed so i could finally size up the passenger platform. was pretty happy to get the final thing built to that curve on the first go. the platform can accomodate a 141 and a train of 3 mk3's with the loco or generator car coming to a stop in the tunnel. next, i decided i was gonna pick a section of track to start to build up a nice lineside scene and thought the trackside banks around the forest would be a perfect starting point. but first i said i would try a spot of ballasting, and well considering how well it was looking i kept on going until i had used up the entire bag, ittl need touching up here and there where a few bits of scatter has landed down on it or it did not stick completley. but to say ive never ballasted before im pretty chuffed. railheads will need a clean befoer i try a loco but stock is going over it nicely. the oval has also now been seperated into seperate sections using plastic fishplates for independant loco control on dc so these sections will need to be wired next. rocky area with last white section of hill to be completled, then i will be able to finish the forest floor and built that up. forest end is shaping up really nicely. I havent started on the actual forest yet as i only got around to filling the last hills etc today. its nice being finally able to take pictures that arent a sea of white polystyrene landforms. ex BR stock on tow to the inchicore paint shop after a recent aquisition.

thats exactly it dave, and this is really inspiring me to construct a larger n layout after seeing that i can run decently long trains even on this small layout. the mk3's arrived today so i can finally start on the full lenght station platform

so with the micro shelved, and the TMD moving slowly, I was still without a place to run trains, particularly somewhere with a continuous run that i could just sit back to watch trains going around. until i started playing with an old farish class 08 set ive had for the last few years and looking at n gauge layouts on youtube i quickly fell in love with the idea of building a small layout in N as practically i do not have the space to create a decent sized oo layout. and my scatter brain approach tends to find it hard to actually comitting to a plan for a large scale layout this has become much more manageable and fun. Its only a simple oval with a single track station and a yard/siding on the other side, and im using this build to really focus on improving my scenic work and actually finish a project so that is ideal for what I am doing, there are a couple of isolated "dead" points in the trackwork which can be controlled via the controller in order to allow one train to stand whilst the other runs to the station freeing up the siding for them to swap over. there will be no backscene, as i intend to operate the layout from different "scenes" which will change depending on what side of the base board the user decides to sit at. There will be some efforts made to visually obscure the scenes which the user is not sitting at as this way points of interest can change over time. there will be a few unusual features on this layout such as a small coillte forest with 4x4 tracking and a ruined round tower which attracts tourists. I am trying to recreate the feel of what a railway running through the dublin/wicklow mountains may feel like but whilst also incorporating props from some of my other hobbies. the station itself will be based upon kilcoole as it is the only single track station i really know of around me but the line itself completley fictional and without too specific an era. as N presents enough challenges as it is already forest area slowly being fenced off and terrain building up. not a big area but the local 4x4 club hold leasehold for offroading here. out of a tunnel and over the bridge. fully loaded siding as the dart service runs round. this is just a simple yard/ loading dock. IMG_6600.MOV IMG_6602.MOV IMG_6607.MOV few videos capturing the atmosphere of just what im trying to achieve with this layout, im really looking forward to modelling this one to completion. I do particularly like the dart station level crossing scene.

Hey guys so its been a long time since i updated this thread,a lot of the building stuff has fallen by the way side and with such a healthy array of OO rtr stock on the way i do not know if i will be making anything new in OO for a while. that being said I am a few weeks into a new n gauge layout build which was initially intended to be continental. however after seeing the potential of what can be done with Irish n gauge the focus has shifted into building an irish layout with a few suitable items of rolling stock to go along with it. so far I have kept things mostly simple. however i do have shapeways stuff and some farish mk3's to refinish with vinyl on the way which will be interesting. first on the chopping block is the farish 08. as the body of these are die cast, not a while lot can be done except for a respray and the correct decals applied. I have had this as part of a set for a good few years now but it has not seen regular use until lately and it is a little cracker of a unit. happy to plod along at a walking pace. from this same set, the brake van, in need of a suitable respray and a few details changing to make it feel more irish. I do have a soft spot for box vans, and when i seen that peco offer these rtr for around the same price as a dapol OO kit, I had to grab like 7 These come complete with slightly shorter looking couplings which peco say space the vans out properly to scale. they do look really nice in a train. the roofs pop off for easily repainting in grey. however as can be seen here. I have not been able to remove the white LMS lettering without taking off the greay paint so i reckon i will need to simply paint over it, these should look great when i get my hands on suitable transfers. Finally for the moment until the mk3's arrive and I am able to fund shapeways theres this kato 103 emu which im planning to refinish into a 2 car dart set, not entirely sure what era I will be aiming for with this as I have just been having too much damn fun playing with it, at about 60 quid this is a damn good little runner that can again easily move at a snails pace. I am definitely planning on adding at least another one to the collection when i get to building a larger N layout. its got metal wheels all round and makes a seriously impressive little click clack when its going around the layout. Also Theres this, not a train but definitely fits in the spirit of this thread and at 10 euro's from oxford I really am impressed with the level of detail which surpassed expectations on it. It even has a little Irish Reg plate which i assume is based on the real bus, cant really see it to well in this photo however.

it might be worth a try to simply remove the hook from the coach and pull with just the loco hook pulling the coach loop. they tend to just slot in and out on most of my rolling stock. I dont have any mk3's in particular though

watching youtube videos of inchicore and one distinctive building with a 2700 poking its head out stood out to me so ive started a little project to convert my hornby shed into somthing similar. if anybody knows the building im on about and would have more close up pictures of it they would be greatly appreciated. i like this atmos, will look like a nice little yard when it all comes together. short container runs look great too, so these along with a couple of IRM flats and a few bells etc will look great on this. there are also 9 dapol tankers under construction(and 5 vans for the micro ) so there will be no shortage of stock to run on this. want to do up 4 in the alexandra road 40mph livery for fuel transfers on the layout. and other 5 can be generic for runs in and out of the layout. Since train lenghts are fairly limited this gives me excuses to acquire smaller runs of prototypical rolling stock to run on the layout without breaking the bank. PWD stock in particular would look the part in any of the sidings. I have also opted for the turntable so theres a dapol kit on the way should fill the little free space nicely. not a huge amount to report from the oil depot side of the layout cut up a few kitchen roll tubes and an old dapol tank to try and turn into big static tanks at a later time. and finally not really 90s but the little deutz that could So whilst i havent really done much i have fashioned up 3-4 little scenes of interest on a very small layout, so im pleased with that.

so with the arrival of some new murphys diesels over christmas the old micro layout had to be lifted, however, it had become far more than a micro layout and i fully intend to bring it back at a later time using the lessons learned and actually sticking to the spirit of a micro layout. but for now i want to model somthing that my slowly growing stable of irish stock would both run and look at home on. after much consideration a shunting layout was the way to go but i havent fully settled on a layout plan until the last few days and now that i have some track laid i think it will be very fun to operate indeed. as mentioned before, I really just like to sit and watch train runs, but its hard to find the 3-4 foot needed for a continous loop of second radius track, so the layout will be semi modular with the ability to remove the fiddle yard and later add a portable loop of track that can be lifted when the layout is not in use. but for now heres the track plan until i get a hold of a better camera. so essentially trains will enter from a fiddle yard on the bottom right most road, this will be a continous run in a later iteration of the layout however for the moment it will end as a siding at the end of the baseboard. this siding will function as an oil depot with tanker trains running in and out. there is also a level crossing to allow road traffic in and out of this area which will be later built up. left of this siding we have a goods loop and headshunt with an overhead crane for container traffic. the loop is designed for 2 longer items of rolling stock such as a set of coaches or 2 conflats however here it is holding a set of 4 2 foot flats. I will probabaly add a second track running under the crane here but i am unfortunately out of points for the moment. at the other end of the layout will be a 2 road tmd building with some sort of fuelling stand. this tmd will require regular deliverys of fuel from the depot at the other end of the layout. beside this depot are 2 sidings which serve both the tmd and the container yard, and therefore could be occupied by anything from coaches and locos awaiting work, to container rakes to permenant way sets. and as previously mentioned fuel deliveries. As 130 will operate the layout regularly i may opt to install a turntable in the rounded area of the track plan. the other open part of the layout will be modelled as a general industrial area 4 20 footers sit in the goods loop mm130 looks right at home amongst her stable of home made friends. a second lane can be added to the engine shed later 203 shunting a single container.as the crane line is also used as the layouts headshunt it must be kept clear at all times. this is why containers can be kept at the tmd sidings.i must also finish the crane. as always feedback is appreciated and im looking forward to putting a bit of work into this one as im quite fond of how the operating scheme will work out for me. I feel for a small area it surely packs a lot of operating potential.

This thread has opened a Pandora's box in my mind David.

video-1599341659.mp4 thats a grand looking wagon and the couplings seem almost better than the hornby ones, in any case i can tilt them slightly to suit my curves but they mix grand with hornby ones without any modding for the curves. Since switching from the hornby to a non pwm bacmann train controller, i must say the g class has improved 100% in its slow running and is going to be used a lot more often due to this now. still havent been motivated to start the2600 power car but its one of the last bits of stock for a while...... finished off the conflats when all that is said and done im gonna focus on weathering a little, as one of my building kits featured a weathering guide that looks fairly straight forward and not too hard.

at 6/7 quid plus a lick of paint. the dapol self build/unpainted van line definitely ticking all the boxes for cie stock on the cheap. just got to make sure the tighter couplings will work on the layout before i go buying more.

video-1599199337.mp4 video-1599200022.mp4 got curious after this last post and decided to plug in a bachmann controller, MASSIVE improvement from this one. that makes the loco very usable now the PWM from hornbys controller was literally rattling it to bits lol

video-1599192108.mp4 not done much for the week but had a bit of a running session tonight. what a great view to be sitting with my feet up on the couch. the g is a clunky little runner at times, rebuilt the E and added a bit of weight to it and its running much better now and more comparable to the other 0-4-0's I think the G may run better with a different controller as when i have a second loco elsewhere running on the track it crawls along smoothly at a stupidly slow speed just like it should be, and im using the basic old black hornby controller...when i try to run that loco on its own at a slow speed its all shaky like in the vid, so the issue is definitely an electronic gremlin of some sort to work out. have a nice package coming from dapo/ratiol today so should see some progress over the weekend.

https://allscales.co.uk/finescale-figures-1-76-1-43/ these look to have a large mix