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Broithe

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Posts posted by Broithe

    Arguments about abandoned trains, sociopolitical influences on railway building, and probably something else eventually.

    in General Chat

    Posted

    55 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

    LOVE that thread title! Someone will be doing a thesis on it in 20 years' time....

    OK, here's one for you.

    Setting aside all the stuff that gets trotted out as "fact" in terms of closed railways being dropped on the Germans, etc etc etc, a new one: what is a closure date?

    Is it (a) the date of the day on which the last official public train ran?

    Is it (b) the day after that, namely the first date without public trains?

    Or, is it (c) something else? For example, imagine this. A line is to close on 31st December 1950, let's say. That day is a Monday, but that line never had a Sunday service, so the last trains run on Saturday 29th. Is that the closure date, or is Monday 31st?

    First correct answer can buy me a pint.

     

    36 minutes ago, Metrovik said:

    Id say that the lines closure date comes with the train used to pull it up, and take it away. Can't get much more closed than that.

     

    34 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

    What about the ghost train that goes through a few years later, as per the numerous tales on the Donegal - Killybegs section?

    How long can a thread title be..?

    • Funny 3

    Dazzle ships

    in Letting off Steam

    Posted

    Some US ships still carried dazzle camouflage in WW2.

    No photo description available.

    The ship in the picture, along with 23 others, was built in sections in the Rocky Mountains, then transported 1,000 miles to the coast for final assembly.

    • Like 3

    Arguments about abandoned trains, sociopolitical influences on railway building, and probably something else eventually.

    in General Chat

    Posted · Edited by Broithe

    For the sake of completeness, this is Mountrath & Castletown/Kilbricken -

    https://www.google.com/maps/@52.9634348,-7.4660293,102m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

    - not so easy to see from the Street View, but still fairly complete.

    Catching a glimpse of it fleetingly as you go past can have you thinking you've passed Ballybrophy.

    Arguments about abandoned trains, sociopolitical influences on railway building, and probably something else eventually.

    in General Chat

    Posted

    6 minutes ago, LNERW1 said:

    I meant Mountmellick, but I have the memory of an amnesiac goldfish and I’m awful at Laois geography, being a still-relatively-recent (2017) blow-in from the land of sourdough and SUVs. (Guess where that is😉).

    Within the last year, I have had two fairly local people tell me that you could get a train from Mountrath to Kilkenny - probably the same similarity misremembrance.

     

    2 minutes ago, LNERW1 said:

    I wonder if the owner is a railway enthusiast?

    I have no idea, but I may investigate one day...

    Arguments about abandoned trains, sociopolitical influences on railway building, and probably something else eventually.

    in General Chat

    Arguments about abandoned trains, sociopolitical influences on railway building, and probably something else eventually.

    in General Chat

    Anyone remember when...

    in Letting off Steam

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Horsetan said:

    To be fair, when I look at the room available on my daily Thameslink to / from central London, a horse could easily stand - and turn round - in the central section between the sliding doors.

    And it would be handy in the event of a train failure. A friend of mine spent a dull time yesterday stuck on a replacement bus, when that broke down...

    To lighten the mood.

    in Letting off Steam

    Posted · Edited by Broithe

    36 minutes ago, Ironroad said:

    Talking of speech synthesisers, reminds me of the one that was used on the underground trains at Atlanta Airport, announcing the terminals.   And since it sounded like HAL that's what locals called it. We miss HAL the trip is not the same anymore.

    I once spent a productive 15 minutes with a new 'train manager' on a Heuston/Cork train. Being of a southern African origin, such places as Thurles and Cloughjordan were not phonetically obvious to him from the paperwork, as he read out the pre-stop announcements.

    Trying to locate a place near Lough Derg yesterday, the sat-nav woman from the driver's phone kept referring to Nenagh like a toddler impersonating a cop car - Neeee-Naaah.

    • Like 1
    • Funny 2

    Arguments about abandoned trains, sociopolitical influences on railway building, and probably something else eventually.

    in General Chat

    Posted

    There were quite a few traction engines around that area, due to the Castlecomer coalfield.


    I can remember seeing a few sitting in Stradbally, idling at the side of the road, having drawn grain trailers into town in the 70s.

    I do have a set of the 1912 1" maps, with the coalfield lines on - I did start building a 'Goggle Maps'-based thing with them overlaid on it - I might even finish it now...

    • Like 1
    • Informative 1

    British locos and stock that can be disguised as Irish

    in Irish Models

    Posted

    5 minutes ago, LNERW1 said:

    This is either going to be met with begrudging agreement or crucifixion, but could a class 67/68 be repainted to a rough approximation of a 201?

    If you have any other points you're thinking of making, you really ought to post them before the 29th of March.

    It'll be hard to type with your hands nailed to a plank.

    • Funny 1

    Cheap Modelling Materials Sources

    in Tips & Tricks

    Posted

    8 minutes ago, Patrick Davey said:

    So it turns out that the new style of paper on the Quality Street sweets works a treat for what I was trying to achieve!  As I had hoped, it helps to dull down the brightness of these lights, and also adds the distinctive sodium glare:

    234EE908-069E-4779-8E42-4FFA7E3B3E55.jpeg

    96441FA9-AC2F-4874-BFF3-552D3CFFCEDC.jpeg

    Sweet!

    • Like 1
    • Funny 4

    Timpo Prairie Rocket.

    in Workbench

    Posted

    Hardly a worthy workbench item, but does anybody have a Timpo Prairie Rocket?

    I got roped into 'fixing' one and each step of the process takes a long time - it's been a couple of months to get this far, I only finally got to see the actual problem today.

    All I've had delivered is the motorised tender, in a non-functional form.

    I've got it apart without busting anything. The motor seemed to be dead, with no circuit through it at all, even when I could get straight onto the motor terminals.

    The motor is a bit 'special', in that the mounting requires this actual motor, using the shape of the case to fit and hold it.

    On a hunch, suspecting that it just hadn't run for many years and the commutator was merely oxidised, I gave it a 'robust manual spin' to polish it up a bit and did get an occasional circuit then - so I persevered and was then able to get it to run and clean itself properly.

    DSC_0196.thumb.JPG.9cf24dec72879ffd039b432f9270b689.JPG

    I've cleaned the carpet fluff from the gears and it runs OK now.

    Anyway, the real point is that the tender does not have rear, unpowered, bogie in place.

    I'm guessing that the two bogie wagons that are part of the set will use a compatible 'dead' bogie and thus I could cannibalise one from there - but, the wagons are 60 miles away and two to three weeks from arriving here.

    It would be nice to know if my suggestion of this temporary fix is likely to work, before another month passes and I get to see the wagons.

    • Like 1
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