IRM Latest! The High Queens of Ireland - IRM Celebrates 10th Birthday With GSR 800s

[NorthWallDocker]

IRM's news about the 800 locomotives motivated me to reserve one model of each locomotive.  Three Irish steam locomotive models.  The largest single purchase of railway models I've ever done, but well worth it to support such an important project.

[James Regan]

Very pleased to see this project coming to reality. I remember the first time I saw the original as a young boy in Witham Street, a gigantic looming thing squeezed into a tiny, dark, cramped space. You could hardly take it in. As Ireland’s greatest steam locomotive, I wanted to love it, but the overall effect was spoiled somewhat by the American style diesel cab windows and the miniature buffers. Still a very imposing piece of Irish railway history. Will pick up a couple.

[Fowler4f]

I haven’t read all the posts, maybe we need 3 or more of appropriate mixed coaching stock sets, by IRM, to match The Queens.

[GSR 800]

2 hours ago, Fowler4f said:

I haven’t read all the posts, maybe we need 3 or more of appropriate mixed coaching stock sets, by IRM, to match The Queens.

The Park Royals probably scrape through (just about). I've yet to see a photo of an 800 hauling a PR, but a photo in a Second Glance of Meadbh at Kingsbridge shunting a coach onto her train, has a PR in the adjacent carriage siding. So they were certainly in service at the same time, on the same line. Funny enough there's plenty of photos and footage of them hauled by steam from Westland Row to Bray, of course the suburbans were put into service there first.

The composites are the most likely coaches for IRM to justify from the 50s. I'm unsure if the Bredin steel sides used the same chassis (was that alluded to here?), but either way, composites were around from the 1950s up to the mid-1980s, so they cover almost the entire CIE period.

We're getting a bit pie in the sky here, but it's possible at some point IRM go for 'generic' GSWR/MGWR bogies to cover that period, if they ever decide to go that early. They are essential for any layout based before 1965 IMO. I have considered commissioning an MGWR Galway Mail set to be 3d printed, but that'd be a few years away at any rate.

 

 

[Mayner]

The chassis on the GSR Bredins & early CIE built stock were different in detail. The GSR Bredins basically had a 60' version of the 57' riveted underframe used in late GSWR/early GSR stock with vertical kingposts and bracing rods with turnbuckle adjuster.

Bredin riveted underframe with Kingposts & truss rods with turnbuckle adjusters.

CIE used an all welded underframe with welded trusses. To complicate matters further CIE built the 1st batch of coaches on a 60' underframe and subsequent batches on 61'6" underframes, the final batches of CIE "Bredins" ran on Bulleid underframes on Commonwealth bogies just like the Park Royals.

CIE all welded underframe with angle iron trusses.

Simplest solution would be to use Stanier coaches in GSR or CIE livery to produce a generic "layout train" to run behind an 800 or someone with very deep pockets commissioning Accurascale to produce a mixture of ex-GSWR early GSR and Bredin stock that typically ran on a GSR or CIE steam era passenger train with few vehicles alike.

Otherwise David Jenkinson book on scratchbuilding coaches in plasticard, David seemingly seemingly vast numbers of highly detailed ex LNWR, Midland and LMS coaches for his 4 & 7mm Settle and Carlisle themed layouts during the 1970s including models of specific 10-12 coach main-line rakes. His shortlived EM Little Long Drag layout of the 1970s was basically an American style walk around layout in a British purpose built garden shed which featured several stations actual and a fictious Junction on the Settle & Carlisle line, featuring several prototypical full length trains all using scratch or kit built locos and stock. The layout didn't last long the owner realised that it was too big to maintain and upsized to a simpler O gauge layout.

Edited 16 hours ago by Mayner