Johns Workbench, a place to start.

[Turin60]

I'm just starting my Irish railway modelling journey so I anticipate a good few mistakes so please bear with me. How did I end up here, well not too many miles from me lives a certain Andy Cundick whose exploits with 4mm scale Irish modelling are well known here, given such influence I was bound to want to dip a toe in sooner or later.

The other influence was from when I was growing up in the 1960,s, I had a copy of "The Observers Book of Railway Locomotives" and in there were some diesel locomotives which appeared to be painted SILVER! What a mad idea, only to be outdone in the 1980's by Network South East painting locomotives red WHITE & blue...now that was mad!. Anyway now I've got a replacement Observers book and it seems that edition was the first to feature the railways of the Irish republic.

Now being English (albeit with Irish ancestry) and awkward my project is going to be built to 21mm gauge, now I must admit I don't mind building pointwork which is going to be done with code 70 rail and PCB sleepers, there should be appended to this message a photograph of my point plan set up with sleepers stuck in place ready to go!  In more recent times I seem to have acquired a reputation for building layouts which don't feature many (or any) points, well my plan is to use two points so the layout might be classes as small as opposed to Micro and will be more charicature rather than prototype. Bear with me it might not be as bad as you fear.

So I've got the cunning plan and rail and hope to make some progress over the forthcoming festive season, so best wishes to you all. Now let's see about inserting that photograph.

John Bruce.

[Patrick Davey]

Good luck with the journey John!

[Mol_PMB]

Welcome! 

I'm a few months ahead of you with building a 2-point layout as a first step in 21mm gauge, so it's great to see someone else following the same path.

Here's my journey so far:

I look forward to seeing your progress. Feel free to ask if you have any questions on regauging stock etc. 

Have you chosen which wheel/rail standards you're using? Some people use P4-based dimensions but others (myself included) use EM flangeways and wheel profiles.

As for silver locos, this is my attempt:

Cheers,

Mol

[Galteemore]

Excellent work! And if you live near Andy you’re probably not far from me (far west Oxfordshire)