Irish Models That Can Be Converted to British Models (No Really)

[Auto-Train Original]

Hear me out. About 30 years ago, a friend and I were trying to come up with a plan to produce Irish R-2-R rolling stock, but considered the market for Irish 00 trains to be too small at that time. So one idea we had was to reverse the wheel and produce locos with their shells swapped. So a British loco could be put on an A or C class chassis or that some of the coaches could be sold in UK liveries (Mk2s etc) into the UK market to finance the production of the Irish models. It was one of these 'closing time at the pub' ideas, and never really went much further as our knowledge of the prototypes was not in depth enough. We also were looking into an Athearn style drive to make the performance superior to the Ringfield/Pancake motors which dominated UK models at the time. Also the coaches would have flush glazing which was also not a thing at the time.

Thinking about it again the other day, got me wondering if the chassis of any Irish locos, DMUs and so on could have been sold in to the UK market with the 'export' shell or repaint?

Edited 7 hours ago by Auto-Train Original

[GSR 800]

1 hour ago, Auto-Train Original said:

Hear me out. About 30 years ago, a friend and I were trying to come up with a plan to produce Irish R-2-R rolling stock, but considered the market for Irish 00 trains to be too small at that time. So one idea we had was to reverse the wheel and produce locos with their shells swapped. So a British loco could be put on an A or C class chassis or that some of the coaches could be sold in UK liveries (Mk2s etc) into the UK market to finance the production of the Irish models. It was one of these 'closing time at the pub' ideas, and never really went much further as our knowledge of the prototypes was not in depth enough. We also were looking into an Athearn style drive to make the performance superior to the Ringfield/Pancake motors which dominated UK models at the time. Also the coaches would have flush glazing which was also not a thing at the time.

Thinking about it again the other day, got me wondering if the chassis of any Irish locos, DMUs and so on could have been sold in to the UK market with the 'export' shell or repaint?

I think in many ways this is what IRM/Accurascale are doing with the likes of Mk2s and whatnot, wherever possible looking at commonalities to utilise. 

What could be done is something akin to Genesis or Rapidos planked wagons, building something 'generically' Irish that with a different paint job would suit British stuff just as well. The problem with that of course is Ireland has a larger loading gauge. 

For locomotives honestly might have a better chance looking at something like an 0-6-0 and which ones had the closest wheelbases to british ones. You of course have the Woolwiches too, though Rapido is currently doing the U, the larger dia driver variant.

Something that could be looked at, though perhaps not true to the OP proposal, is that with the acquiring of Heljan, a 'common' TT 120 chassis could be utilised for 00n3 Irish. We've seen Bachmann offering a wide range of chassis for kitbashing at the like, Rapido and Fourdees make strides in using a common chassis with a 3d printed body on their Sirdar, perhaps something similar using an 0-6-0 chassis which can have pony trucks and bogies added on front and back to cover a wide range of Irish narrow gauge motive power!