Irish Padre

Cheers Kirley. All soldered up now with door fittings installed.. ..

Hopefully the ‘face’ of the loco is beginning to show .....nothing fixed down yet but trial fits are encouraging....

A quiet day in 50s Ireland

1950s Ireland. 5’3” track (36.75mm) . CIE F6 2-4-2T no 42 (Alphagraphix kit. Buildings and carriage scratch built).

Rolled a boiler and tried out some fittings...dome sprue needs filed off a bit more...only a test fitting but it’s getting there I think!

‘Large Tank’ gets large tanks. I’m in a Tier 4 area so may as well be busy....cab front is only tack soldered for now - needs to head forward. Simply in place to see if character of loco is finally emerging ....

Love your layout and projects, Kirley. It’s like a lucky dip - all the best bits of Irish railway history !

Probably have them to thank for whatever educational success I had. When I started my school commute the Larne line was largely semaphore signalled with 70 class traction and much original infrastructure remained. By O-level time it was a glorified tramway run by these horrors. So much less of a distraction from the studying I was meant to be at... And, with the sobriety of hindsight, I I know these monstrosities probably saved the NIR system from destruction. But I could never quite forgive them for banishing the 70s, whose beating EE hearts they swallowed into their bland BREL ma

And Enniskillen’s platework starts to come together ....since slightly amended to make the coal rails closer together

Very nice. Good NCC atmosphere about this scene.

Did some more platework on cab: rear cab upper, and coal bunker front complete with hatch. The latter still needs tidied a little but slashed my finger in mid-construction so didn’t linger once the essential work was done! The grilles were a pig - individual 0.3mm wires soldered in place....used a little plastic jig to ensure all were same length ! Lough Gill and Sir Henry had lost most of the grille wires by 1957 but Enniskillen’s were largely intact. Lucky me.

Take an old boxwood ruler, thin to 3mm with Dremel sanding. Add a 10thou NS backing plate, accessorise with 0.5 and 1mm rivets, some Slaters bearings inverted as safety chain eyes, add a few other bits, distress with piercing saw and files to taste, and we have a wooden buffer beam as Enniskillen carried at the end of her days. It’s not perfect but passes the 2’rule (not that the boxwood folding ruler can now quite make 2 foot).

And Enniskillen finally has rivetted tanks. There are a lot of rivets, to put it mildly. I do wish the SLNC had managed to find the cash to get them countersunk. Two separately spaced lines at the top, with various other spacings around bottom, edges and middle. And if you haven’t cut the NS straight those long lines of rivets will gaily march just where you don’t want. I’m glad it’s finally done !

Thanks Colin. Most interesting. The various C class lurking around York Road in the 80s did brighten up my school commute. Thankfully I had a few years of 70 and 80 class travel before those awful 450s came in......IIRC didn’t C224 have a bent frame or similar ? It sat around for ages still in orange and black.

Very nice. Mind you, if I’d got a ticket from Limerick to Sligo, I’d have bagged a seat in coach no 1!! It’s a very long trip....