KMCE

Hmmm......seem to have lost the photos following the site changes, so to put some back...... Line up of DSER (Dublin & South Eastern Railways) and GSR (Great Southern Railways) locos, wagons and railcars. Back line DSER wagons with 6-wheel goods brake. Next line 423 Class loco with DSER wagons, SLNCR (Sligo Leitrim & Northern Counties Railway) vehicle transporter, with a gas wagon bringing up the rear. DSER Armoured train dating from 1923 utilised during the Civil War. Front line - Clayton Railcar & Drewry Petrol Railcar. Also a new loco added to the fleet. GSR 551 Class or J26, in this guise No. 560 with the enclosed bunker as used on the Waterford Tramore line. Whilst not strictly DSER, the Waterford line went back and forth between DSER and GSWR over the years. Paint removed from the coupling rods as considerable fettling was needed to get the motion operating to P4 standards. Nice loco and a characteristic Irish loco. All for now. Ken

DWWR / DSER Gas Wagon Lighting in passenger coaches on the DWWR system was originally by oil lamps, and in 1878, the company began testing various manufactures offering of gas lighting systems, one of which was the system used by the MGWR. In 1884, the Pintsch Gas Company lighting system was installed in coaches free of charge and utilised their patent compressed oil gas – quite a deal at the time and one can only wonder at the discussion around gas costs over the years. To facilitate the change, a gas works was constructed in Bray which fitted out the coaches over time as they passed through the works, installing gas tanks with pipework up to the gas lamps located on the roof. This work continued until all coaches were converted by c. 1890. To facilitate the filling of the gas tanks on the coaches, a supply and distribution network was required to bring the gas to the coaches. To this end, in 1895 two gas tank wagons were constructed to facilitate this distribution across the DWWR network – one wonders how the coaches were topped up before these wandering gas tankers. It would be not unreasonable to suppose the coaches were topped up in Bray when there - given the vast bulk of the coaching stock would have been on the commuter line between Bray and Harcourt St. or Westland Row. Other stock probably was topped up when possible, but it cannot be too hard to imaging a number of dark journeys when the gas ran out before Bray. Having travelled the line myself for years in the late 1980’s I do recall a number of trips when the lights failed – the tunnels South of Bray are quite dark, I can tell you! To ease the re-fuelling process, two old wagons Nos. 131 and 242 which were most likely cattle wagons were stripped and their chassis used to carry tanks for the gas. Tanks were fabricated, and given the weight of gas, these were not likely very heavy wagons in themselves. Notwithstanding the cobbled together approach, these wagons appear to have been quite long lived with 131 operating on the network up to 1959. No drawings, or even full photos were available, so by researching through old photos on various forums, (the IIRS archive online being very useful) it was possible to get some partials images which allowed a wagon to be developed and built. There is a distant image of what appears to be one of these wagons in Bray in Shepherd & Beesley (Dublin & South Eastern Railways) p61. The cattle chassis from the era in question would have been short, so a wagon length of 14" was selected, which in turn dictated the size of the gas tank. A model was created from this drawing using brass to form the primary elements with some balsa forming the tank cradle. The gas tank was formed from brass sheet with rivets embossed, then rolled to form the basic shape. Straps were then added to hold the shape and represent the wagon straps. The ends were dished circles with smaller flat circles added to form the tank ends. The wagon chassis is built from simple brass sections, riveted as necessary, and uses SSM (Studio Scale Models) compensated wagon chassis W-irons; Dart Casting white metal springs and axleboxes were added to these. Buffers were also from the Dart Casting range, whilst the draw hook was from an unused fret of some forgotten kit. The wheels are open spoke type, typical in Ireland and from Alan Gibson, running on 28mm pinpoint axles in waisted brass bearings in the W-irons. The brakes were built from an SSM wagon brake etch kit The couplings are from the Spratt & Winkle coupling system. The model was painted using airbrush and Vallejo acrylic paint with weathering added by airbrush, washes and weathering powders. Numbering, (as can clearly be seen) was done by hand with a drafting pen and white ink. One element of speculation was whether these wagons had a floor or not. In one or two partial images I have seen it looks like there was no floor and the tank cradle was built onto the wagon frames – it’s quite difficult to see however. In building the model I worked on the premise that the floor would have been retained with cradles built on it which would have involved less work – it also reduced the workload in building the model. Similar to other models mentioned here, I developed this model further to create a 3D printed model. In this case I decided to try an open chassis model which is easier to do with printing. Generally good result, however some of the layer lines are visible in close up on the tank. At normal viewing distances, these area are not noticeable. I cannot claim it to be historically accurate, however given the severe dearth of information available, I think this is a reasonable representation of a much used, but little seen wagon. All for now. Ken

DWWR / DSER 3 Plank Wagon In 1872 DW&WR ordered 40 open wagons, 20 of which were from the Metropolitan Railway Carriage & Wagon Co (MCW). In April of the same year a broken drawbar on a goods train caused a derailment at Foxrock which led to the introduction of side coupling chains. Whether these two events were interrelated is not clear, however from the drawing information I have no side chains were designed into the MCW wagons, so perhaps these were ordered before the incident. The Historical Model Railway Society (HMRS) has a drawing for this 3 - plank wagon produced by MCW which are annotated that they were for the DW&WR. The information provided on the drawing is very good, albeit a little smudged, however still in good condition for 150 year old drawings. A digital copy of the drawing was purchased with the view to creating a model. This drawing was imported into CAD and drawn up, however some inconsistencies between figured dimensions and drawn information needed to be resolved. I opted to use the figured dimensions and the drawings were amended accordingly - nothing major, but worth tidying up nonetheless. The wagon has a 9' wheelbase with a load area of 15’ 0” x 7’ 1”, so quite a large wagon for the time of construction. The earlier design provenance can be seen in the extended headstocks which look similar to dumb buffers. In line with other wagons of this era, brakes or in this instance – brake is on one side only. Given the single brake arrangement, it is reasonable to assume these were coupled in one direction & thus brake levers would be on one side of the train in any given rake to allow banksmen to secure the train without recourse to crossing the train. These wagons were re-built in 1907 in the Grand Canal Works which transformed it completely from this characteristic wagon. The re-built version had 4-planks, almost flush doors, with door planks vertically instead of horizontally. There is an image of the re-built version in Shepherd & Beesely “Dublin & South Eastern Railways” page 107, which I will not reproduce here as it is distinctly different from this wagon. I have not been able to uncover any photos of this wagon to date, so we will have to make do with a model at this time. A 3D model was developed from the drawings above to allow printing. Holes were designed for the installation of buffers, and draw hook these being from Dart Castings. The 3D print is quite light and some weight needs to be added to balance with the other wagons. This can be done either internally with a load, or perhaps underfloor if the wagon is to remain empty

I have started a workshop thread in the Kitbuilding & Scratchbuilding section of the forum - hopefully this is the correct location for such a thread. Anyway, for those interested; Cheers, Ken

While posting some photos of my micro layout Port Bréige, some queries regarding the locos & rolling stock were raised. I propose to show some of these models and their provenance in the coming posts. First up. DWWR / DSER 13' 6" Ashbury Covered Wagon. The 13’ 6” Ashbury wagon is probably the best know DSER (Dublin & South Eastern Railways) wagon as there are numerous photos and some line drawings which have appeared in various publications over the years. The wagon in question here is the 1902 version built by Ashbury Carriage & Iron Co., however Ashbury did build earlier wagons for the DWWR (Dublin Wicklow & Wexford Railway) in 1857 and again in 1878, and some of these were used for the conveyance of livestock prior to the intervention of the Board of Trade requirements for separate wagons for this traffic. There are some images of this earlier wagon being used for livestock conveyance with the upper most board under the roof being removed to allow air through the wagon. Whilst this wagon may be the best known of the DWWR /DSER wagon, it was by no means built in large numbers; the convertible wagon considerably eclipsed these vans in numbers and use across the network. These wagons were quite long lived and survived into the CIE (Córas Iompair Éireann) era being modified with through vacuum piping and screw couplings to allow them run with coaching stock. Image courtesy of Shepherd & Beesley There are some sketch drawings available for this 1902 version which were used to develop a more detailed drawing, and photos were then used to clarify elements for development of a model. This wagon was initially modelled in brass, but was subsequently developed as 3D model for printing. Later version of the wagon were fitted with basic louvres and both variants have been modelled in 3D. First brass model. There are considerable amounts of external uprights and the number of uprights on the ends makes this a very slow build in brass. Hence I decided to develop the model in 3D and let the printer do the work! This printed off well & shown here in P4 21mm gauge next to the original brass model. For the P4 model cast buffers, draw hook and roof were added separately. The model was developed further with buffers, roof etc printed as a unit. In this instance it was only necessary to add wheels. The models above were printed for others in OO gauge with NEM pockets to ease the addition of coupling systems. The models are printed as standard to take the 28mm pinpoint axles so can run as 21mm or OO gauge if preferred. A very small wagon but I'm pleased with how they have turned out. All for now, Ken

Many thanks for all the kind comments, it is greatly appreciated. To those who commented on the Scalescene elements, I find they are a great and inexpensive resource - well thought out and can be bashed into other elements also. The wharf is also a Scalescene product, and the LHS of the front building is a re-hash of the back building overlapping the facade to make a bigger building; the taller building is scratch built. I will set up a separate workbench thread to show the locos and wagons with some information on their history and build. Once again, many thanks for the comments & all for now, Ken

As an intro to my work here, I thought I would post some details of my current micro layout. I rather liked the Canal Wharf micro layout by Scalescenes and decided to take a closer look at it (https://scalescenes.com/product/ly02-canal-wharf-boxfile-layout/) and at £10 I though, why not? Question was, could it be done in 21mm (5' 3" Irish Gauge) - as it turns out, yes, and proves to be quite a shunting puzzle. The Scalescene layout in the box is of limited operational use, however they do recommend using a sector plate or traverser to provide some level of operation. I opted initially for the sector plate and incorporated it into a single layout, which will be twice the size of the scalescene proposal and I could use some other buildings to hide the sector plate. The wharf space was limited, and as I already had the dock scene from Scalescenes, I could extend the wharf and convert to a port - in this case a small fictitious port somewhere on the East Coast in Ireland. As the track will be covered there was no need to provide all the sleepering - just enough to hold the track in position. A Y-point was created, and even though it is short, it has the equivalent of 800mm radius (as does all the track) which means locos (short) & wagons travel through quite well. This was wired up for DC (or as the layout is so small, it could be DCC). Sector plate will be operated by a simple push rod, as will the point. Uncoupling positions (magnets) are noted by the circles and the layout operates with 4 - 5 short wagons; early Irish wagons are quite short c. 14'. Each small siding can only hold one wagon without fouling the points, while the top road can just about hold four wagons. Sector plate can hold the loco and two wagons, so shunting options are quite limited. By using the uncoupling position on the point exit, it is possible to make up trains of 4 on the long road, from the 4 - 5 wagons and still provide quite a challenge. This is then put into a box to contain the scene and make it portable with overall dimensions of 660 mm long x 300mm deep x 320mm high, so quite small. Some strip LED lighting was added to light the scene. The scalescene kit is very good and buildings come together well, albeit with a lot of cutting and sore fingers! Parts of the original kit were used to create new buildings to cover the sector plate area along with some 3D printed windows. Sea detail is as per MarklinofSweeden (YouTube) tutorial using PVA glue and toilet roll to create very realistic sea & waves. The drifter is a Model Slipways 1/72 RC model cut down to a waterline model for inclusion in the scene - needs to be weathered though! Cobble detail is created with DAS Clay using a 3D printed pattern roller. In order to improve the operation of the layout, I built a traverser and opened the centre track to allow access onto the stage. So the overall view. All rolling stock is either scratch built in Brass (locos & some wagons), or 3D designed & printed stock (small railcar & wagons). Clayton railcar is based on a Shapeways product with a lot of work to build to a functional model. Sorry for the longwinded post; you're getting a quick synopsis of work commenced initially in Oct 2020 Anyway, all for now. Ken

Hello All, Just a quick note to introduce myself: Location - Wicklow Town, Co. Wicklow, Ireland. Interest - Irish Railways, mostly DWWR (Dublin Wicklow & Wexford Railway), DSER (Dublin & South Eastern Railway) & GSR (Great Southern Railways) Scale - 21mm P4 Promotion - 3D printed goods wagons - more info here https://irishrailwaymodeller.com/forum/65-kmce-models/ Other Forums - https://irishrailwaymodeller.com/ Kind Regards, Ken