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 maws... They are shaping into nice models, Robert, though !

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....

Instant setting superglue fine for small bits in my experience (presume that Kirley’s Loctite sets a bit slower). If doing overlays etc I’d tend to use contact adhesive: gives you a little more ‘change your mind time’....

Tony - here’s a Fred Graham loco, photographed by my brother in sunny Ulster this afternoon, and forwarded to me in rainy Buckinghamshire ! LSWR holly green may be an option ? Nice work on the kit - Alphagraphix are great little kits for the price and a good basis for ‘fettling’.

Brilliant book - got mine this week. Only wish it was four times as big - cracking images therein.

Lovely Colm. If it’s any help, I thought ‘Antrim’ before I read the text!

Very very nice. UTA liveried S class a nice touch. That station scene is pure Derry Road.

That’s brilliant. May 1989 was just about when my school commute stopped and I headed off to Edinburgh - just as Scotland finally cleared most of its loco hauled trains and went to DMUs!

Very nice. I do like the GN van especially!

Vote for HH jig for me. Just built my first scratchbuilt chassis with my own scratch made rods. Lots of scope for error then! But HH jig made the assembly most straightforward .....

Have communicated my thoughts on IRM, Glover, but I really hope Pettigo box will not be sending 2-1 for some time yet.

Yes. I lived at Downshire from 1971 to 1989, and in other parts of NI from 93-99 and 02-06, so saw pretty much all the liveries come and go over the years. That was the best of them, agreed. The Sealink was good for novelty value!