Irish rail system

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Greetings!

I’ve been contemplating what area & RR to model since having left the hobby for ::mumbles with his hand across his mouth:: years… At this point I may be looking at modelling the midwest with the old Minneapolis Northfield and Southern, but last night while sleeping a thought occured to me (I really MUST try to figure out what I ate that made me think of things like this in my sleep! ::grinning::)… Since I am so proud of my Irish heritage, perhaps and Irish railway… and a nice piece of the Irish countryside…

Any ideas of where I can find info, or an Irish model RR site?

Thanks in advance!
Rick

2

here is an iri***rain set! store.yahoo.com/internethobbies/bac-00651.html

Thats all I found looks like you will have to concentrate on the british railway and spin it off from there.

3

Thanks! I agree - there doesn’t seem to be much out there. [:)]

4

Try this site: http://www.westontrack.com/gallery07.htm

I’m a fan of “The Quiet Man” and have been kicking around the idea of modeling a scene from the movie as a surprise to my wife - have no idea where I’d find a model of the loco. We’ve actually stood on the bridge used in the filming (she cried!!??).

Anyway, this website has the train used in the movie - pretty cool.

5

Bachmann have offered RTR Irish steam locos and passenger cars in OO scale, Lima have offered more recent stock (diesels and modern passenger cars). Freight stock is mostly from small Irish suppliers - often resin kits. If you have any prototype questions you could do worse than try the “British Railway Operations” thread over on the Trains magazine forum - some of the regular contributors there have experience of the Irish system too. I think I’ve seen the Bachmann set listed in a Trainworld advert before now but the Lima locos and cars were mostly special commissions by Irish hobby shops (limited runs of a few hundred) so tracking them down could be difficult. That said, a lot of the car bodies were identical to British ones, so you could use standard ones and respray them with some detail changes. Good luck!

6

Thanks for the link! (That’s pretty cool when your wife was so touched by the moment).

7

Sounds like you need a research trip to Ireland!!

I’ve got quite a few 35mm photos of a bog railroad… unfortunately they’re not digitized.

I spent a few weeks touring the southern part of Ireland - south of Dublin and the Shannon, for the most part. I saw a few railways, but I wasn’t focused on them, so other than the bog line I didn’t get many photos. If I can find what I do have, I’ll scan them and put them on my website.

8

Not to be the skunk at the garden party, but doesn’t the Irish Railway run on 5’3" gauge? Modeling that accurately might be an adventure!

(Who am I to talk? My prototype runs on 3’6", and the scale-gauge combination I use, 1/80 on 16.5mm, is peculiar to that prototype alone.)

9

Ready to run Irish diesels were made by Lima but since they went to the wall they are a bit scarce. Hornby are just starting to release the Uk models so it might reappear in a year or two.
There are also reliveries of British steam locos used in Ireland made by bachmann.
Have a look on www.hattons.co.uk they have a couple http://www.worldwidemodelrailways.com/ is their international models site.
Look under Lima OO diesel -class 201 River Boyne and
Bachmann Steam engines/Locos - N class 2.6.0
As one of the others said most were produced as commissions for Irish shops and there were extra liveries coaches and wagons available.