Hi All
I live in Co Wicklow, Ireland, I'm a semi retired architect and have a small extensive workshop- Mini lathe, Optimum drill/mill, Optimum band saw, Stepcraft CNC Router and a lot of tools….
I've been modelling since I was about 6 years old, I was lucky to have an uncle that did live steam locos and learned a lot about workshop stuff. I've built back then- boats, planes, tanks and trains, but girls and motorbikes took over in my teens and I stuck with that for many years. About 15 years ago I went back to model building, mainly live steam stationary engines and astronomy telescope bits, to learn more about machining, the processes, and get more tooling to complete projects. 5 years ago I was asked to build an Gauge OO DART (Dublin suburban EMU) for a chap which was successfully and caused a bit of a stir in the Irish Railway Model scene, and I now make these to order- see here;- **LINK**
I'm also building the Northumbrian Loco as featured on here, a Gauge O Flying Scotsman (that awful kit that came in mag form) and many Gauge OO Irish locos brass kits for me and for others- 121, Class A, Class C, J 15, and Class 800
My pet project at the moment is developing a Gauge O 'Hibernia' kit in brass, one of the first locos to run in Ireland on the Dublin & Kingstown Railway, again the first track laid in Ireland in the 1830's. The loco was build by Sharp Roberts and in England was known as the 'Experiment', though not very successfully with vertical cylinders and a mad bell-crank to send the drive horizontally to the drive wheels. The ultimate goal with this is to build a 3 n 1/2'' live steam model, building the Northumbrian kit is a preamble to this….
There is more but thats enough for my introduction
Eoin