jhb171achill

Crossley, Metropolitan-Vickers, General Motors, Inchicore Works, Cravens of Sheffield, Dundalk Works….

I would add my voice to that - probably over half of my stuff is Dempsey-weathered, and it looks superbly realistic. Trains were never shiny clean in daily use….!

Several points; after decades of conservative rule over thyere, gopvernment investments in any public infrastructure projects is not exactly littered with largesse; and in order to try to counteract conservative votes, like in many other countries, the parties who represented the left are veeriong more and more towards insipid silence, mediocrity, and hand-wringing; witness the Dems in the USA too, who are now considerably mo9re right-leaning than pre-Reagan republicans! But to stick to the railway theme, the British still are "good" at railways, just perhaps not so much in some areas, though arguably a great deal better in others. None of the preceding posts are really about the railways themselves, or to back to topic, the Enterprise. Ever since railways had to be nationalised some 75 years ago, as a result of not being able to pay their way as businesses, they have been entirely dependent on state funding. Investment in railways, or lack of it, is a matter for a government - be it a British, Irish, EU or Timbuktooean one; rather than a lack of any will or skill within the railway itself.

Vans - be they older wooden ones, all types of tin vans, genny vans, BR or Dutch vans - often were allowed to get into a shocking state of filth, whereas passenger carriages were kept in much better order inside and out.

Yes, they were inded double-skinned. Great photo - trust Bob Clements to get the rarest of them all!

I am delighted to have a couple of these JM Design vans on my layout; I came a bit late to the party ande they were sold out when I was fishing about looking for them. Therefore, I bought several Silverfox ones to make up numbers. There is simply no comparison. Plus, EVERYTHING Silverfox produce in supposedly CIE green livery is utterly wrong in all respects. Grey roofs instead of black - and light grey at that - white logos and lining instead of pale green, and above all, the green colour is like British Railways loco / railcar green - nothing remotely like CIE green. I got a green van - I might as well have asked for a tartan one. So I just repainted the damn thing in silver grey and had Mr Dempsey weather it within an inch of its life. The JM ones, though, are superb, and a vitally necessary thing for Irish modelling in the late 1950s, throughout the 60s, and into the mid-70s. I think the last time I travelled in a train with a four-wheeler tin van must have been very early 1976 on the Limerick-Ballina run, just before it finished.

I think the roof lights were inded covered over. But there were only a small number of these four-wheeled TPOs. Two, as you know, ended up in PW use, with gangways removed too. One, the last survivor of any type of tin van at all, is now at Downpatrick undergoing restoration. It will be used there as a genny / luggage / brake van.

To be fair to them, it's Westminster that pays their salary. The real deal is how Stormont can get the Other Island to cough up. And, it has to be said, Stormont does have people (on both sides who are aware of that and (rightly) do not lose an opportunity to try to extract pounds sterling from those quarters for a number of things (the health service there probably being the most pressing, but that's another story).

I saw a decomposing body of one of those about forty years ago in a field near Barna, outside Galway. It was sheeting on top of the older planks. All was rotting, so it was impossible to tell what condition the planking would have been when they initially put the sheeting on. From my own observations over the years, i believe that some sheeted conversions were done in a heavy-duty plywood, and others were something like sheet steel. As for the outside-planked ones, a few comments. Apparently, this was the terminology used to describe them on the railway - certainly, in Inchicore. I am not sure they were ever intended to be insulated vans per se - I feel that Senior would have told me that if it was the case. I remember them in traffic, and they were just used as normal goods vans, to be mixed in with the other standards of the day - GNR wooden vans, GNR cement vans, CIE Palvans, CIE "H"s and these. I can't help feeling that iof there ever was an intention to actually use them as "insulated" vans, some exterior markings to that effect might have been evident. Finally, they were conceived in GSR times, but I cannot recall ever seeing a picture of one with "G S" on it. The wagon plates on them, though, had "G S R" on them. (And talking of wagon plates, I saw a GNR cement van in the 70s, now in CIE brown, and obviously used as a standard "H", and it had a standard CIE wagon plate with "C I E", and the number 111N. I wish I had been able to get one of those plates....!)

Superb stuff. If IRM or anyone else ever get around to doing a "C", it would be an interesting appendage to have, not just for detail, but to enable those who like strict accuracy to be able to run a prototypical train. Now all we need is a RTR wooden composite bogie, as used in so many ways in the 50s and on into the black'n'tan era briefly. Single composite bogies of the very type shopwn above were used on the lines Mayner mentions, plus also Kenmare, Loughrea, Baltimore, North Wexford, Ballaghadarreen, and gawd knows where else.

There was even more to it today, but I didn’t want to labour the point! Sooner both governments cough up for a complete new fleet, the better!

Well, there’s wasn’t a 4pm. At 15:25, an announcement at the soviet cigarette factory told us all to go to Lanyon on a local, as the 16:00 was going from there. Over the next 50 minutes, numerous empty NIR sets went through without stopping, all towards the new terminus; and one DD (228) went empty towards York Road. No explanations, and staff on the ground knew nothing. At 16:50 we were told to hurry round (back) to Grand Soviet to get the 17:00, which is an ICR with no tea trolley, or, unusually for an ICR, no internet. NEXT time, car.

4pm leaving from Maysfields Cattle Sidings Lanyon Central. Gawwd knows what it will be. A 2-car 26 diverted from Little Island - Carrigaloe?

10:50 is an oul railcar. NIR thing, but at least it’s not a 29.

I hadn’t heard of this either