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I'm looking foward to some lovely greenies arriving 😍 We've got one of these to haul them: But hopefully an alternative is just over the horizon: Obviously a blue and red kettle would be inappropriate so I cropped it off for a closer look at those lovely carriages!   Edit: I now wish I had scanned the whole page when I had that book and the scanner in front of me, so the GNR fans could have had their fix too    

@Georgeconna posted HERE in THIS Facebook group that he has two of them.

Listen… It’s getting closer…

The AEC Railcars While Inchicore was turning out new and old carriages in the plain dark green livery, the AEC Railcars were under construction in England. The underframes were produced by AEC and the bodies were added by Park Royal. Despite some opposition from the Irish government for some local content, they were entirely built and finished in England. The first 20 had been ordered in 1950, and a further 40 in 1951. Construction followed those previously built for GNR, and the design was very similar. The first two arrived in December 1951, followed by another two in early 1952. Deliveries then stopped for a year, largely owing to strike action at Inchicore and sympathetic strikes by dock-workers who refused to unload them in Dublin. The disputes were resolved at the end of 1952 and deliveries recommenced in January 1953, with all 60 delivered by June 1954. The order had been for 60 main line cars but CIE later changed their mind and Park Royal outshopped three types of vehicle: 2600-2647 'Main Line' with first and third class, tables, toilets, guard's van plus a heating boiler in even-numbered cars. 2648-2657 'Suburban' as above but without tables or toilets, having an extra bay of 4 seats instead of the toilet. 2658-2659 'Waterford & Tramore' with high-density bus-type seating throughout, 2658 having a heating boiler. In 'Diesel Dawn' (Flanagan), it is stated: All the CIE railcars were initially painted in dark green, but later received a lighter shade than hitherto which looked very smart. Photographs and memories (such as @Northroader's a few posts back) support the statement that all 60 were delivered in dark green. IRRS reports from 1951/2 describe the arrival of the railcars but do not mention their livery, perhaps further cicumstantial evidence that there was no change in colour worth mentioning. At the time of their order, the CIE livery would have been the late 1940s elaborately lined dark green, but by the time they were being built the plain dark green had replaced it. The dark green scheme applied to the railcars used the same colours but was intermediate in style between the elaborate and the plain schemes. I bought a slide on ebay which shows this original livery very nicely; elsewhere I have seen this credited to Colour Rail but I cannot find it on their website. West Cork fans will like this shot of 2637 at Bantry in May 1955. It had been in traffic about 8 months, so this is a great illustration of the original condition: The main colour is dark green, with a thin EdN line on the waist beading. Windows have shiny metal frames, and the buffer beam is red with black buffer shanks. On the sides, classes 1 and 3 are indicated by large EdN digits, and there is also a large snail transfer. Not obvious in this photo, the vehicle number was shown towards the right-hand end of each side as usual. The vehicle number was also shown on the end. As delivered from England, the number was immediately below the waist line as seen in the image above. Photos indicate that Inchicore practice was to place it lower down, so the position of this number on the front end can be a guide to whether the car has been repainted. Later still, a larger size numeral was used, but that will have to wait until we get to the very late 1950s. In the image above we can see that the solebars and skirts were also dark green, but not so obvious is that the bogies were painted silver. Here's a closer look at the bogies when new: The front ends were obviously green, but not so obvious in many images is that the intermediate ends were also green. This IRRS photo of the blunt end of a newly-delivered car shows the black buffers contrasting with the green end: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53506776108 This photo also shows a green intermediate end, as well as the extent of the silver paint on the bogies and underframe equipment: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53509287160 Here are some shots of the early trial runs: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53508838923 https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishswissernie/54308511828 By May 1952 the first 4 cars were in traffic on Dublin-Waterford services, and there are quite a lot of photos of the new toys. Just a few linked here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53507783362 https://www.thetransportlibrary.co.uk/-/galleries/rail/lens-of-sutton-association/lens-of-sutton-association-irish-railways-part-2/-/medias/488ba1cc-ff73-4225-ab7b-933bc98bd438-cie-2600-twin-railcar-at-waterford-26-4-52-jn-faulkner https://www.thetransportlibrary.co.uk/-/galleries/rail/lens-of-sutton-association/lens-of-sutton-association-irish-railways-part-2/-/medias/5a0f0819-e9a0-4316-b97f-f87fd2378bd5-cie-2600-2601-twin-railcar-set-at-inchicore-05-04-52-rk-kir https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53507047870 Once deliveries recommenced in 1953 the cars quickly spread across the network reaching the furthest extents of the system: So, what colour was the roof in this original railcar livery? I'm pretty sure that the roof dome above the cab was green, same as the cab end. The rest of the roof is more matt in appearance, and often appears a little lighter when new and clean. I wonder if it was originally light grey as on the GNR AEC railcars? Whatever it was originally, the roofs quickly became dirty dark grey as shown in the colour photo at the top of this post. But do have a closer look at the roof dome on that image - there are hints of green under the grime.   The books say that all 60 railcars were delivered in dark green; we've seen 2600, 2609, 2637 so let's finish with 2659, last of the Park Royal built cars built specially for the W&T. Here it is in 1957 when it was 3 years old - this images appears in 'Irish Railways in the 1950s and 1960s' (McCormack) p125. As a contrast, the second vehicle in the train is 2657 which was modified at Inchicore to W&T specification in 1955 and repainted at the same time into a lighter green scheme. They're both a bit grubby but you can see a difference, though it's not entirely conclusive. I'm tended to support the view that the AECs were all dark green initially.   I will deal with the later liveries of the AEC railcars as we get to them in the timeline. My next post will consider the intermediate coaches that were painted to match the railcars they ran with - some new and some old vehicles.

Some more of my Lima  upgrades. This time  MK1  coaches,  these  have  had the buffers replaced with white metal ones and kadee couplings  fitted in the same was as the   MK2's.   I have  fitted a bachmann slim tension  lock  coupling  on the  ends of the rakes  for  coupling  up  to locos.