leslie10646

Well done. Nice to see one of Roger's kits built. As for the Black - well, White's Law applies - ie it's your layout and you run what you want on it!

No new Generator vans immediately - the single-ended Yankees pulled the little four wheel generator vans around for a while. Those converted Mk3 generator vans are a pretty recent addition to the Enterprise sets - within the last five years? After the four wheelers came the "Dutch" heating vans, built by both Verkspoor in the Netherlands and some by CIE themselves and then the BR Mark 1 full brakes converted into generator vans (the RPSI has one). The wheel has turned full circle, because in GB, steam engines on the main line trail a gennie van (often a Brake / 2nd) to provide heating etc. Health and Safety would not allow anything as dangerous as the steam loco providing heating steam itself via the steam pipes in the coaches - as it had done perfectly well for 150 years. Of course, on the preserved lines, we still have "proper" steam heating and the loco fireman couples up the steam pipe when he is attaching the vacuum brake bag. On the Bluebell Railway, we used to cease steam heating on 31 April and restart it on 1 October. If your Missus says she's cold in May - September - you now have the "official line" - NO heating in "Summer" - another way to save up for your new locos this year! Leslie

Six years (1961 - 67) would seem like an eternity on today's GB railways. I'm also delighted to see that 134 will be in the "as delivered" livery which I thought looked well. Noel is, of course, quite right about the awful British diesels delivered in the 1950s - look at some of the stuff created for the 1955 BR "Modernisation" Plan. However, if my memory serves me right the British electric motors were left in place on the A and C Class with the Yankee diesel engines acting as the generators?

Report post Posted 16 hours ago I think the plan was to extend from Kingscourt to ultimately reach Cookstown, if I'm not mistaken? Yes, that would seem logical - the old Derry Central seemed to have little sidings to military establishments all over the place - like those strange little lines which branch off Swiss main lines today and promptly disappear into a mountain! Think of it - if the Wee Man from near Salzburg had invaded Home, we could have had Woolwich moguls pulling trains of British tanks on low loaders on both sides of the Irish Sea. Gives a whole new meaning to Second Front?

David Thanks for bringing us this good news. I had it on my 70th birthday pressie list, but now it'll have to be for my 73rd! This one has to be with sound - I still remember standing on Portadown platform in the 1960s and watching one accelerate away towards Belfast on the CIE Enterprise. The "vroom, vroom" as it accelerated away from the permanent restriction is as indelibly in my head as Sir Mick singing "I can't get no" - I'll be satisfied now.

Jon I think we're (you are?) talking at cross purposes. The idea was to link Kingscourt to Carrickmacross - a very short distance. Of course, then Inniskeen would have sensibly have been relaid as a triangular junction to aid access to the North via Castleblaney and Keady (roundabout and a pig to work, I would think) but in wartime, needs must. After all, in WW1, the coal for the Grand Fleet came from South Wales over such exotic lines as the Manchester and Milford in central Wales to gain routes North to Scotland and Scapa Flow. I wonder what they did during the weeks the Fleet was in Lough Swilly?

Obviously some of you guys have never made it plain to the partners in your lives just where they stood in the pecking order. Before I got married, I took The Boss on a Portrush Flyer, then didn't sit with her so that I could get a milepost seat. The honeymoon was two weeks behind the Iron Curtain bashing very obscure steam, followed by a week in Vienna so that she could visit her many friends there (and I could bash Austrian steam while she was with them). It wasn't my fault if she hadn't got the message by then? Getting back to paying for the locos and the stuff I'm producing this year (just a hint, you realise!). The Church had a solution - join the Total Abstinence guys (The Pioneers?) or become a Methodist! Either way, NOT drinking 3/4 pints a week will pay for everything that comes out this year! Just remembered, Lent's starting - give up booze for Lent and that'd pay for an A Class, at least. Get your partner to give up chocolate for Lent and you can have a rake of Ferts as well? No charge for the advice!

John remarked on the MGWR intentions re Northward expansion and the GNR answer by building the line to Carrickmacross. In 1940, or 1941, there was a distinct danger of the little Austrian invading the UK via the Free State. In such a situation, the Brits expected to be invited to help repel the Wehrmacht. They realised that with just the GN mainline, plus possibly the Cavan lines and the SLNCR, they were in danger of having their line of logistics cut off. So two young engineering officers were told to put on civvies and do a preliminary survey to estimate how long it would take to extend the line North to Carrick and so produce a further supply line. They duly did this and one of them, later the UK Inspecting Officer of Railways, Lt Colonel McNaughton, told the IRRS London Area that they reckoned to be able to put in a basic link in a couple of weeks. War does concentrate the mind?

Not at all, Noel, try them behind a grey J15! Well done Railer for finding that one - the equivalent of an original C Class pulling the fertiliser. I'm quite surprised that it moved them!

Jon Why stop at something like that when you could model Keady, complete with the Connaught narrow gauge going underneath the GN by the tunnel WHICH IS STILL THERE! In fact, why stop at that, pretend partition never happened, the Keady line stayed open, so you could have CIE diesels on the broad gauge and West Clare type F Class diesels on the Connaught Express on the narrow gauge? Use your imagination Man! What's this stuff in my glass - I must stop drinking Black Bush at night!

Ah, Mike, 100 Billion? Just don't build the next two aircraft carriers? Oh, that's wrong too - they're less than ten billion a throw. Getting back to Peter Smyth - he's certainly on top of the Game with interesting ideas for IE's future trains.

When Peter Smyth spoke to the London Area of the IRRS recently, he specifically mentioned the Class 185s as possible leased stock. David, when you asked about a model, I thought - "but it's a Desiro and there's a couple of models on the market". Ah no, never trust a steam man talking about Diseasals - the 185s are a Desiro with a "Face"! The models might do for the intermediate cars, but not the driving trailers! However, we've got some nice uncomfortable new electrics on the GWR - you can have them cheap - they already have diesel engines in them as they are "electric" trains, designed to run on an un-electrified railway. You couldn't make it up! No-one would believe that the Brits more or less invented railways and look at the place now! I must fill in my passport form. Bring back the HSTs! Hey, you could have a few of those - lovely trains even though they're forty years old!

Thanks, Eoin, for doing that research - the old maps can be a mine of information. Ernie, thanks for the shot of 137. Not for the loco, but it's the first view I think I have seen of the format of the rear wall of the Broadstone roundhouse. Now, who's going to build a model of Broadstone in MGWR days? - The buildings are still there to work off and now we have a bit more info on the loco shed.

Richie, You certainly left me scratching my head when I read this post, so I'd be interested to hear the "evidence". Oddly enough, the GNR history (both Patterson and Murray) make little comment on the Company's loco sheds. A scan of the IRRS Journal index proved fruitless as well. Ah, I thought, take a look at Norman Johnson's GN loco book - nope! It did yield a photo of the shed we now know as Amiens Street Shed which was taken at least a hundred years ago and it clearly is today's structure. So, cough up the info, young man! It is strange that while British sheds have been the subject of several dozen books on sheds - I think at least fifty - no-one seems to have written any kind of treatise on them for Ireland. Well done, Ernie - it's appalling that I forgot the Guinness roundhouse, having scanned slides of it recently!

Hi Dave You are right about Broadstone. Part of it, roofless, remained into the 1950s, at least. Loads of photos of steam locos in front of the remains at that time. To it you can add Clones and Portadown which were copies of each other and built in the late 1920s in Ferro-concrete. The one at Clones is still there in industrial use. As for models - well, the Portadown one has been modelled by William Redpath and was on show at Cultra last November - see the thread under "What's On on this site. He's done a super job. I'm as jealous as can be, for the same set-up, without the actual roundhouse is in my left, for my railway is based around "Portadown Jct". Time to concentrate on the layout before it's too late?