leslie10646

Thanks, Darius, they do look very well. However, I'm just the middle man - the Modelling Genius is Michael Rayner, who is EIGHTY on Wednesday! I must get a card in the post!!!! Having persuaded him to do the Bulleid corrugated wagon (not an easy modelling task) - they sold pretty well (my best seller); the next step was to copy IR, stack two bodies on each other and make a flat chassis to go underneath and Hey Presto a Double-height Beet wagon. Not content with that, we sell the flat on it's own .......

We had a term much used in NI when I was young - "He's a Chancer"! We'll see if they're sold at that price........ There are guys who collect all Dapol commissions and I think that this outfit is hoping to kid some of them into filling gaps in their collections! They ignore that while they were Dapol wagons, what was on them WASN'T! No, I wasn't rooting around in my garage - I was commissioning more wagons from Dapol ........

This hydrogen thing has been blown up (pun intended) out of all proportion. It is NOT a solution except you have electricity to waste creating it! The UK civil servants have been deluding our "politicians" with it for several years - anything to do the sensible thing and put up the wires. This month's Modern Railways has a brilliant article pointing out how cheaply branch lines could be electrified and then re-use unwanted, older but serviceable EMUs.

The shot on the spoil train would have been in the early days of the contract while a brake van was still included. So some time in 1967 - they were still included in May 1967. I know someone who will tell you the name of the fireman, if you wanted to know! I have a scan of John's notes too - not as easy to follow as Lance's!

Thanks for bringing this up Skinner. Speaking as an enthusiast, of course it would be good, but the practical part of me asks - "Is there a dual carriageway road paralleling the route?" If so, where is the traffic?

John Dewing. The lower shot could show the Great Man, who was given to cycling holidays in Ireland. More likely, it is his companion on that particular trip. He cycled to IRRS London meetings right into his eighties and was always great Craic in the pub afterwards. Pity about the re-mounting / copying - with the Casserley stuff we bought it was more a matter of being over used and loaned to folk who didn't take care of his negatives when in their possession.

The NCC dumped locos are at Adelaide, as Lance King took them from a different angle (in colour!). The shot is part of my NCC talk. Where else would you get such a gathering of older NCC locos? Was the photographer on the Coaling stage to get the angle? Lance's shot was taken on 17 May 1959, if that helps date this?

As Galteemore says, they weren't in great order. In the summer of 1964, I took my first "Runabout" Ticket - then 70/- (£3.50) for a week on all trains and buses in NI. The bus could be useful if on the S Class-hauled 3pm to Derry you chickened out at Pomeroy (of making the Zero Minute connection at Omagh onto the 5.08pm Relief - also steam) and then used the bus to get back to Dungannon to catch The Relief there! Anyway, back to the S Class. Until No.171's overhaul in RPSI ownership, I didn't get more than a "Sixty" (mph) out of one. No.171's inaugural trip to Dublin saw her do 72 mph down the Bank into Dundalk. I think that's my fastest with her! She has been timed a lot faster, but I wasn't here! David, thanks for mentioning the sojourn of the CIE S Class on the Derry Road - I can't find the logs on my computer - a panic-striken search is now beginning!

When I first saw Ballyconnell Road it was during an intended quick visit to a MR Ex at Guildford. I spent my entire two hour parking slot just walking round and round it, more amazed each time. I had to go and repark the car to see the rest of the exhibition! Mind you Mick and Co are in another League, modelling-wise!

Hi Skinner. Don't fret, IE are too clever to impose the unbelievably over engineered electrification that the Brits have done. IE's present CME is well on top of the options - he gave a brilliant talk to IRRS London about five years ago. That said, I can still get a decent shot of a steam engine "under the wires". See my shot of "Mayflower" (a B1 4-6-0) out in the country, but under the wires? The last video on "Growlers at Goring" in What's happening on the network.

Oops! 1957! Corrected in original post. Age is getting to me! Nice shot, by the way, Mr West Cork!

Hhmmm. As you're modelling 1980-ish, why the TURNTABLE? Yep, I know that you want to be able to turn the 121s, but I suspect they ran in twos then? (JB?) Or were on push pull? If it's for the odd steam special, the steam loco could run out to your triangle? Final wind-up. A single track from the terminus to the Main Line? I don't blame you if the idea was to avoid diamond crossings - nasty things - I did the same to the Armagh Line on my layout to take away a troublesome diamond - and I'm trying to get rid of the other one at Portadown Jct itself! Good luck with it Adrian. I presume that you're 30/40 with the time to get it done by the time that you retire - good strategy and better than leaving it until you're in your seventies and can't get under the boards!

That's a clever shot of the little Guinness tank, within the brewery area, but a piece of the Kingsbridge facade visible - good composition! No.85 was almost certainly taken on my 13th birthday 10 June 1957 - again an identical shot in the Lance King collection! I've just received from one of "my team" a massive batch of scans of the late David Soggee's slides. A bit of a distraction from digitising points on the layout upstairs. Why do Peco put such short wires on their point motors - another 10cms and my job would be a lot easier!

Ernie, your recent colour shots were all taken by someone travelling in an early LCGB group when Lance King was leading - they give a different slant on the trip. Lance didn't miss much, but your guy did pick different angles which show a different scene. Glad you've managed to add them to your collection.

Actually, John, this is why I asked. 00 Works next Irish loco is another version of the J15. This class meets all the typical IRM criteria - lots of them, many variants (and to some extent liveries), but on the same chassis. While Roderick's little locos are pretty good (I've got five of them), I don't think they'd match a "Full Fat" IRM one. Hence my quandary is, do I order a Z boiler / large tender J15 to go with my two 4'4" boiler, small tender locos? Knowing that a J15 is a pretty logical steam loco for them to do? Part of me says, you're 77 in four weeks, Roderick will give you the engine this year and give you another year's (or maybe more) running it! Of course, there's the other issue that J15s never got to Portadown! John, your other point on the low sales of the Class UG (and the U Class) was due to the perceived high price. I wish I'd bought a dozen Us / UGs then, I could have sold them at a decent profit - much better than current interest rates!

Never mind the coaches - WHEN do we hear what your IRISH STEAM ENGINE is going to be?

Interesting what James said about the GNRI. With JC Park from the English GN and then Glover and Howden from the North Eastern ....... Who cares? It was a wonderful railway! "Railways" cover such a wide spectrum that people see attractions in all manner of places. I loved the "Southern" because it gave me a load of very exciting runs in my late teens / early twenties - even named my son for the designer. Then I went to Germany and had even more fast runs - and switched from toying with Irish modelling to Fleischmann. My son then got a German name to add to that of the Blessed Oliver....... Then SSM came along and the rest, as they say is history! I have been blessed with an urge to travel (steam logs from over two dozen countries), then after retirement, I got paid to do it! Even more things to distract me - Switzerland, the Trans Siberian (I paid for that myself) and China. I'm old and creaking now, but, boy, have I been blessed! As our French cousins would say - "Vive La difference".

Colin You'd save a fortune on rolling stock. A CAF set for the "local trains" and an ICR for Dublin excursions - of course, you really should do the whole triangle with the Loop Line Platform - then you'd need that Yurt? Joking apart, it'd make a great model railway and Tullygrainey could loan his BCDR diesels and steam!

Beats my S Class on 11 bogies!

Don't do it - you'd get four customers - I can probably name them ...... Someone in the Stock Market understands that too, with Hornby shares losing a third of their value this year.

Hi James and welcome. Harcourt Street station building is still there, so you can pop along and measure it? The line was elevated indeed. But how high? There is a photo of a loco which went through the end wall and finished almost in the street. It was a little loco, so maybe 20 feet long? Work out the angle it's at and do the sums? I never was any good at maths ........

Best wishes to Wexford MRC this weekend - I hope the exhibition is a brilliant success. Apologies for our non-appearance - my Sales Person is in New York! Looking forward to reports from those who can attend!

Steven, thanks for the heads up. That's the highest buyer's premium I have ever seen!

If the photo was taken in 1964, then I can't help with this, but Jim's surmise above (that No.207 had failed at Dundalk) is probably correct. Why? Well on 15 July 1965 I was on the 0925 excursion with No.207, hauling 10 bogies. She ran to Dundlak, non-stop in 83 minues (Schedule 81) and was declared a failure with a Hot Box (which one I didn't record!). She was replaced by A19 which struggled up Castlebellingham in the forties (the VS would have been around a mile a minute here) and then failed at Drogheda. A27 took over and struggled to get into even the low fifties - mind you they were still with their original engines then! For the return journey, WT No.56 had a reduced laod of eight coaches and ran like the wind throughout - with a full 75mph inn the Knockarney Dip.

@iarnrod Sorry that we can't help at present - a lack of volunteers in Dublin, compounded by the deaths of two of the Archive Team. Post Lockdown, nothing is back to normal in Dublin on Tuesday nights (the Library Night, when it used to be possible to access the Archive in cpmpany with one of the Team) or with our drawings. Following Covid and Lockdown, everything needs to be restructured, and it is taking a long time because it is complicated.