DERAILED

Hours away from breaking up - any takers - price reduced to €150 plus p+p?

Ultra rare Working Timetable showing details of all DSER lines including the Shillelagh branch and the North Wexford line (Macmine Junction/Waterford). Worn but clean condition as it is only a paper item - no card cover. €40 including .p+p.

Another set of these reports - 7 in number - has come my way. Before I give in to my usual bad ways of breaking the set and selling the maps separately would somebody take the whole lot off my hands? They are in well used condition - see images - but the maps alone are worth well more than the asking price. And, no, before anybody asks I'm not going to open them all out to photograph them - too fragile and the lucky buyer can do that to their hearts content. They are all there and worth the gamble. Just €200 plus p+p or can be collected from Enniscorthy.

A nice clean copy of the 1948 CIE Working Timetable. Loads of long lost lines - T&D, West Clare, Clara/Streamstown, Shillelagh, West Cork, Cashel and much more. 84 pages plus light card cover. Does not look like it ever saw use as there's no cabin or station name on it. First offer of €40 including p+p secures. You won't be disappointed! SOLD!

It was Channel 5 (?) Anyway, it was Chris Tarrant and the whole video is here:

This is the big one (22 inches x 30 inches) and ultra rare. The last example seen at auction was at Sheffield Railwayana Auctions in 1990 and it went for £1,150. This one has been in the owners possession for more than twenty years. It is cracked from top to bottom - see mark on image - and it is held together by a strip of iron across the top - on the reverse. Further pics are available. This steel is probably part of what it was originally attached to rather than a later addition. The new owner could get it repaired by somebody specialising in cast iron welding but in reality it would not be needed as it is quite stable and if it was me I would just strip and repaint it. €800 delivered to Dublin or can be collected from Enniscorthy for €750. Alternatively you can wait until I get it repaired and shipped to a UK saleroom.

A while back I posted about CC1 on another thread regarding the stock that it hauled on its various test runs and since then Belfast artist, David Briggs, did this wonderful painting for me. CC1 -The Turf Burner Trials - David Briggs. First commission of 2021 ready to go to its new home! The setting for this painting is Inchicore on the mainline from Dublin to Cork. It has been the main workshops for the railways in the Republic of Ireland since it was constructed by the Great Southern & Western railway in the mid 1840’s. The castellated facade on the right hand side of the painting fronted vast workshops, the smaller building on the left hand side of the view was until recent times a signal cabin. In the mid 1950s the then Irish state transport company was CIE. They had already begun a process of dieselisation indeed one of their early diesel locomotives can be seen in the background approaching on the shed road. It is a Metro Vic A class - A57, one of a class of 60 that would undertake the bulk of mainline duties for many years, and prove very successful once re-engined with General Motors power plants., however the main featured loco in the painting is what is of interest here. As a result of a late 1940’s report (the Milne report ) into the state of Irish railways the chairman of CIE Thaddeus C Courtney ( in the painting with the camel coloured coat and bowler hat ) invited one of the committee who carried out the study, one OVS Bulleid to join CIE as Consulting Mechanical Engineer ( later Chief Mechanical Engineer - CME ). Oliver Bulleid resigned as CME of the southern region of British Rail and moved to Ireland. He was one of the last of the famous CME’s of the steam era and although some of his ideas were questioned at times by his peers he was undoubtedly an able engineer and designer. Ireland had little suitable coal resources for steaming but did have abundant supplies of low calorific value fuel in the form of peat or turf as its more commonly known. Bulleid reckoned he could design and build a suitable locomotive that utilised this fuel and thus was born CC1 - The Turf Burner. As this is a narrative to give context to the painting I won’t go into the details of how it works but it makes interesting reading if you care to do your own research! Ultimately the project was not pursued just as with Bulleids other innovative project for BR ‘ The Leader’. You can do your own homework on that one too! Our scene here then is CC1 passing Inchicore on a test train to Cork in October 1957 with a hotch potch of available carriages ( purely to provide a load for the loco ) . The loco would ultimately be fully painted in lined green but during the trials was as is usual painted in workshop grey. Bulleid ( black coat, red bow tie, and bowler hat ) is explaining to the ‘ brass’ at Inchicore some technical point or other as the train, driven by a skilled and enthusiastic Inchicore works driver Michael Keely, passes heading west. Bulleid designed and built other excellent rolling stock during his time in Ireland, however he tends to be remembered on both sides of the Irish sea for his more ‘outside the box’ type thinking and perhaps not concentrating on maximising the company’s effficient operating and therefore profit. He was certainly a visionary but the steam age was coming to an end and so was his career, he retired in 1958 to Devon and then Malta where he died in 1970 aged 87. I think he was just born too late for his steam engineering dreams to be fulfilled.

Ah, a bit like painting the West Cork stations before closure so. I need to invest in some railway books instead of having to ask dopey questions here but the reason will be unveiled in due course. And, no, I haven't found CC1 hidden in a walled up tunnel!

Many thanks, just what I was looking for...and another question. When were the warning stripes and lining out added as all the pics that I can find online of testing show the loco as above?

Not Noo Yawk - nearer to home - and can be viewed at Dromod unless it has been flogged to somebody.

I urgently need any information on the rolling stock that was hauled by CC1 when on trial and or when it operated some services to Cork. Anything at all - what services did it operate? I'm aware that it would have hauled old GSWR bogie stock on the Inchicore Trial train but did it ever haul 1950s CIE passenger stock. I know about all the different books but I haven't time to order same as I need the info. today or tomorrow at the latest. Thanks in advance for any information, links etc.

Probably worth about €10 as seller has at least cleaned it up. Yet another chancer!

I note that a photograph of mine - 175 at Newcastle West - has also been used without permission or credit on the Tralee/Fenit Greenway website.

Still haven't done the WRC or Midleton since they reopened - surely proof that I'm an ex.enthusiast. In fact I've never done the WRC or even Limerick/Ennis by regular service train - plenty of times by specials. I did both Red Luas lines as soon as they opened and before they became a scumbag playground.

Irish Railways (Irish Environmental Library Series: 44). by Kevin Murray. Coloured illustrations by Peter Jay. Published by Folens in 1978. 82 pages, full-colour illustrations. Text is crisp and clean, saddle-stitched binding is tight. Scarce title. €15 including p+p or can be collected from Enniscorthy.

@Wrenneire I know there was somebody reproducing these fence signs a long time ago and your one seems in remarkable nick for something attached to a fence for years.

A wonderful Art Deco GSR brochure aimed at the visitor to Ireland. 40 pages, folded brochure with maps, fares hotels and more. In virtually unread condition. See scans for details. €20 including p+p or can be collected from Enniscorthy. collectireland@gmail.com will get the quickest response.

There's some unhealthy level of toxicity in the world of Irish railway preservation - I'm so glad to be long out of it. There's some pictures of Moyasta here - no date - but I suspect quite recent. http://www.industrialheritage.eu/2021/European-Year-Rail/ENDANGERED/IE/rolling-stock-at-Moyasta4 I moved on to check on the ITG and there's some appalling stuff about them posted by some Aussie (?) nutter on Facebook - evil people etc. They are probably responsible for Covid-19 too. There would be no standard gauge diesel preservation in Ireland were it not for the efforts of WISRA, GSRPS and head and shoulders above the rest - the evil ITG.

Surely there's acres of space in Inchicore Works that this "state of the art" centre could be built in without removing causing any problems?

Perhaps they been moved to Waterford for the Waterford/Rosslare preservation scheme - that old GSWR six-wheeler would be a major asset. More seriously, I heard that the Halfway stuff still exists on a private site in West Cork.

Amazing footage. I was sure one of the lifting rigs was going to topple on top of the guy directing operations. What weight is in one of those locos - 200+ tons? Also amazed that the road under the bridge was still open to traffic given the combustible cargo on the train. Only in America do they just get stuck in and get on with it.

Never seen a photograph of the Halt before. The strange angle of the photograph makes it seem like the line is blocked by a landslide - so much so that I had to look it up on the Geohive site to make sure the hotel platform wasn't on a Curragh siding style branch! Anyway, I assume you will be including Jotter's postcard of the Hotel in your book? I have a spare copy if needed.

Love that sound!

An April 1921 view of the front of the LNWR Hotel (right hand side of the building) and a group of Black and Tans put on a show of bravado after surviving an IRA attack on the hotel. More here: https://www.facebook.com/eastwallhistory/posts/837545859647959 and more railway pictures on that FB page.