GSWR 90

Very well done to IÉ and the IRRS for making this possible. I’m very tempted to go on the IRRS railtour, but I can’t afford a hotel in Cork! Táilte Tours put up a great article about the 2600s a few weeks ago – you can read it here

Well, 90 was running railtours on the mainline not so long ago…

Unfortunately I was unable to go due to a personal commitment and my replacement had to pull out at the last minute due to a medical emergency, so we were unable to attend. Hopefully the run-up to the next model show won't be so unlucky!

If they do release an 80 class, and if they do a DCDR version, I hope it’ll be 69+749 rather than 90+752. It’d be hard to get the graffiti on 90 and the rust on 752 exactly right.

It’s alive! FullSizeRender.MOV

We have a table booked. We’ve been to a few model shows before accepting donations and selling stock from our shop

Can we get back on topic please?

It’s useless to us and it originally worked in Britain for BR, so I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.

The railbus isn’t on loan from the UFTM, it’s owned by DCDR. Someone had the not-so-bright idea of bringing it to Downpatrick in 2001 for regular shuttle services, without understanding that there was a reason why it wasn’t put into mass production. We now have the 80 and the 450 for such services anyway, which are more historically important, are wheelchair-accessible, have a much larger seating capacity, and are easier to use. As mentioned in one of our members’ newsletters last year, DCDR agreed to transfer it to a relatively new project, the Gwendraeth Valley Railway in Wales. As there are a lot of moving parts involved in setting up a railway, it’ll likely be a while before it moves to Wales.

I will try and summarise my own thoughts on some of the questions/comments above: Is €3mn the final estimate? As Horsetan mentioned above, people will continuously find bits and pieces to add to the bill, but €3mn seems to be the ballpark so far according to an independent assessor + our own calculations. I think it's important to emphasise that it's not a case of DCDR never running again unless we get the entire €3mn – we'd have raided Moyasta by now if things were that bad! How are you able to boost your income in the meantime? Like I mentioned before, we offered a non-railway related alternative for our Christmas passengers, but while we wait for insurance/government funding if either ever materialise) our main source of income is through donations. We've had a quiz night a few weeks ago and we're having a fundraiser at the Strand Cinema in Belfast on the 24th of February. We'd love to organise more events but we need more people + resources, we are a bit overstretched at the moment. A few people have even very kindly donated some models for us to auction online, and I have organised some new merchandise which we will hopefully () be able to sell online at some point. Is the ground currently waterlogged? No more than usual for this time of year. Will the flooding happen again? It is possible, but there are a few of things to bear in mind: A flood like this has not happened in Downpatrick in approx. 70 years, and it was the wettest November in County Down c.100 years. The Department for Infrastructure is currently assessing flood mitigation measures. Parts of it were blocked with so much sediment that its discharge was reduced to less than 50% during the flood. Yes, 'freak' weather events are becoming more frequent, but this will massively help drainage in the future. We know what to do if there's a flood risk – a while after the floodwaters subsided they started to rise again while the water table was still high, so we moved the locos/railcars up to the end of the yard where the water didn't go above rail level. A person also very kindly took drone footage of the line during the flood, so we know where we can store other items of rolling stock out the line during a flood if necessary. We know that the water will go no higher than platform height before it drains off into Market Street – so it won't get inside any of our carriages or locos bodies. We are now storing a lot more stuff on shelves, and we'll be particularly careful when storing things during the winter. Should DCDR invest in flood defences? There don't seem to be many viable flood defence options where we are apart from enhanced river maintenance (i.e. removing potential blockages more frequently). In addition, flood defences are extremely expensive – we’d be spending tens on thousands on assessments and consultations to be told either that we can spend millions on flood defences or that we don’t have any suitable options. If we spent all our money on that, we wouldn't have enough left to run trains. Can you sell rolling stock to a UK line? Anything we'd want to sell is stuff that we don't want because there's something wrong with it – it would be difficult to sell even if there wasn't the gauge problem. It would be very hard to even give stuff away. Can you sell rolling stock to a collector? Same as above. Also, there aren’t really any collectors of 5’3” rolling stock. Can you sell rolling stock for scrap? At the very most we'd get a few thousand euro per vehicle – that's a drop in the ocean, and will not fix any of our problems. There needs to be a very good reason to get rid of something which is historically valuable or will be useful to us eventually, even if that's in the very long term. Is there a risk that we end up saving nothing? No, the railway doesn't have €3mn to hand but it's not insolvent. We will not go under if this sum of money doesn't materialise, but the less funding we have the more difficult things will be and the longer the recovery will take. The A class, B class, G class, and the 450 are all under repair and are currently operational at least to some extent.

A brief update to fill you in over what has been going on at Downpatrick over the past while: We have added up the total cost of the flood damage with the help of assessors/insurance adjusters: including locos, machinery, infrastructure, etc. we will be out of pocket up to approx. £2,500,000 (€3,000,000) – no, that is not a typo! We have not received anything from the government's assistance scheme. The requirements for the next round of funding applications are grim reading – I would bet money that we will not receive a single penny. Cleanup is well underway, as far as I have seen the sheds are generally cleared now but the floors will likely need to be professionally cleaned. It's sad to see tens of thousands of pounds of equipment being simply chucked into a skip in a matter of seconds. We're at the point where we're gathering up wooden sleepers/debris which have floated around the yard. Passengers who had booked tickets on our Santa trains had the option of either receiving a refund or attending an alternative Christmas event that we organised in the nearby Down County Museum, who went to great lengths to very kindly host us. Although the vast majority of passengers did opt for a refund, the static event slightly softened the financial blow of losing our Christmas + diesel gala revenue. I don't think it would be an understatement to say that this is one of the greatest crises ever faced by railway preservation on this island. You can donate to our recovery appeal here – many people have been extremely generous, for which we are extremely grateful, but we'll need a lot more support if we're going to be restoring and running trains in the future.

It is with great pleasure that I inform you all that No 90 was not swept away from the floods. Her boiler cladding came in handy for insulating the diesel locos’ traction motors when they were being dried out. It will be a while before we start working on her again but at least she’s safe. Most of the parts taken off her so far were stored in/on G613 so they are safe as well.

Anyway, the point I was making re the Cabinet was that the current NI Secretary of State is not very popular in Downpatrick. Several weeks ago, he was to attend a meeting of people impacted by the flood to announce details of the recovery fund and to answer questions from business owners etc. While they were waiting for him, the SoS briefly met with our MP to tell him that the recovery fund was going to be roughly half of what was originally expected, then the SoS bravely left through the back door and flew back to Britain without speaking to any of the retailers! Our MP was not pleased with having to announce these details to an angry crowd on his own while being unable to do anything about it.

Interesting, thank you! I knew there was going to be some caveat to my original post

Good point. Would therefore be a stretch to say that we’ve ever had an MP in the cabinet, and I doubt that will change any time soon to allow us better access to relief money. As one of my colleagues said, Mo Mowlam would have been down in Downpatrick in her wellies!