GSWR 90

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!

Yes, I’d say we’ll keep the locos etc up the yard for a while. No major flooding in 40 years then twice in two months demonstrates that we should be on our toes for at least the next few weeks. We are considering several options to minimise the impact of future flooding, all of which are very expensive – we will look into them more when things have settled down. Although a lot of people have been extremely generous, for which we are all extremely grateful, last time I checked the total value of donations is about 1% of the estimated total cost of the damage – so recouping the cost of repairs alone will be extraordinarily difficult, never mind paying for flood mitigation measures. Although we can apply for grants, grant applications are very arduous, time-consuming processes that have a relatively small chance of success and only apply to subjects within narrow parameters, often things like accessibility and environmental sustainability which won’t be of much help to us at the moment. On top of this, as I’ve said before, the NI Secretary of State is in charge of the government financial relief (which has been taken from other NI departments) which we have not been eligible for to date – as far as I’m aware there has not been a Northern Irish MP in the British Cabinet since Edward Carson, so I don’t think we’ll be able to do anything about that any time soon. We are a lot lower down than the rest of the town and we’re in the River Quoile’s very wide flood plane so flood barriers etc don’t seem to be an option. A lot of people have been calling for the Quoile to be dredged (during the flood some areas were blocked up with debris to such an extent that the discharge was less than half of what it should be), but the Department for Infrastructure said that that would have a negligible impact on flood risk. It’s worth mentioning that the river was last dredged in the 1990s and major flooding has only occurred 30 years later after it has been significantly silted up. I understand that flooding is a very complex and multi-faceted issue, but personally I remain unconvinced of the ineffectiveness of dredging, particularly since there has been no explanation or elaboration on this stance. Unfortunately since there’s no Stormont, there’s no infrastructure minister to give a detailed explanation on this, and there are no MLAs to hold the DfI to account. Making the shed doors watertight won’t be of much help since water seeps up through the inspection pits in the Maghera Shed and the Workshop (I don’t know how to make these watertight but I assume it’s not cheap), the former of which has big wooden sliding doors which would need to be completely replaced. The sandbags were only put around the Gallery as a last resort – they won’t be effective against a significant flood but they can be helpful, eg during the first flood I put sandbags in front of a shop on Market Street which just caught the edge of the flood, if the water level had risen much higher then the place would have been underwater but the bags did prevent it from seeping through the door. Re Ballynoe, a lot of infrastructure, land acquisition + a bridge over the main road needed to have a base there, I imagine too much money and work for at least the medium term. I am not sure about a railtour as we have our hands full at the moment, I’m going to pass the buck on to Táilte Tours on that issue! In spite of all this, plus the usual sectarian trolling that businesses in Downpatrick and Newry have received, we’re all blown away with the financial and moral support that you’ve all been giving us. Several railways in Britain have provided us with vital advice and logistical support on dealing with flood-damaged locos as well. Hopefully we’ll have a nice event to celebrate our recovery at some point in the future.

Packing sandbags around the Carriage Gallery. Spitting in the wind maybe but better than nothing. Most of the stuff in the new loco shed has been moved off the floor

G, B, 80s, bruff + dumper are being moved up the yard to minimise risk of flood damage

Water is rising again. Like I said before ground is saturated from extremely heavy rain over the last two months. Please keep us in your thoughts tonight!

For better or worse, G617 seems to largely be working again. It's diesel hydraulic with a chain final drive, so no traction motors to dry out unlike the A/B/C/railcars, so main problems were axleboxes + an electrical fault.

Also worth mentioning that the UK government has already given £1,700,000 to affected businesses to date, out of the total of £15,000,000 allocated for flood relief by the Northern Ireland Secretary – of that £1,700,000, we have received a whopping £0.00. For context, the estimated total of the damage caused by the flooding throughout Northern Ireland is about £30,000,000 (and I assume that's not including the particularly high cost of the damage to DCDR as they didn't consult us on this). Unfortunately nothing anyone in Northern Ireland can do about it as we don't have an Assembly at the moment.

The cost of the damage is racking up well into the hundreds (and hundreds) of thousands of pounds, with the pile of destroyed machinery in the workshop getting higher and higher. Everything from extremely expensive lasers for the new tamper to much of the fencing around the station, as well as essential equipment for maintaining the permanent way, are badly damaged/beyond repair. And on top of that, diesel locos/bridges etc. need to be professionally inspected, which in itself will cost many thousands of pounds in addition to any repairs that need to be carried out. Will we hit the magic million? Stay tuned to find out! On the plus side, the 450 missed a lot of the floodwater due to its position in the yard, and after a massive amount of work to replace the grease in all the axleboxes + electricy things, it now appears to mostly be working again.

According to the website’s admin it went offline as their card expired. Should be back online over the next few days

Underneath power car 90

Thank you! It's very much appreciated!

Always and never are words that you must always remember never to use! It's not a case of 186 never steaming again, it just likely won't steam again for the foreseeable future as far as we are aware. Maybe eventually 93 in Cultra would be a nice size for Downpatrick or Maam Cross

Many thanks to everyone for your support, whether you’re donating money, spreading our message, or even just liking our posts. It really means a lot to us all. This October was the wettest on record for County Down, with this year seeing almost twice the average rainfall for that month – this raised the water table in the Downpatrick area, meaning that the heavy rain at the end of the month had nowhere to go apart from above the ground’s surface. In the 40 years that DCDR has been here, we’ve never seen any flooding even remotely close to this. This map from 1729 shows Downpatrick before the land drainage in the area and construction of a tidal barrier in the mid-18th century. Before this, what is now the River Quoile was once part of Strangford Lough. Our station is just south of where the cathedral is (Down Cathedral, which still stands and where St Patrick is buried) on this map; the station’s approximate location has been marked with a red X. The railway runs through several drumlins (small hills created during the last ice age which are common in County Down) which were islands before the land reclamation, and were briefly islands again during the flood. It’s interesting to note that some of the drumlins/islands still retain their original names today, even though they haven’t been surrounded by water for a long time, eg Horse Island, Hog Island, Inch Abbey (Mainistir na hInse = Abbey of the Island). Also interesting to see Plague Island mentioned – I assume it’s named in reference to St Nicholas’ leprosy hospital, which was established in the medieval period very close to where our railway station is today.

Hard to believe that the end of December will make 10 years since 186 was last in steam! Where does the time go? I would be very surprised if DCDR were to turn down any 5’3” loco offered to it, regardless of what size it is or what state it’s in, without thinking very long and very hard about it first!

It’s worth mentioning that the storm that caused the flood did quite a lot of damage to the loco shed’s roof. So there won’t be any work on No 90 or any of the other steam locos until the roof is repaired. You can donate to the flood recovery fund here. On a slightly less depressing note, I am working on a few projects to raise money for 90’s overhaul, but given how preoccupied everyone at DCDR is with the flood recovery it’ll be a good few months before it’s all ready.

Another one, this time from the Railway Magazine c.1900, featuring No. 91. Also a photo of it after rebuilding.

The Locomotive Magazine featured GSWR 90 (simply designated as “C” at the time) in its 16/5/1903 issue, complete with a photo of the loco in its original condition – this is the only photo of it like this that I’ve ever seen. I’m 99% sure it’s 90, as the carriage portion on this railmotor is very different than that on No 91, and even more different than that on No 92. The article reads: “Our first illustration needs little description, beyond the fact that the combination engine and carriage here shown was, until quite recently, running on the Gortatlea and Castleisland Railway of the GSWR of Ireland, whence within the last few years it has been transferred to the Fermoy and Mitchelstown branch of the same company. The engine is of small dimensions throughout, having cylinders only 10 in diameter with a stroke of 18 inches, 3 ft 6 in coupled wheels, a total heating surface of 362 sq ft, and a weight in roadworthy condition of 23t 7cwts. While in service in Kerry, the carriage on the engine frame was, curiously enough, not used for carrying passengers.”

The Downpatrick & County Down Railway is facing its biggest ever crisis. The recent flooding saw substantial damage to our rolling stock and infrastructure, which is estimated to cost at least £250,000 (approx €290,000). It’s a long road ahead, but with YOUR support, we can recover. With YOUR help, our fantastic community of supporters, you can help us rebuild and restore the Downpatrick and County Down Railway, Ireland’s only standard gauge heritage railway, back to its former glory. Your donation, no matter the size, will make a significant impact. It will contribute to repairing the damage, and ensuring that our beloved railway remains a source of pride for people across Ireland, the UK, and beyond for many generations to come. You can donate to the appeal by following this link.

Following preliminary examinations by our loss assessors, it seems that the floods have caused, at the very least, £250,000 (approx €290,000) worth of damage to infrastructure, machinery, etc. That doesn't include loss of earnings or damage to our locomotives and carriages, which we are currently looking into. We're still in the process of setting up a fundraiser, but if you want to support DCDR in the meantime you can buy some Christmas cards from our eBay shop or you can buy a GSWR 90 badge from the Táilte Tours website. Thanks.

Time to start un-wrecking the place. Things are very bad, but it’s important to stay positive – like I said before, at least the water didn’t get into any carriage bodies or diesel engine rooms. 458 seems to have made a lucky escape, everything else not so much. On top of everything else, the place is filled with condensation, so the electricity is slowly getting worse. We’ve had the green light from our insurer to do a fundraiser, so we should be getting started with that over the next weeks or so. I was hoping that we’d start 90’s fundraiser about now, but sin an saol!

Thank you very much for your donations. It’s really been heartwarming to see the amount of support that we’ve been given from both the local community in County Down and the railway enthusiast community across Ireland, the UK, and beyond. We will hopefully start a fundraising appeal over the next week or so, following discussions with our insurers.

Well, as far as I can see we won’t need to scrap any rolling stock. But it’s important to bear a few things in mind. For a lot of the spares that we have, they stopped making them 30+ years ago (particularly railcar parts), and a lot of the track machinery will cost a fortune to replace. For the diesel locos, we don’t have the facilities to simply lift them up to take a look at the condition of the bogies or replace a traction motor. And we only have 4-5 people who work on our diesel locos regularly. When everything settles down and we have everything assessed, we will need people + money to sort this out.

FLOODING UPDATE Since I last posted, a few of us have gone on site to make a preliminary assessment of the damage. Apart from the station building, all of the buildings/sheds have had at least some water in them, ranging from a max of about 5 foot in parts of the Workshop to about 18 inches in the Maghera Shed. Containers for track equipment and railcar spares were also under about 3 foot of water as well. This means that the water level has gone above the axleboxes of a lot of our rolling stock, and that the traction motors are wet on most of our diesel-electric locos and railcars. The Diesel Gala in January has been cancelled, but we’re looking into different formats for our Christmas trains. If you’re interested in supporting us, you can become a member of DCDR at https://www.downrail.co.uk/get-involved/become-a-member/ The red line on 836 shows approx where the water went up to in the Carriage Gallery.

Worth bearing in mind that the frames, wheelsets, dome, and cab front are all original!