Markleman

Actually, he was assured "by 1966 the roads from Belfast to Londonderry via Portadown will be almost entirely good trunk road or motorways". He was also told of the soon to be built Belfast urban motorway connecting the motorways from Bangor and Carryduff.

Leslie As part of his brief Benson was expected to recommend shutting the entire NI system down, but he rejected total closure. He proposed retaining a suburban service run using "austere but clean and not uncomfortable" trains (which is what almost happened). He also proposed reopening the Central Line which had been unlawfully severed, new rolling stock, and increased frequencies. The 1961 "Blue Book" had envisaged closing the entire NI system within ten years. Benson, only two years later, said that some should be kept. He says that he was assured that "by 1966 the roads from Belfast to Londonderry with be almost entirely good trunk road or motorways", which is not true in 2025 and looks like taking many years yet to achieve. The UTA was quite capable of closing railway lines without asking anyone (other than a rubber stamp from the Transport Tribunal). By asking Benson they accidentally spoiled their plans to shut the whole thing. I am not about to drink a toast to his health (which is rather a moot point in 2025) but without him there would have been no NIR at all, no RPSI, and no railway North of the Border.

Yes Leslie - even I am ancient enough to have visited the refreshment room in Mullingar. In 1974 I was doing an all-Ireland rover trip. On 3 July 1974 we travelled to Mullingar from the Athlone direction and were changing trains to head towards Sligo. Being July it was cold. The place was called something like "The Woodbrook Refreshment Room" after the racecourse. Present with me were Aubrey Dale and Michael Norris as he was back then. We had tea and a scone. The place was run by a very strict lady, assisted by two girls who looked about 16 and seemed very alarmed by their boss. The boss barked orders to them. The staff had white pinny-type covers on, like the tea room in Dad's Army. We had to put in a bit of time before heading off for Longford so it was a good chance to get into the warm. We knew at the time that we were enjoying a bit of history. We also used the refresh in Claremorris which was totally different place - just a dark room and totally informal. Mullingar was bright and neat but clearly run to a strict routine. It could never have lasted, but it was great experience to sample it while we could. Great layout - how Mullingar station has changed over the years.

He has confirmed this happening and he has promised to get the details if he can find them. I have seen the slide myself and it was shown at an MRSI slide show. it is a pity that year NIR provided their own traction for the sprayer. At one stage they also borrowed a loco which brought a 141 class onto the Larne line. The guy in quesiton has thousands upon thousands of slides of Irish railways from 1975 to about 2010. He has never had a single slide scanned. He turned down my offer to scan the whole collection and produce a book for him. They are all in his icy loft despite us all telling him that they need to be at room temperature to avoid mould. Someday the whole collection will end up in a skip. If he ever produces the details I will post it here.

During one of these weed spraying marathons a Sulzer reached Portadown and handed over the weedsprayer to NIR there. Other than that I am not aware of them north of the border. I have sent an email to the guy who photographed it to check out the date and details.

Leslie This has happened to me before with stuff from Australia - the VAT they charged was much more than 20% of the value. There is no duty on things like that so VAT is all you should be charged. You have to pay it to get the stuff delivered, so then I appealed against it. Apparently they sometimes do not believe the values stated and make an estimate. Seemingly they believe that some unscrupulous types understate the value of things on customs declaration - I don't know why they think that. Anyhow there was a section on the HM Customs website for appealing which I did. I had to restate the value (which was what was written on the declaration in the first place). Eventually they sent me a cheque for the difference. Good luck. Jim

Returning to the idea mentioned above of modelling Lisburn in the 1970s, there was a lot of activity each night. Two (allegedly fitted) goods trains arriving from the South, two from Derry (in early 70s one MPD hauled and one 70class), much shunting to change motive power and run round and add a brown van or two (which went to Cullybackey!). Those trains brought lots of CIÉ goods stock and a lot of fiddling about. They were then followed by the early morning "paper train" passing through. Perhaps for this reason there were often stray CIÉ wagons of various sorts left at Lisburn during the day, to be hauled away by passing services to or from Belfast - more shunting. This night time shunting started in 1965 and featured pretty well any type of goods stock CIÉ had at the time apart from oil or grain wagons. You would have lots of variety, though roofed vans and cement bubbles were the norm. We have many of the wagons now in rtr with Mayner's brake van rounding it all off. The 141s we have. MPDs and 70 class would required a bit of work. In the late 60s there was also the three times a week ballast train which worked frequently south of Portadown. This was hauled by a Jeep from York Road and the wagons were often loaded at Antrim. Whilst you might have to be creative with the ballast wagons, the big missing element in Irish rtr remains for me the Jeep. Leslie provides the brake van. Add to this NIR's ramshackle PW wagons (watch one of my DVDs to see a Hunslet hauled lash-up of a PW train) and the variation was really quite wide. Lisburn in those days was not all about railcars.

Well, NIR/Translink's incompetence over many years has prevented a station at Knockmore. The latest proposal is now well over a decade old and progress is pretty well zero. And why a two platform station when a third on the Antrim branch would allow locals from Belfast direction to reverse there (if there were locals from the Belfast direction). This they could also give it a better service than the 1970s joke halt. Knockmore is a prefectly good project so why am I still saying it should be built? It will happen someday. Why are we still waiting? There are other candidates:- Another park and ride project which they completely failed to make any progress on is the one at Templepatrick. Egllnton (not on the previous site) might be a runner too. i was reminded of this last month when a train I was on had to stop as a plane was landing. While the runway does not cross the line there is nevertheless a restriction on trains passing during aircraft movements. Whitehouse would surely do as well as other comparable stations (like Sydenham). No doubt though they would do the usual - say it is a good idea, draw up the plans, even get planning permission, and then fiddle about for years doing who knows what.

Yes, those are Kadees. Most of the ones I use are the ones that fit into NEM boxes. That means you just have to pull out the tension lock coupling and push in the Kadee. There are four lengths, 16, 17, 18 and 19. It depends a bit on what radius curves you have but mostly I use 17s. For me the right one allows the wagons to propel over curves without the buffers locking. If you don't do much pushing back round tight curves that hardly matters. They allow close coupling. Along with the magnetic uncouplers they allow realistic shunting. I only have them on the locos and wagons I am likely to shunt. Fixed rakes like liner trains and passenger sets I left the tension locks between the coaches and just have a Kadee on the end. For older things without the NEM box I used an older Kadee which can be a pain to fit. I also have some adjustable fittings which glue under wagons etc. I used these under Dapol and Provincial Wagons until I realised that it was cheaper and easier to change the wagon underframes for newer Dapol ones with NEM sockets. Anyway, the flanges on some older Dapol wagons gave me problems so that made more sense that trying to cobble an old Kadee onto them. But the main story is that the NEM socket type of Kadee are easy to fit - and if you use IRM, JMDesign or more recent Murphy stock they all come with NEM boxes in the right places. Expensive if you have a lot of stock though.

i have sent you a PM.

What service ... arrived today and on the time scale of the original announcement. Now my third 20 ton brakevan from the same source, plus a 30 ton one too. Looks great and runs freely. The NEM box is the right height and the Kadees went in a treat. Brilliant. Thanks.

This appeared on the BBC website section "Your Questions Answered" about the new station. It is a good question which gets a lame response. Basically "we are doing this because it suits us". ========================================================================= Are through services from Bangor-Portadown ever going to resume or will I always have to change at Grand Central? Before services moved from Great Victoria Street to Grand Central, many services ran the whole way from Portadown to Bangor, pulling in and out of Great Victoria Street on their way. Now services from Portadown and Bangor both terminate at Grand Central, meaning passengers have to change trains. Translink said: “Belfast Grand Central Station has been designed to be a terminus station offering increased connectivity and integration with the wider public transport network for connections across Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and beyond. “The new rail timetable is designed to bring all rail lines into the new station and back out again on the same corridor which increases reliability and efficiency of services operating on all rail corridors across the network.” So, in short, there are no plans to return to operating through services. ======================================================================== Essentially this says "make the best of it". Now it is official - The Holy Grail of cross city operation (as in operation everywhere else in the world) does not apply to Translink, who know better.

It doesn't need an inquiry into how to do this right. Somewhere there must be a file on how a more complex operation was carried out in 1995 when GVSt was re-opened. Or how the Cross Harbour Link was opened in 1994. Or (maybe a dusty file now) the Central Line was re-opened in 1976. All they had to do was learn from the experiences of previous projects. From what I recall all of those major changes were well planned and had very few of the shambolic moments that this mess has. Those projects were organised by a proper railway management team who knew about railways. Some of those people are still around (some even on this site). Each of those developments was a step towards running trains though the City Centre and providing cross town options for the travelling public. Like every S-Bahn, Crossrail or RER system you can think of. This latest mess interrupts all that progress made over the years to link the rail services through the city. Can you imagine all DART and outer suburban trains terminating at Connolly and everybody having to change?

Well, if the new timetable is there today I cannot find it. It may well be there as I often struggle to find things on Translink's site. I am trying to plan a trip from Glasgow to Belfast by bus and then on to the train. I cannot book anything after this weekend and the new station is not available on the bus locations served even though the bus station is open. I have to enter Europa bus station and then it allows me 3 minutes to walk from there to a station I cannot book from. Then I cannot book in advance of this weekend anyway. I want to go on to Dubin and return by train. The existing timetable shows the buses leaving Newry after the train arrives, but they appear four columns before the train, which is confusing to say the least. My connection to Bangor leaves five minute after the train from bus connection from Newry arrives at "Grand" Central, and of course the train leaves from Lanyon. So at the moment the plan is to use a competitor's bus from Glasgow and on to Dublin. I would use the train but without a timetable for next week how can I plan anything? Doesn't matter, i cannot book on the Translink website after this weekend anyway. So the timetable would be useful in theory by no help in practice. As the Translink website says "Plan your journey before you travel". If only I could.

Leslie As the email I got on Monday from IRRS London did not have a date, it is perhaps worth reminding everyone that this is on Friday 4 Ocotber at 19:30. i know you had the date in the heading on this site but anybody reading the IRRS announcement would not find it there. i wasn't around that early, my first trip being the excellent Dalriada and then the two day trips to Athlone and Cork (one to remember). Jim