Markleman

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

My BnT 6 wheeler arrived on Friday. Cost £34.95 incl UK VAT plus £4.00 postage. Looking good so far. Runs very freely. I will have to change the tension locks but then I always do.

I am looking forward to the brake fitted H-vans when they arrive. After 1965 when the UTA gave up on internal goods traffic wagons originating on CIÉ continued to work to Belfast and Derry. Freight at Belfast was handled at Grosvenor Road depot before moving around 1970 to Adelaide near where a Guinness depot had opened earlier. The Derry trains had traffic for Donegal and CIÉ maintained a freight depot at Stranorlar at the time. The requirement was that all of the wagons coming North of the Border had to fitted with vacuum brakes and either screw or Instanter couplings. The trains appeared in the WTT as "Ftd". "Fitted" in the parlance of the time meant fitted with vacuum brakes as most CIÉ ordinary goods wagons then had no continuous brakes, just side levers to be worked from the trackside. The Belfast fitted trains continued to have brake vans at the rear for the guard to travel in until that was done away with on CIÉ in the 1970s. I have no clear recollection of a brake van on the Lisburn - Derry section in the early days. There is a Derek Young photo of an MPD-hauled overload goods at Coleraine in 1966 with a brake van on the back. I do recall that whatever the rules were the guard (in NIR days a Conductor) always travelled in the railcars rather than the freezing bumpy brake van. This meant that in theory they could exchange the tablet, a duty they usually discharged by sleeping across the seats in the passenger section. Rules were often bent in the middle of the night. The most common wagon I saw in the 1960s and 70s was the brake fitted H-van. Oddly enough I never saw an ex-GNR van, I suppose because few of them were fitted. Cement wagons were of course all fitted from the start and so were the container flats as they became more and more common. A typical freight heading for Belfast in the late 60s and early 70s had a long string (20 or 30) fitted H-Vans with the odd container flat and bulk cement wagon. A regular container traffic was Irish Raleigh cycles container which seemed to be exchanged every day. These looked like the standard Raleigh container which ran on BR at the time, but not painted like the Peco one around now. At the time the ones on BR were dark blue but the Irish Raleigh ones were grey, though the lettering was the same. Standard BR containers would appear from time to time, but usually inside a Bullied open wagon rather than on a container flat. Pallet wagons also appeared - I believe that these were used for cement and Guinness traffic. I certainly saw them in the Guinness yard at Adelaide. Another Belfast-bound traffic I saw regularly was crashed cars being returned to NI for repair. I guess this happened when people had motored South and pranged their vehicle which then had to be returned to NI to be fixed. These cars were seriously mangled, and it seemed to happen a lot. They were always placed inside Bullied open wagons and tied down. The overnight Derry goods services were much the same to start with but later they tended to have more containers and cement wagons. They were handed over to NIR haulage at Lisburn. Starting in 1965 the Lisburn - Derry section was two MPD hauled trains each night. These trains put huge strain on the MPDs causing a lot of failures. Once the 70 class arrived one of the trains was turned over to them which worked very well. The operations were pretty complex and I would try to explain if anybody is interested. It was all a lot of hassle really and nobody was too concerned when they could get by later with just one 70 class hauled train which had the route to itself. NIR had the bright idea of stationing a DH loco at Derry for shunting and to haul one train to Lisburn and back. On a long run they overheated and this plan failed - though many of us recall a DH hauled overload goods passing Limavady Junction while we were there on an RPSI tour. An MPD power car (often non-corridor) was based in Derry for shunting purposes until shunting there became a thing of the past. Run-offs were frequent during the days (and nights) of the four wheel wagons, especially on the Derry route where the track might have been a bit iffy. There were the nargled remains of H-Vans lying by the trackside at several points. The vans were emptied and left where they ended up, but cement wagons were always recovered and returned to CIÉ. I do not plan to take the wheels off a nice IRM H-Van and plant it at an angle at the bottom of my embankment, but that would be pretty proto-typical. Anyway, after 1975 bogie wagons started to take over and they held the track a lot better. It must have been a pain finding fitted H-Vans at any point on CIÉ when something was destined for Belfast or Donegal, but it seemed to work. So there it is - 1965 to 1975 - fitted H-Vans mostly, but some pallet wagons, bulk cement wagons, 20foot flats and brake vans. There must have been a few fitted or piped Bullied open wagons kept just for heading North - does anyone know about this? After 1975 these trains looked like standard CIÉ freight trains save that they were usually mixed traffic (often containers, Guinness, cement, fertiliser, all on the one train) rather than running as a block train. At one stage this reached 5 trains to and from Adelaide per day before tailing off in line with such traffic everywhere. The Derry traffic tapered off into occasional daytime loco-hauled block timber and fertiliser trains before finally expiring. Finally - I have one recollection of other wagons heading North after 1965. Around 1968 I was at Lisburn one evening when an AEC set arrived from Portadown towing some (four I think) ex-cattle wagons. These were adapted to carry homing pigeons in baskets. The air gaps below the roof had been filled in. Some had what looked like plywood with holes drilled in it, another had chicken wire in the gaps. The platform staff at Lisburn unloaded the baskets and placed them behind the buildings on the loop platform near the signal cabin. They checked the birds and watered them. The labels said they were from County Cork, giving liberation times the following morning. The staff were to do the liberating, mark the labels with the time and return the details with the baskets. This is the only time I saw anything other than the usual wagons, though the regular swapping of the steam cranes added a bit of interest then too. Once we have the IRM fitted H-Vans we will be well on the way to making an rtr OO-scale Belfast or Derry goods. All I need now is an MPD to haul them, though a pre-transplant A class will do for now.

In my earliest model days I had a Christmas Club account in Frederick Thomas and I remember buying a Tri-ang plastic signal box with it. There was also the Post Office opposite Queens University where in about 1967 I saw my first Hornby 2-6-4 tank which caused me to get pretty hot under the collar. Never could afford one though. The memory of the Belfast Model Shop which is stuck in my mind is without an exact date stamp, but I guess it was in December 1970 or so. I went down to Belfast in the train and ambled round to the shop which was in Upper Queen Street then. It was a still cold night before Christmas and there was oddly no traffic so it was easy to cross Howard Street. I recall as I turned into Upper Queen Street that I was crunching through what I thought at first was frost on the pavement, though on the way home I realised it was the upper floor windows of the Presybterian Assembly buildings which were lying on the street. I always was an observant child. When I crunched my way to the Model Shop the window seemed very clear and the glass doors seemed to be open. As usual the glass display case opposite the door was full of Matchbox toys. The place was deserted and the various displays seemed a bit disorganised. I stood there for a bit wondering why there were no staff when "the woman" appeared down the steps from where the Scalextric track used to be. She burst into floods of tears when she saw me and bawled out "Can't you see that we have been bombed!". I turned on my heels and fled into the street, through the non-existent glass door. Out in the street there was still nobody about but I could see blue lights in Queen Street where the bomb had been left in a car somewhere near the Educational Company. Blast travels in unusual ways, and it seemed to have crossed Wellington Place and proceeded down Upper Queen Street before dissipating at the start of Brunswick Street. As there was no chance of buying anything I tramped back through the glass shards. Once I turned down Wellington Street normality returned in that at least there was nothing unusual under foot. I dashed back to GVSt to catch my BUT railcar home. Nobody stopped me, and apart from "the woman" nobody spoke to me. In fact, I saw nobody in either direction between the station and shop. There was just total silence. As I say, I was always an observant child.

Thanks both for the photo lead. I found it in Fermanagh's Railways and it looks like the one at Bundoran Junction which I recall. There is another photo in that book of the set at Portadown. They are pretty easy to distinguish in side view. Along each side they both have three doors. The full cabs have a drivers door at one end and a passenger door at the other. The full cab has a door between the first and second class compartments which is four window bays back from the cab door. The half cabs doors are not at the extremities as there is a cab on one side and a toilet at the other at each end. Instead the passenger doors are more towards the middle on the half cab. At one end on the half cab, beyond the door, is a blanked window for the toilet, and at the other end is the cab with a drivers door into the back of the cab and a window beyond for the driver. If there are two doors together then it is a half cab, if there are four windows between two of the doors then it is a full cab. Also, the full cab had only one toilet which was in the second class section and opened into the corridor between first and second class. Whether you can see the blanked off window obviously depends which side you are looking at, but as Steve pointed out to me, the NIR full cabs varied as to which side the toilet was fitted. Another mystery.

I first met Steve in 1967 and he was very knowledgeable about GNR coaching stock even then when we were both at school. I just plucked one date out of my notes, 13/12/68, when 132/594/124 were on the 16:55 Belfast to Lisburn. Steve was probably on that one too as we often travelled home together. Until first class was abolished on local services the single end cars provided the necessary exclusivity in the compartment behind the driver. That kept the single end cars in demand, but only one was usually needed on each set as first class travel was not much used on the locals. On the subject of the "Continental" corridor connections mentioned above, I was told that the corridors were slightly wider and had been fitted to allow a food trolley to pass through the train. The BUT seats were fitted with special arm rests to hold trays of pre-prepared food which were served at the seats. This was supposed to do away with the need for tables. Needless to say, that plan did not last very long and the lack of tables was a problem for the Enterprise for the rest of their days. In operation the up side of the design was that on coupling and uncoupling there was nothing to do at corridor connection level, the down side being that the rubber perished over time and let in wind and rain. It never formed a perfect connection and always gave me the creeps when passing through. According to Diesel Dawn the first BUT set went into service in June 1957. A single half cab hauled the very short lived Enniskillen to Belfast express service with a brake/first which was run round at Omagh. I have seen a photograph of that somewhere.

Do you mean in GNR days? In my UTA (just) and NIR days they ran like that every day. In the late Stephen Rafferty's posting above he give an example of a 900 at one end and a 700 at the other on the Enterprise. That was the regular formation. On the UTA/NIR Enterprise of my day there was almost always a full cab facing Dublin to provide first class with a view and a half cab at the other end, with a second half cab elsewhere in the formation. As there were more half cabs than full cabs it was quite rare to find a full cab at both ends but my records do show it on 21/12/68. Steve gives an example of two full cabs on the CIÉ Enterprise in the early days. From my notes I only saw a full cab at both ends that one time. A half cab at both ends was very common, and so was a half cab at one end and a full cab at the other end. If you need to see them in action the DVD "NIR Archive Volume 1" has two shots of BUTs and they both have half cabs at one end and full cabs at the other. One in NIR livery was at Lisburn taken by Jonathan Allen, and the other of the Enterprise in UTA blue and white at Drogheda was taken by John Friel. I cannot speak for GNR days as I did not have a good camera pre-1958, but I did have the kiss-curl (!).

Is the loco near and everybody is FAR AWAY? The military people have a lot of good scenic material and paints which railway modellers can use. I see the comments and I might try to get along next year.