Mol_PMB

I was thinking the same, though I don't have the facilities to do it myself. Perhaps we encourage one of the other forum members who could? I'm going to do a little thread about them bringing together the information on them, and of course with a survivor there is scope to measure up. There were at least four liveries carried by them - alloy with snail, alloy with block lettered CIE (as preserved), orange with roundel, and blue. They lasted well into the 1970s.

Meanwhile north of the border, McArdles were making a name for themselves building containers for customers in Ireland and abroad: Derry continued to be served by Anglo Irish Transport: Here's a closer view of the Anglo Irish box: And of the other smaller operators, Greenore Ferry Services was still in business: The Cawoods entry gives a container fleet listing: And the small Manx firm Ronagency had started to serve Belfast as well as their core Glasson Dock to Castletown IoM service:

Of the major operators, B+I had a detailed entry, which included a container fleet listing: Here's a closer look at the photo. There were several variants of these early B+I containers; different heights, rib arrangements, and livery/lettering. These appear similar in livery to the one the survives at BnM Blackwater, but they have a different number of ribs: B+I had also launched a new service in partnership with Holland America Line known as IROPA: This image posted by @WRENNEIRE elsewhere on the forum shows an IROPA container; there were other styles too. Bell's entry was a bit dull this year, but relevant illustrations occur in the container handling and equipment sections. While the photo above shows entirely alloy containers, the one below seems to show a Bell box in their new purple and blue scheme. It looks like a smooth-sided box too:

Irish Ferryways were still significant at this time; their advert showed a slightly different view of one of their typical 30' containers - although physically ISO-compatible it doesn't have ISO-standard numbering and lettering: There are three entries for Irish Ferryways in the directory under slightly different names! Although well-known for their 30' containers, they had other sizes too, and there are certainly some 20' boxes in these views:

So for Christmas Day I've scanned some of the Irish pages from the 1972-73 edition of Jane's. The Irish section is now headed 'Republic of Ireland', and now runs to 6 pages with some interesting information and some better photos. Here's a zoom in of the two photos at Cork, showing several variants of B+I container, and a Greenore Ferry Services box labelled GREENORE-PRESTON-SHARPNESS: Pages 2 and 3 focus on Dublin with plenty of detail of the shipping routes and companies, and the volume of containers handled. Some of these would have ended up on trains, of course. Zooming in on that last photo, most of the boxes here are pre-ISO, non-stackable types. There are several 'ULSTER FERRY' and in the foreground an old 'B&I LINE DUBLIN-LIVERPOOL': Page 4 covers New Ross and Waterford: Here's a closer look at Bell's Frank Cassin Wharf: Pages 5 and 6 are perhaps of most interest to us, covering CIE. Page 5 lists some of the liner services and notes that CIE carries containers for other companies including B&I, Bell, BR, B&L, Guinness etc. The container train shown is carrying several leased containers from CTI, who were the largest international container leasing firm at the time: Page 6 gives us a fleet listing for CIE's containers. At this date (1972) the ISO fleet was all 20'x8'x8'; the introduction of taller, longer and shorter CIE boxes had not yet occurred. Note also the non-ISO containers including the dry cargo boxes 18.9'x7.6'x7.6', and the large number of flats. Intriguingly, the grain hopper containers are illustrated but not listed.

Interesting, thanks. They had more than one of them; I confess this is an awful photo:

A little more progress with the container train. I decided to have a go at one of @leslie10646's container flats, which represent the 27101 series 20' flats. I wasn't sure how easy it would be to build this for 21mm gauge, but it wasn't too hard. I mostly used a piercing saw with a coarse blade to remove material from the floor and the back of the W-iron: I then tidied up with a file. The tip of the pin-point bearing hole was still visible to provide a witness mark for re-drilling the hole deeper. For now I've just deepened the hole in the resin, but I might possible drill out deeper and put in a brass bearing. After that, the rest of the model went together fairly easily. A few minor tweaks needed to get the brake gear to line up with the broad gauge wheels, but nothing major. I still need to add buffer heads and a paint job, hopefully later in the week. In the meantime, I have the beginnings of a container train, which will hopefully grow with a couple more 4-wheelers at least. I haven't yet found any of the IRM 42' bogie wagons available for sale. The C=Rail containers are very nice, but I may give them a bit of light weathering in due course. Merry Christmas all... Mol

I hope you can have a relaxing lie-in tomorrow morning then! Another wonderful selection of photos - many thanks. The Connolly shot is interesting for the variety of traction and the variety of shades of orange - proof that they didn't always match and that variations in paint colour, fading and weathering could give substantial differences even on fairly clean locos and carriages. Before my time period, didn't the GNR 4-4-0s look wonderful in blue, whether they were big or small ones!

I had a look for some more info on Greenore Ferry Services - I think Greenore was the first port in Ireland to handle containers in 1963. As well as early ISO containers they also handled a lot of Lancashire Flats. The following are from the Trucknet website which also has some reminiscences about GFS and some of the other small Irish Sea operators: https://www.trucknetuk.com/t/lancashire-flats/202588/2

This drawing in my collection is the painting and lettering diagram for the Bell containers built at BREL Derby in 1973, by which time the familiar Bell livery of purple and blue had been introduced. These were 20'x8'x8'6" steel boxes and the paint specification gives the main colour as Petunia Purple, except a blue panel on each side. So these would have had purple tops.

I mentioned Cawoods in my previous post. This IRRS Archive photo on Flickr shows Cawoods containers on a train at Dundalk: https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53510397787 Here's one of the early B+I ISO containers which I photographed at Blackwater BnM last year: One of CIE's pre-ISO containers survives at Dromod C&L and I have several photos of that; I was wondering about a separate thread on them, as I have more Jane's scans to do for this thread.

There’s a product called black superglue which contains a bit of rubber, and I have seen it recommended for this sort of thing. As well as being black rather than leaving a white haze, it is also slightly flexible. Might be worth a try? Alternatively ‘glue and glaze’ is clear, not so strong or fast-setting, but more forgiving.

Of course the other wheel arrangement similar to the carriage shown is the Western Australian Metro-Vick, the A Class’s elder brothers. They were 2-Do-2. From personal experience, the ride through pointwork was quite alarming, and the interior of the Crossley engine room was almost entirely covered in black oil.

London Underground had some locos with 4 bogies. ESL 107 is preserved at Acton, but there used to be several of them. They were used for de-icing the conductor rails in winter. 3 bogies is much more common, there are plenty of Bo-Bo-Bos in the Alps but they can also be found in the Channel Tunnel.

Merry Christmas to all on the forum, and especially to the manufacturers who make such wonderful kits and models of Irish prototypes for us. I hope you all have a restful break over the Christmas period. Here's a seasonal photo I took on my recent holiday, and almost the only one that didn't feature a train. I'm afraid they're not quite reindeer either, you'll have to make do with a pair of Ibex (Ibexes? Ibices?)

I must confess that modelling progress has been slow recently, partly because of a minor arm injury (that has now healed) which made me ham-fisted and painful to do anything. There was also the much more pleasant distraction of a week abroad photographing trains. Anyway, for those reasons, and because I've incorporated various modifications to the model to suit my prototype, completion of the GNR brake van has dragged on a bit, but I think I'm finally there with the build and it's had a coat of etch primer. The next stage is to try and reproduce the awful paint job that NIR put on it, with the rust showing through the thin grey paint. This photo from Jonathan Allen on Flickr, and a few others of his, have been the basis of my modifications: My intention is that this will form part of a short works train for my IRM maroon Hunslet, when it arrives. A couple of kit-bashed Courtaulds wagons and three of @leslie10646's spoil wagons (converted to ballast hoppers) are also part of that plan. When I last modelled Irish in 4mm scale about 30 years ago, I attempted to build this kit, and made a right hash of it because I just didn't have the skills, experience or quality tools to make a good job of it. Starting again 30 years later it's still quite a challenging kit but I think it's worth the effort. Hopefully I've done it and @Weshty justice. While I've got the soldering iron out, I've made a start on another etched kit, this time from @Mayner. This is one of three, and will become 25436 series container flats. I'll try to make them all a bit different, for example one will have plain bearings and the other two will have roller bearings. So far it's going together well:

Off-topic perhaps for this thread, but this is the sort of thing I'm mulling over for a shunting layout, part of the Limerick wagon works and a tiny bit of the stabling point. Time period would be a bit flexible, mid 1970s to mid 1980s. The available space for the board is shown by the orange rectangle, 1750mm long and 450mm wide. I can fit in the basic arrangement of the yard without much compression, using 1000mm minimum radius curves: The main problem is that the headshunt top right is a bit short for shunting the long siding with a mainline diesel loco, though it wouldn't be so bad with G611 or E428, each of which lived here at one stage. There might be scope for a short headshunt extension but not the full width board; if I did that then I might actually shift the board footprint left a bit to include more of the original WLWR shed. Originally I had thought of viewing the layout from the bottom of the plan, with (at least some of) the six through lines behind, then the retaining wall and the trees as the backscene. But it just becomes way too wide for my space if I do that. So now I'm thinking of viewing from the top of the plan, with the wagon works forming the main backdrop. The two isolated sidings on the right wouldn't be functional but could display some of my growing collection of wagons. Left-hand end of the layout, photographed by Tarkaman in 1988: Looking from the hypothetical extended headshunt, photo by Ernie in 2005: Hmm, lots to think about but I'm afraid it's not a BLT!

Limerick station itself is nice and compact, though the Roxboro' Road bridge is further away than you think, and there a 6 parallel tracks running under that which makes for a complex throat. I'm looking quite seriously at a shunting layout representing a small part of the wagon works and loco stabling sidings, which I think is well bounded by buildings and scenery and should work with a bit of compression.

Not a green H van, but a green horsebox (also with black ends and underframe), in a freight train from a 1964 film. Incidentally the train had no fewer than 4 brake vans on the back! Screenshot showing the horsebox: Link to the whole clip: This photo of Ernie's also appears to show three horseboxes in the same green livery, with the large XP markings seen on the one in the film clip (that were not applied to green H vans): But by no means all horseboxes or other passenger-rated vans were painted green, again here are a couple of Ernie's photos showing grey ones in green trains:

Meanwhile, north of the border Belfast has appeared in a big way, with a long list of services to the GB mainland and further afield. I won't repeat a lot of the ports information which didn't change so much, but Warrenpoint appears in the list with a service to Garston, and the entry for Garston shows some of the Irish Sea Ferries and Cawoods operations. Of course, those containers arriving in Northern Ireland weren't so likely to end up on a train. Bell was being reorganised and growing, note that in 1971 their containers were unpainted aluminium alloy, none of the blue and purple that came later. Some of them just said 'Bell' others 'Bell Line' or 'Bell Ferry'. Meanwhile B+I was making a big deal of their new Dublin terminal. Note that this includes a listing of their container fleet at the time: There were still plenty of smaller operators, some examples here:

I don't have the second edition of Jane's, but I do have the thired, 1970-71 edition. By this time, the Irish entry had developed from 1.5 pages to 6, with more ports getting in on the act. CIE was also making more of its container services and featured a hard-hitting full page advert too. While there are plenty of ISO containers in the photos, there are also older types and some earlier livery schemes from B+I and Ulster Ferry visible. The photo at Tivoli shows a Greenore Ferry Service container being lifted. Note that Manchester Liners (a personal favourite of mine) gets a mention in Dublin, their containers certainly ended up on CIE liner trains. More to come...

Finally from 1968, details of the shipping lines that carried container traffic to and from Ireland. Some of these will be more familiar than others. This view of the ship 'Rolf' in 1969 shows what many of these Irish Sea intermodal vessels were like at the time. Small coasters adapted to carry a few containers, and in this case although there are a few ISO boxes it's mostly older container types and Lancashire Flats. In this photo the vessel is being operated by B+I and is carrying containers or flats belonging to CIE, Irish Ferryways, Containerway, Roadferry and others. (scanned from the book 'Looking back at Containerships' by Andrew Wiltshire, and the photo credited to Danny Lynch)

Ah well they can be bought on the internet in a range of colours!

I've long been interested in intermodal traffic and containers, particularly the early years of the ISO container in the 1960s and early 1970s. I have a fair bit of literature on the subject including several early editions of 'Jane's Freight Containers.' I know there are a few others on the forum that are interested in this sort of thing like @leslie10646 and @DJ Dangerous , so I thought I'd do a few scans which are relevant to the Irish scene, and post them in this thread. Hopefully they will provoke some discussion. I'll start with some scans from the 1968-69 edition which was the first one published. At this early stage there were many small operations with one or two ships service a wide variety of Irish Sea routes, including some that seem quite surprising from today's viewpoint. Even in the 1960s, some of these were starting to merge or collaborate. Firstly, some adverts: Next, the 'Eire' section, as it was called back then: And now some information on the container ports in Northern Ireland: Still from 1968, some data on selected GB mainland ports which served Ireland, plus the Freightliner network of the time:

I've written about the green ones here. Any more info or photos would be very welcome!