Mayner

Iain Rice did a scheme for a layout based on Westport Quay in one of his railway planning books and also incorporated the basic track layout into a freelance Scottish harbour setting. The station layout was on a curve and a down grade towards the buffers, with the harbour siding dropping steeply to cross the road. The siding appears to have ended at a loading bank shown on JHWs diagram, but could be extended to curve around to run along the quay with a G or small industrial to take over from the main line locos In latter years the line seems to have been used mainly for stores and oil traffic to the CIE bus depot beside the station and was lifted in the late 70s, before that it would have served a similar function to Fenit serving as a port for Coastal Shipping to County Mayo & Rocommon imported corn, coal, timber, exporting cattle IRRS Journals has a fine colour photo of a 001 in Supertrain livery shunting a 4w flat with an Orange CIE 20' container and a tank wagon with Croagh Patrick in the background.

Great find the loose coupled beets could load to 55 wagons 780 tons between Campile (which acted as a marshalling yard for loaded bet trains) and Limerick Container wagons appear to have been regular Limerick-Waterford passenger trains including AEC railcars into the early 70s, the traffic possibly meat or dairy products for export through Waterford or Rosslare. Oliver Doyle wrote about heavy traffic in bacon carried in BR insulated FM wagons from Waterford. The B141 taking the Ballinacourty line with the short goods train is an interesting one, was she simply shunted to clear the Limerick line for a service train or a trip working to Waterford Iron Founders siding at Waterford West. The line across the viaduct to Grace Deiu Junction remained open for traffic to and from the foundry following the closure of the Waterford-Mallow line in 1967, the traffic ceased and the junction removed by the late 1970s

Reminds me of when I was living in Scotland about 20 years ago, we had a heavy snow fall after Christmas and went out for a drive one as far as Killin out by Callander and home via Lough Tay and Perth. Beautiful cold sunny afternoon, cross-country skiers out in the hills by Lough Tay. Snow was gone the following morning with a sudden thaw washed a viaduct on the Glasgow-Perth main line near Glen Eagles closing the line for the best part of 12 months

All coach sides are sold out and I have no plans at this stage to re-stock. Due to the design of the tooling there is a minimum order of 3 sets of sides for the BSO, BSSGV & SO for supply by special order direct from the engravers.

Finding a suitable battery to power Erin turned out to be less of a challenge than expected. I managed to pick up a 14.8V 1400 mah Li-Poly battery that fits in Erin's boiler without too much surgery. I originally wired the loco up with a charging jack and switch gear in the cab with the intention of charging the battery in situ or power the loco from a battery in a trailing car a fairly common G/large scale arrangement Usually I hid the switch behind a panel or under a tender but there was no room on this small loco, the radio receiver is on the left of the cab and is about the size of a HO or small O gauge DCC decoder. Its not a good idea to charge a Li-Pol battery inside a plastic loco, the boiler is removable to allow the battery to be removed for charging. Most of the wiring is redundant I will replace the RCS switch gear with a simple DPDT switch, remove the charging jack and fit a poly switch to protect the battery, I have fitted a low battery voltage alarm. Erin looks very small coupled to Bachmann American 1:22.5 scale equipment both Erin & the Bachmann coach are underscale for 3' gauge and overscale for 3'6" Cape and NZ Gauge. The coach was recently re-painted from green into maroon using a motor spray enamel, the railway has one other coach which may appear in a shabby purple lake or rebuilt into one of those GMC gas-electric Doodlebug things. Erin's visit to the shops is tied up with a New Year resolution to complete a large backlog of unfinished projects starting with the G Gauge ones as they seem to take up the most time and space. Next in line air reservoirs and plumbing for a pair of tender locos. Erin has worked a few trial trains. Next stage is to build a new cowcatcher for the front end sort out the wiring and tidy up the paint work. I have tried cleaning a section of the boiler with enamel thinner while the varnish/weathering cleans off fairly easily the underlying paintwork (possibly motor enamel) appears to be good. Does anyone know if removing the varnish and weathering with enamel thinner is an option or whether a fresh coat of varnish would work

My father lived near the Salmon Weir bridge in Galway just before the Clifden line closed, he had little interest in railway but often spoke about a girl that often walked the top of the steelwork of the Corrib Viaduct. http://www.realizedvision.com/railways.php The GSR offered the viaduct to the city or county for a £5, but the local authorities were not prepared to take on the liabilities and the viaduct was dismantled.

Before the fixed formation train era the GSR & CIE had very low carriage utilisation by modern standards, a high proportion of carriages would have spent most of their working lives in sidings and were only used occasionally to strengthen scheduled trains or when required for excursions or specials. There was a report in one of the Fayle's Journals of passenger complaints and delays when damp/wet coaches were used to strengthen Broadstone-Galway/Mayo trains carrying cross-channel passengers. Passengers (tired and sleepy) had to detrain so that porters could sweep/mop the water out of the carriages.

Flatbottom Track panel with Peco Code 60 rail on copper clad sleepers in foreground, panel with Code 82 rail salvaged from Atlas flexible track in background. Peco Code 60 rail profile Peco Code 55 N gauge rail with double foot!

I had to do a double take when I saw the photo, I chased a similar consist with 129 & 142 from Waterford to the Junction on the 2002 Oct Holiday weekend! The locos propelled the train from the Limerick Line onto the North platform road before running round, further shunting took place with the Beet shunted to the Down Main line to free up the platform roads for up and down passenger trains. Ten years earlier during an acute loco shortage single headed 121s worked two fertiliser trains out of Cork on a summer Saturday afternoon, before the 17:30 Dublin Passenger, the 1st made it to the Junction the second to Rathpeacon before being shunted clear of the main line for the passenger. Apart on the ban on long hood running the Straffan p.w. bogie collision lead to one of the 1st modifications to the class the fitting of louvers to the cab doors.

The GSR proposal to re-build the Woolwich into 4-6-0s seems to been for similar reasons to the GWR decision to rebuild 100 4300 Moguls into Grange and Manor Class 4-6-0s, to improve stability at speed by fitting a bogie and increase boiler power by fitting a larger boiler. "Primarily goods engines but suitable for passenger trains. They work Galway passengers but are too overloaded to run fast. The boilers are to the British gauge (loading) and are too small for Irish requirements" 1948 Operating Department assessment. Fitting a bogie would allow a bigger boiler to be fitted while keeping the axle load within acceptable limits. While a Manor was 16 tons heavier than a 4300 the Manor had a lighter axle load.

During the 1950s CIE like British Railways did not anticipate the requirement for high power diesel locomotives that would become necessary as trains became heavier/faster in the 60s and 70s The B121s were only fitted up for multi-unit operation during the Mid-1970s when double heading became necessary to keep time with longer/heavier trains as service frequency was cut back as CIEs losses worsened as a result of the 1st Oil Crisis. More people were using the trains than before but fares were capped by government as fuel costs soared following the crisis. Increased fuel and transport costs basically killed of Quigley Magnesite and adversely affected the viability of Asahi and NET/IFI

I was curious about these locos as the more I looked at the GSR/CIE diagram the more the design made sense. I am not sure what Milne or the diesel faction would have thought. Proposed conversion of Woolwich Mogul to 4-6-0 re-drawn from GSR/CIE weight diagram. The first impression is that the loco looks like a scaled down Lord Nelson rather than a Patriot. The comparison with the GWR "conversion" of 43XX into the Grange Class of heavy mixed traffic 4-6-0 was striking, was Inchacore planning a light weight version similar to the Manor for the 16t axleload lines? Was the design of the 3 cylinder front end design influenced by Maunsell's Southern Railway Schools with a little help from Bullied? Maunsell's team on the Southern advised Inchacore on the front end design of the 500 Class and 402 the 1st and most successful rebuild of the 400 Class. I would be interesting to build one and see how many people identify the prototype cool:

Its interesting the GSR closed the Muskerry in 1934 the same year the Free State Government completed its final payment to the GSR in compensation for abolishing the Baronial Guarantee system. The Muskerry was one of 41 railways (broad and narrow gauge) built under a system where the capital was guaranteed usually at 5% (in perpetuity) and operating losses guaranteed by the ratepayers in area served by the railway. While the GSR did not hesitate to close uneconomic lines which did not receive a subsidy and the Balfour Lines, it would have looked bad closing a Baronial Line until the Government made the final compensation payment. The GSR to have been much more decisive about branch line closures than CIE proposing to close most branches and secondary lines in 1939, including West Cork and remaining narrow gauge The odd one is how the Schull & Skibereen survived until the 1947 coal crisis. One of the weakest of the Narrow Gauge lines, never made a profit taken over by the Cork Grand Jury in 1892 and later Cork County Council. Was the road in too poor a condition for motor vehicles or had Kingsbridge forgotten about it?

Very little on line Ian Allen/Midland Publishing 'Irish Railway Pictorial" series approx. 10 books published to date incl. C&L, GNR GSR,SLNCR, Dublin, Cork and Kerry. Colourpoint Books mainly Ulster subjects includes GSR Locomotives, Chasing the Flying Snail, Steam among the Drumlins. Individual photographs and out of print books from specialist railway and transport book sellers. Major UK exhibitions such as Warley. IRRS Library and Archive Heuston, SLS, LCGB, National Railway Museum York, National Library of Ireland

Apart from the Emergency the GSR and early CIE period was recorded reasonably well by British enthusiasts and photographers . From the 1920s through to the late 1950s The May edition of the Railway Magazine included articles and features on Irish railway operation. The May 26 edition included a Rex Murphy photo of a highly polished GSWR 403 at speed on the Dublin-Queenstown Mail Train and an E H Ahrons article on locomotive and train working on the MGWR. Prominent UK photographers such as Henry Casserley , W A Cammell, Ken Nunn, Ivo Peters, J Smith, P B Whitehouse plus our own C J Fry, Henry Fayle, Bob Clements recorded our railways. While companies such as the Loco Publishing Company (LPC)and Locomotive and General Railway and Genera Publications (L&GRP published high quality rods-down photos of locos and photos of coaching and wagon stock. Visiting enthusiasts and photographers were relatively rare in numbers often arranged their visits with the railway companies and got the red carpet treatment, for instance C L Fry arranged to have one of the Schull and Skibereen locos specially steamed after the line closed in order to pull out the other locos to take photos and measurements for modelling The LPC & L&GRP photo collections are now part of the NRM collection in York. Groups like the Stephensons Locomotive Society & LCGB have photographs of Irish railways in their collections, while IRRS members such as Herbert Richards and Barry Carse recorded railway infrastructure in the 60s and 70s.

A diagram of the 372 Class "conversion" recently appeared in New Irish Lines basically a 3 cylinder version of the 500 Class with an 800 class cab and double chimney with Woolwich driving wheels, possibly cylinders and tender. The general outline is remarkably similar to a LMS Patriot fitted with small driving wheels.

Dublin is similar in size to Copenhagen, and Auckland. Although there is high rise Auckland is probably more spread out than Dublin, people prefer to own their home in the suburbs, compared with living in an apartment with leasehold and building management issues. Whether you commute by private car or public transport its still a rat race.

It difficult these days to appreciate that during the late 1940s CIE could have up to nearly 350 locos in use out of a total of 461 with an average of 257 in service on any one day. A class of modern light weight 4-6-0 of similar size to a GWR Manor or BR Class 4MT capable of running on all the main routes, would have made sense allowing better loco utilisation and lower maintenance costs than by several different classes. Rather intriguingly in a similar manner to the GWR rebuilding 43XX Moguls into Grange and Manor Class 4-6-0s CIE developed a proposal to 're-build" the Woolwich 2-6-0s into 3 cylinder 4-6-0s as a light weight version of the 800 Class with wider route availability. Whether Milne (a GWR man) or Bulleid had a hand in this we will probably never know. The main parts to be re-used seem to have been the wheels and tender While CIE seems to have struggled to find work for the 12 4-6-0s on the Cork line it had the opposite problem with overloading of Woolwich Moguls on the Midland. A Class of 50 3 cylinder 4-6-0 with a wide firebox capable of burning poor quality coal would have been easier on the track (and fit in with Bulleids ideas) and have wider route availability than the big 4-6-0s. The 50 new locos would have freed up the large GSWR 0-6-0s & inside cylinder 2-6-0s to replace J15 and Midland Standard goods reducing the need for double heading or the running of overload goods trains. Although passenger traffic was in serious decline throughout the GSR period, freight was more important in terms of profitability.

Executive E9 Illinois Railroad Museum BNSF SD70s departing Moorhead Yard MN on mty Unit Coal

Got hooked on the Delaware & Husdon when I bought an Atlas RS3 in Victors model railroad shop in London 30 years ago. Preserved Alco RS32 at North Creek Visited some of the lines during a road trip across upstate New York in 2004

N Scale trestle set up in the back garden in Dublin around 2000 scanned from slide. Early digital photos attic layout in Dublin 2001-2

Resistance is Futile:

I particularly like the low own 3/4 front view of Sir Henry on the cattle train it could almost pass for Dromahair on the "main line". Any chance of building a roundy-roundy layout with Glenfarne as a centre piece so your locos can show their paces on the 06:30 & 10:30 Sligo-Enniskillen & 2:15 pm Enniskillen-Sligo goods trains and 7:30 pm Ennskillen-Sligo mixed.

For many years 24'' radius was the minimum recommended for OO gauge, while diesels and bogie stock is quite forgiving (18* the min recommended for American HO) a lot of compromises are needed to allow model steam locos with bogies and trailing axles around anything less than 36". The RTR manufacturers get by with excess side play (slop)) in axles, undersize bogie wheels, narrow plastic frames. Kit or scratch built locos are likely to have brass of nickel silver frames, a high quality Japanese can motor, with multi stage reduction drive, all gears and axles running in substantial brass bearings. Most of the locos I built from kits 20-25 years ago are nicely run-in and going strong, while I cannot get spares for expensive rtr locos bought within the last 10 years.