Mayner

Interesting time capsule of the last days of the traditional steam age railway, the RPSI special narrows the time period to June 1972 when 186 worked the "North Kerry" raitour to Tralee visiting Castleisland & Fenit. Probably more interesting seeing Tralee still had a G Class for shunting the two goods yards and trip working to Fenit and possibly Castleisland. Goods traffic at both Tralee & Castleisland seems to have been heavy at the time with a hint of the modern era creeping in with Guinness, Bulk Grain & ISO containers handled at the gantry in the North Kerry Yard.

I think the continued survival of the railways has more to do with changes in social & economic policy in the 1960s that reversed the long term decline in rail passenger figures rather than any coherent government transport policy or actions by CIE. Passenger figures were in decline since the 1920s, the trend only started to reverse with the improved economy in the late 60s, fewer people emigrating, higher income and probably most significantly a new travel hungry student class with more people staying on in education into their 20s than emigrating or settling down and starting a family. The implementation of Railplan 80 slowed rather than reversed the long term decline in railfreight, tonnage basically dropped year by year in the 70s & 80s as many Irish companies developed their own road fleets to get around CIEs near monopoly on road haulage. The growth of the Courier companies basically wiped out sundries and parcel traffic, railways struggle to make money on container and timber traffic, leaving Tara the only heavy bulk flow though this is probably marginally profitable, ore trains of less than 1000 tonnes gross are very light by international standards. With light tonnage and short line hauls the writing was on the wall for Irish railfreight once the road haulage was de-regulated in the early 1990s

Well spotted this Italian loco was basically the standard for a C Class rtr conversion before the repainted Lima 33s arrived on the scene in the late 70s. The Rivarossi HO & N versions had better motor bogies than the Lima locos.

The tractors were owned by Dublin Port and Docks Board and more recently the Port Company. The tractors seem to have been mainly used to move tank wagons between the Granary Sidings East Wall Road and the various oil and bitumen siding on the Alexandra Road Tramway. Irish Shell had its own shunting loco. Traffic on the Tramway would have been heavier in loose coupled days with wagon load traffic to and from Alexandra Basin, grain traffic for Ranks and Odlums and fertiliser from Gouldings East Wall Road.

Most of the larger Irish companies had TPOs with South Eastern, Midland, GSWR & Great Northern vans including some 6 wheelers in service until the new CIE vans appeared in the late 50s. The Hornby model would makes a passable CIE van. In later years the POs ran mainly on the Cork & Galway mail trains. The Galway Day Mail was usually a mixed rake of TPOs, Parcel Vans & MK2D Supertrain coaches, the Night Mails BR Van, TPO, Parcel Vans with a tail of container wagons for mail and Liner traffic.

Very attractive station might even model it some time. Photo taken in summer of 85 while exploring the remains of one of CIEs mouldering branch lines.

The video includes earlier CIE publicity material including the Cork Glanmire Road-Alexandra Road B&I liner Irelands 1st company train and footage filmed or the introduction of the Supertrain in 1972. Interesting to see CIE filmed the Supertrain on the South-Eastern, publicity included a poster of an aerial photo of the train passing Avoca village. I always thought 001 looked really well with the roof painted black. The modernisation plan was pared/cut back radically as CIEs financial position worsened, while most of the freight part was implemented, it took another 30 years to upgrade the track and signalling to modern standards. The plan was a lot more wide reaching than just freight and basically involved total route modernisation in addition to the new trains. Push-pull trains were to be used on Dublin-Waterford & Dublin-Limerick passenger services, some freights were planned to go out by one route and return by another. At one stage there were plans to serve Waterford and Wexford with one sundries train serving South Eastern & Kilkenny line depots. The bogie fertiliser wagons with their steel mesh doors were originally nicknamed Long Kesh wagons. Sundries traffic was originally to be carried in block trains of 60' sliding door vans. Some of the H&S stuff is scary, I wonder how may of those Inchacore workers in the video ended up without some form of occupational disease. Internationally railways were never good at looking after their workers health

Sunday afternoons 30 odd years ago sent exploring abandoned branch lines after getting my first car. Very attractive line with riverside sections & a backdrop of the Wicklow Mountains. More common view of the North end of the train shed Not sure of the purpose of the stone building on the right it looks more like a farm than a railway building and too small to be a loco shed. Station building from the South East similar to Rathvilley I will put up the goods shed and trainshed when I get a chance. The branch lost its passenger and regular goods service in the late 1940s, the only traffic appears to have been cattle specials to Baltinglass with the loco running light to Tullow to turn. The branch seems to have been quite run down and over grown in later years, most photos in later days show trains running through a sea of grass with the rails hardly visible. There are a couple of nice photos of the Station in GSR days with a 52 Class on a passenger and a J15 on a goods in Great Southern Railways by Donal Murray (ian Allen 2006). The trains are a nice mix the passenger with a corridor coach in chocolate and cream and a 6 wheeler in what looks like the then new maroon livery, the goods made up of old style14' wagon is a bit like the old Triang-Hornby Freightmaster set with no two wagons the same. One of the oddities for the terminus of a long branch line is that Tullow does not appear to have had a engine shed at a time a shed or workshop was essential for carrying out maintenance light repairs between runs.

Neil Ramsey' C Class comes pretty close.

Possibly commissioned by Metrovick as a boardroom ornament for CIE or for publicity purposes.

Taken with an Instamatic (I hadn't anything better) around 1980 wont find this one on Eiretrains

Its a bit ironic to see luxury tourist trains appearing so many years after the most scenic lines like Achill, Clifen, Valentia and Waterford-Mallow closed. CIEs 1st diesel programme in the 1940s included a luxury train aimed at the American tourist market. It will be interesting to see if the new train will involve an element of overnight running, this would have advantages for Belmond and IE in moving guests between attractions, avoiding the boring bits in the middle, feeing up line capacity and improved security.

Good to see that tribalism is alive and well in Ireland. Funnily I haven't heard similar calls for "The Model Railway Club" in London or "The Ulster Model Railway Club" to change their names or calls for a ban on the imperialist NMRA recruiting members outside the US. The club is similar in a way to the MRC in London one of the oldest in the country with good working relationships with other clubs and members drawn mainly from the greater Dublin area with even a few from the SDMRC Dunlaoire-Rathdown heartland.

I like the 3/4 view the model really captures the look of these coaches. The IFM Park Royals look like good layout coaches and are reasonably priced for what they are and fill a huge gap in the rtr/easy to build market. To a degree comparing the IFM & Worsley Works Park Royals is like comparing apples and oranges. The IFM model is aimed at the modeller/collector who wants a coach that looks like a Park Royal, rather than someone who wants to build a scale model of a Park Royal.

The TPO/Tool Van kits are in stock at $106 + $20 shipping prices quoted in NZ dollars. I will be in contact with anyone who has expressed an interest or placed an order for one of these vans.

WLWR layouts made it to the cover of the Railway Modeller and almost became fashionable in the 80s with Richard Chown's Castlerackrent and Dave Walker (I think) Killaney. Killanney was exhibited at Chatham and Castlerackrent tends to appear in various forms at exhibitions in Scotland. There is a good selections of photos seems to be mainly MGWR and WLWR No2 Shannon in lined black http://highlandmiscellany.com/2014/06/03/last-train-to-castle-rackrent/. The 0-6-0s and 2-4-0s locos were supposed to be based on GWR designs and close in size to the Dean Goods, tank engines fairly simple in outline would be fairly easy to build in plasticard if you can find a small enough 2-4-2 or 0-4-4 chassis. The 4-4-2T & 2-4-2T locos appear to be identical apart from one class having a leading bogie this was probably to improve tracking/reduce wear on the loco and track. The GSWR did the same around the same time turning out the last of the small radial tanks for the Kerry branches and Cobh line as bogie engines.

Not exactly US/Canadian or Modelling but distinctively American in style probably one of the reasons I settled down here. Our October Bank Holiday weekend is more the equivalent of the UK & Irish May weekend and the mid point of an annual spring tour. This year the tour covered most of the central North Island including a day excursion over one of the local freight only line. On the day the weather was pretty grim cold and overcast, 5 year old daughter thoroughly enjoyed chasing Thomas. A bit like the Scottish railway photographers story of filming a train while carrying out earthquake research, sometimes I have the knack of being in the right place and combining work and leisure. The crew have just completed shunting the Lime Train clear of the main line for loading. Its unusual to see these locos running "elephant' fashion, the return journey will involve approx. 60 miles "long hood' first running. The train is classed as a trip working and thee loco double manned for shunting at the lime works and possibly other industries. Later on I heard a whistle and eventually caught up with Thomas, half of the town seem to have stopped work and turned out see the loco being coaled and prepared for the long climb mostly at 1:70 to Poro-o-Tarao Tunnel the first of the major summits for South bound trains. Looking like a typical NZR express from the early 1900s to the late 1960s. The first typically American 4-6-2 Pacific and 4-8-2 Mountain locos were built for use on "Main Trunk Line" in the early 1900s. NZR further developed the type with the 4-6-2 becoming the maid of all work from express passenger to branch line goods from the early 1900s. Large 4-8-4s based on a combination of American and South African practice took over the heaviest trains in the 1930s and a large class of modern 4-8-2 introduced from the 1940s onwards displaced the Pacifics to branch line duties. [ATTACH=CONFIG]15657[/ATTACH]

George's RM thread http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/66331-studio-scale-models-bandon-tank-4-6-0/?hl=%2Bstudio+%2Bscale+%2Bmodels

Fitting Ultrascale replacement OO gauge wheelsets https://www.ultrascale.com/eshop/products/view/CAT007/410 with wiper pick ups on the insulated wheels would be the simplest option for doing away with the traction tyres and converting a Lima or Hornby Class 55 to all 12 wheel pick up. The wheels are basically supplied to order so there should be no problem in getting a two motor set. I have used their wheels both for 21mm gauge Irish locos and stock and re-wheeling Lima British outline locos. If you want a central motor and flywheel drive a Walthers or Lifelike Proto 2000 SD7 or SD9 may be a more economic conversion than a Heljan or Dapol Class 52. Years ago I motorised a MIR/Q Kits whitemetal A Class using the motor, trucks and driveshafts from an Athearn SD9. It was basically a matter of building a frame and motor cradle from KS Brass strip and box section to replace the Athearn frame. The only modification to the drive to fit the shorter A Class bogie centres was to remove one of the flywheels.

No pubic o WTT Railway Byelines Annual No 5 incudes a 12 page Des Coakham article on the Harcourt Street Line in the 1950s. Excellent selection of high qualty photos of steam and diesel (railcar) trains on the line, photos of Harcourt Street inside and outside the train shed and some of the intermediate stations. Services in the end do not appear to much different than what we would expect on a similar line today 100% railcar worked. Park Royal and Inchacore built AEC railcars, 3 car sets mainly with Park Royal and Laminate intermediate coaches. I had a look around Harcourt Street in the mid-1990s, at the time apart from the track lifting and removal of the Adelaide Rd bridge there was remarkably little change to the buildings or structures in the station or goods yard.

Good piece on putting two motor bogies in Hornby or Lima diesels http://www.emgauge70s.co.uk/model_omwb101.html simpler than trying to shorten a metal chassis with central motor drive to the bogies. The Lima Deltic bogie was close in overall length to the A Class.

Going back to modelling what we felt we were secure with in our childhood does not really stack up for those of us who grew up in the late 50s early-mid 60. Probably the reason why so many people model Continental, American or even the Big Four or the GNR in preference to CIE or UTA. As a teenager I was mainly interested in the GWR mainly from articles in the Railway Modeller, only started to develop an interest in contemporary CIE operation exploring the network on a Rambler Ticket after I left school. The new Supertrains, 1st phase of CTC on the Cork Line, new freight stock was exciting, but as I grew older the traditional steam age railway became more and more enticing. All this probably explains why have American G & N gauge collections and a mixture of Irish and BR locos and stock.

With ex-MGWR senior management at the helm and ex-GSWR staff in charge of things mechanical and civil engineering the GSR was very careful with money. Without a commercial need to establish a new brand you would expect that the GSR would only re-paint locos and stock following a heavy overhaul. Locos and carriages built/overhauled in the early 20s probably would not be due for an overhaul until at least 10-12, high quality paintwork from the Edwardian era with multiple layers of varnish would have lasted even longer. While he first Woolwich Mogul 49 was re-painted before the paint had time to dry from lined MGWR livery into grey and re-numbered into the GSWR, its likely that Broadstone would have continued to use up its paint stocks on locos and coaching stock built or overhauled in early GSR days. Both Inchacore and Broadstone were very busy in the mid-1920s as the railways tried to catch up with repair backlog from WW1 and to replace locos and stock destroyed during the Civil War. Both works were busy turning out large modern mixed traffic locomotives and mainline passenger stock. Although the GSR CME was opposed to superheating small locos Broadstone continued its superheating programme for the 19 remaining 650 Class 2-4-0 some of which may have ran in MGWR black into the 1930s. I am not sure if modern paints are better but in New Zealand we have some locos running in freight service that have not seen the inside of a paint shop since the early 90s that are still in reasonable cosmetic condition. Locos that either have a high level of reliability like straight electrics or non turbo diesels tend to put up higher mileage between visits to the works for a heavy overhaul or the paint shop as opposed to turbo-charged diesels.

You could be half right the cylinder seems to be part of "Cabs" lighting system. If the date of the photo is correct No.92 seems to have been really well cared for by GSR standards possibly something of a 'pet' engine kept in GSWR line green livery like 184 in the late 1950s-60s. No92 is part of the same family of small locos with carriage portions built by the GSWR including No90. No 90 lost her carriage portion and converted to an 0-6-0 side tank possibly for use on the Fermoy-Mitchelstown line in the early 1900s

Very rare and worth looking out for. "Irish Railways Today", Brendan Pender & Herbert Richards - 1967 guide to CIE & NIR lines, locos and stock operating in 1967. Larger format than Locomotives and Rolling stock includes photos of stations, locos, passenger and goods stock, numbering details and background information. There may be a copy in the IRRS Library.