Mayner

Westrail was basically forced to cease rail operations as a result of significant problems in accessing the railway network during the early-mid 1990s. The company continued to operate a restaurant in Tuam station following the ending of railway operations. Westrail was unable to access the rail network from its Tuam depot from the early 1990s as a result of the temporary closure of the Athenry-Claremorris line and IE disconnecting the Westrail depot from the network when the line re-opened in 94-95? Westrail continued to operate trains using No 90 and hired coaches for two seasons based in Galway and Cork while the Athenry-Cleremorris line was closed. The Cork-Cobh operation appears to have been a commercial failure due to the high cost of hiring coaches and accommodating Westrail service staff in Cork during the operation. IEs disconnecting the Tuam depot appears to have been the final tipping point to cease railway operations as Westrail appear to have secured the long term loan of a larger loco SLNCR Lough Erne and secured Tourist Board funding for its restoration.

The aluminium containers appear to have been used during the 60s for traffic to & from Donegal travelling under Customs Bond through Northern Ireland, both over the ex-GNR line to Strabane and via the ex-GNR Antrim Branch and NCC Main Line to Derry following the closure of the GNR Derry Road. The Aluminium and Guinness containers were transported on 20'-12T capacity-1'wb flat wagons, the flats were fitted with end stanchions and re-classified as ballast wagons during the early 70s. The Aluminium containers were longer than the then standard Irish 16'11" flat wagon and it was necessary to stagger the Guinness containers on the wagons when Belfast and Derry traffic was containerised by the GNR(B) in the late 1950s Ex 25201 series flat re-classified as 24516 series ballast wagon, handbrake wheel broken off.

The 3 tier keg cages/pallets were intended to eliminate/reduce the pilfering of kegs from trains and yards which had been a major problem with the earlier designs of keg containers. A special forklift attachment was used for placing and removing laden kegs in the 3 tier cages, the cages had fixed sides unlike the earlier designs of keg pallet/flats. The 3 tier cages were transported by road between the breweries, rail heads and distribution depots. The Waterford Liner in its final years transported Cider from Clonmel in addition to beer, the cider traffic was transhipped by road between Kilkenny and Clonmel.ts possible that keg cages were increasingly moved by road when IE severely cut back its Keg Liner operations shortly before loosing the traffic in 2006-7? Destinations such as Galway, Sligo and possibly Waterford were served by a combination of rail and road from railheads at Claremorris, Longford and possibly Kilkenny in a hub and spokes operation CIE used heavy duty forklifts rather than container gantries for loading and unloading keg pallets following the introduction on keg pallets in the late 1970s. I don't know if anyone produces a suitable OO Scale foirklift but the Kibri Kalmar heavy duty forklift appears similar to the forklifts used by CIE & IE for handling keg, bagged cement and fertiliser traffic at many railheads https://www.modellbahn-seyfried.de/kibri_h0_kalmar_gabelstapler%2Cpid%2C91043%2Crid%2C539%2Cproduktdetailks.html Larger 25t Capacity forklifts with lifting bales were used for handling ISO Containers at depots like Athlone, Ballinasloe, Tralee that handled reasonably heavy container traffic but did not have a gantry or to provide additional capacity and speed up container handling at larger depots that had gantries.

Finishing touches to Aurora 34 & 650, Arrow 33 has returned to the works for mechanical assembly and a partial re-paint, basically she was a mock up for the black livery for No 34 on a borrowed chassis in the last photo, fortunately a set of wheels to complete No 33 & decals for 650 arrived from the UK just before the international postal service went haywire with Covid 19 restrictions. I ran into problems getting paint to stick to the Markits wheels and ended up de-greasing and etch priming the wheelsets before painting and sealing with clear cote for final assembly. 650 recently overhauled, vacuum pipe, front coupling hook, tender toolbox and coal load added. The tender top is removable to access a DCC socket. I managed to kink the handrail when setting the loco up for the works photos & the firebox wrapper is sitting down slightly at the cab. Sunlight playing on part of the smokebox, boiler and toolbox. Like the GWR the majority of MGWR locos were driven from the right hand side, Atock locos had an unusual solid (wooden) reversing wheel. 34 Aurora in the final MGWR black livery, the number 34 on the splasher side is part of a half etched overlay, as it would have been extremely difficult to produce and affix separate numerals in 4mm scale. The makers plate is engraved with the details of a full sized plate, just about visible under a strong magnifying glass. 34 drivers side, handle of reversing wheel just about visible, the canopy cab appears to have been built for speed rather than comfort with very little protection for the crew 34s tender is modeled without coal rails like the majority of K Class tenders in MGWR days, I managed to mislay one of the tender toolboxes between completing the loco and taking the photo. I must add vacuum pipes to the tenders they look rather bare. After ballasting the 2-4-0s are capable of hauling 21 4w IRM wagons on the flat without slipping a big improvement on the November 2019 Test run. I cast ballast weights with Woods Metal or Cerrobend a low melting point alloy with a large weight in the tender and smaller weights in the space between the motor and mainframes and in the lower part of the boiler between the motor and smokebox.

A recording may exist, a recording of 106 with sound on a Connolly-Bray special was shown at an IRRS Film Show after the loco was withdrawn in the late 70s, the Sulzer sound was distinctly different to a person that was used to listening to GM locos. Both types of Irish Sulzer shared the same engine and electrical system and are likely to have sounded similar. It might be worth while following up with the IRRS to see if the recording still exists.

The Pre-Amalgamation companies did not shy away from complicated trackwork especially where space was tight. The map is from before the yard was modified to accommodate the Cork City Railway and the Hibernian Road overbridge. Forget attempting to build Albert Quay with Peco or other ready to lay track point systems, lots of custom formations. At one stage the connection from the Main Line to the Cork City Railway and the goods yard appears to have been a 3 way point with a single slip completing the crossover on the goods yard side, there also appears to have been a scissors crossover on the connection to the Quarry loco yard. The photo appears to be from the signal cabin looking West possibly before closure of the West Cork system. Main line and connection to the Cork City Railway in right center, Rocksavage Wagon Works on right, train being shunted/made up on goods yard lead under Hibernian Road Bridge, weighbridge road with loading gauge to left of huts, deserted Quarry Loco Yard to far left of photo. It looks that the crossover from the goods yard to the main line was moved out towards the Hibernian Road Bridge eliminating a 3 way point and a single slip, which would have reduced track maintenance cost and simplified shunting in a complex and cramped yard.

A change from my imaginary stuff 12"-1' snow clearing on the 3' narrow gauge over Cumbres Pass in March 2020. I have a similar problem with Autumn leaf fall but a blower/mulcher usually does the job. Cumbres Pass after the snow clears. Fire control speeder at grade crossing at the beginning of the video. Train approaching Cumbres Pass viewed from the crossing. Windy Point railroad on shelf above highway. 489 at Cumbres Pass (10,015') highest point on the 3' Gauge in North America.

Interesting stuff: I explored the railway system by day trips on rail rover tickets in 77&78, I used to walk out to Myrtle Hill level crossing to watch the return working of the Youghal Goods usually a B141 with two H vans and a brake. I visited Youghal on an IRRS special and was surprised to see that there was relatively heavy (3-4wagons) traffic between Youghal & Moygeely. I was surprised to see the Youghal gantry was actually used to handle ISO container traffic as it was only rated at 5 ton capacity, either the gantry was grossly overloaded or the containers were empty or lightly loaded. At the time I worked for a company in Dublin that received a container load of fitted Kitchens from Youghal weekly. CIE was the distributor for Murray Kitchens in Youghal with road transfer to North Esk and distribution from Heuston Goods, Dublin traffic was heavy enough to keep a driver Richie and a helper fully occupied delivering to building sites and merchants in Dublin with a dedicated 2axle Bedford TK with 20' container bed with white cab and Murray Kitchen branding. Its interesting to see the conditions the CIE Depot Men accepted and worked in in the 70s. Water Street container depot looked like a real deathtrap with its congested conditions and the Youghal gantry an accident waiting to happen. Cork-Tivoli was interesting operationally in that trains trains to the siding operated "Wrong Road" against the normal flow of traffic from Cork Station to the siding under the protection of an ETS or electric train staff, presumably the up line was protected by staff instruments in Cork and Little Island signal cabins with a intermediate instrument at Tivoli. The Tivoli siding served oil terminals used by Burmah, Texaco & Pfizer Chemicals (Quigley Magnesite & Roofchrome Refractory products), the Roofchrome siding was extended to serve the Port of Cork Tivoli Container Terminal following the closure of Roofchrome Factory.

Yesterday the New Zealand Government announced that the country was going into lockdown for 4 weeks with all non essential business and public transport shut down and people expected to remain at home. Supermarkets were extremely busy on Mon. afternoon, packaged imported foodstuffs scarce though supermarkets introduced rationing last week. Fairly quiet in the supermarkets this afternoon, almost panic buying in the builders merchants, managed to load up with material for one or two non-model railway projects at home. The next few weeks should be a good opportunity to catch up on my backlog of half finished model railway projects, even started the final assembly of a Midland 2-4-0 for myself!

The saddle tanks appear to have been used as mixed traffic rather than shunting locos in pre-amalgamation days. There is a 1914 photo of CBSCR No 17 later GSR 473 working a long Clonakilty-Cork mixed train and an undated photo of a saddle tank arriving at Bantry with a mixed train (possibly in GSR days) in Ernie Shepherds West Cork book. Its likely that the saddle tanks were used on main line goods and passenger duties until replaced by the Bandon Tanks between 1906 and 1920 and may have been continued in use on branch line duties following the amalgamation until replaced by ex DSER & GSWR locos in the mid-late 1930s. The Hornby Peckett 0-4-0ST and Hattons 6w coaches would make good companions for the Beyer Peacock saddle tank on a Cork City Railway module or West Cork layout. The West Cork used a mixture of 6w and short bogie coaches some of which were of similar length to the 6 wheelers.

Irish 21mm flat bottom track on copper clad sleepers. Rail in the foreground is similar to Peco Code 75, the B141 and wagons are on Peco Conductor rail which has a lighter Coode 60 rail section. Track was prefabricated on the work bench and glued in place on the layout with white glue and ballast scattered on top. Marcway produce OO Gauge copper clad sleepers which are shorter than the scale 8'6" to minimise the narrow gauge look of OO gauge track. Peco Code 60, 70 & 75 rail is suitable for OO gauge use, 60 for lightly laid sidings and branch lines 70 & 75 suitable for general use. Code 80 is an N gauge rail section and does not look the part for OO or 4mm use. For flatbottom track rails are soldered to the sleepers using a liquid flux that allows the solder to flow between the top of the solder and foot of the rail, this eliminates a solder blob at the side of the rail.

The loco appears to be aimed at the British as a LSWR 330 Saddle Tank rather than the Irish outline market, available in four different liveries as opposed to a choice of numbers with the GSR version. The Beattie Saddle Tank fits in well with OO Works other Southern locos and fills a significant gap in rtr pre-group light railway locos as the Beattie Well Tank, Brighton Terrier and SECR P Class are available in rtr form, leaving the Ifracombe Goods and LNWR Coal Engine as the only significant gaps in ex-main line Colonel Stephens engines. It will be interesting to see if OO Works use the same tooling for both the British and Irish version of the loco.

Some of the Beyer Peacock saddle tanks retained many of their original features including sloping smokeboxes up to withdrawl, I suppose its question of whether OO Works consider that its worthwhile tooling up for the different features of the West Cork locos considering the relatively low level of demand for locos in this price range.

The LSWR saddle tank that also ran in Southern and two Colonel Stephens iterations makes better commercial sense (with a better return on the design and tooling costs) than a purely Irish loco with potentially greater demand for the English than the Irish version of the loco. The saddle tank also fits in well with other OO Works Southern engines. I understand that demand was fairly restricted for the OO Works locos locos with production limited to 100 units of each type and that the UG 0-6-0 was slow to sell out.

The 4-4-0 is "Whippet" an LMS re-build of an older series of Northern Counties 2-4-0s and 4-4-0s locos, there is a thread on scratchbuilding a Whippet by DeSelby on RMeb https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/80681-an-ncc-whippet/&tab=comments#comment-1292286. The 0-6-0 is a relic from the 1870s, the LMS built 3 new 0-6-0s possibly as replacements in the 1920s. The NCC have only a handful of 0-6-0 goods locos, the 4-4-0s & 2-4-0s worked the majority of trains on the Northern Counties up to the arrival of the Moguls in the 1930s

It was like Christmas seemingly with half of Hamilton in the local supermarket on Thursday with not a loaf of bread to be seen, turned out it was nothing to do with panic buying just a breakdown in a bakery that supplies half the North Island. The Examiner has some good advice for surviving the epidemic https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/lifestyle/ask-audrey-what-measures-are-you-taking-for-home-schooling-three-tonic-to-one-of-gin-988924.html

Demand for rtr Irish steam locos in the £250-300 price range is quite limited. A loco like the LSWR 0330 Tank makes better sense than a purely Irish loco due to a far better return on the investment in the tooling, potentially with Southern, LSWR and various light railway and industrial versions.

The photo is of the Swinford end of the station, the gates appear to have been operated by at crossing keeper who lived in the cottage to the right of the photos. The signals and crossover are likely to have been controlled from the signal cabin which is out of view at the Claremorris end of the station. Interestingly the wicket gate was removed and a 3 lever ground frame installed to the right of the buffer stop at some stage after the photo was taken. The frame may have been installed to interlock the level crossing gates with the running signals, so that the signal man could not lower the signal for the section to Swinford or the signals to enter the station unless the crossing gates were open There is another level crossing at the Claremorris end of the station that was operated by the signal man, the gates appear to have been operated by hand rather than from a "big wheel" in the cabin. https://www.flickr.com/photos/152343870@N07/39574108574/in/album-72157713183200497/

Kiltimagh on the Burma Road, I have been planning but never got round to building a model based on the station for many years.

I would ignore most of the thread apart from Noel's & NIR80s replies of 29th Feb and 1st with photos of Peco HO and Bullhead track on their layouts. Peco track systems are the standard for mainstream use in the UK and Ireland as they are robust and relatively simple to use and the large selection of points, crossings and accessories. The Peco Streamline HO (Code 100) is probably the best option for someone building their first layout as it is fully compatible with their fixed geometry Set Track System. Set track curves and straight track can be useful if space is restricted or if you want to experiment with a track layout without having to cut flexible track. I would avoid using small radius set track or Hornby points and recommend using medium or large radius points rather to achieve smooth and reliable running particularly with large diesel locos like an 071 and 201 and bogie coaches and wagons. Two foot is the minimum recommended radius for OO gauge, No2 or No3 radius set track curves should be used if you are not able to achieve a 2' minimum. The Peco HO/OO Streamline (Code 100 rail) system was introduced in the 1960s as a compromise system suitable for OO (1:76) and HO (1:87) scale as a universal track system suitable for British and international use. The Code 100 rail section was considered "fine" by the standards of the time but is larger than scale for most rail sections used internationally and the Continental HO sleeper size and spacing is incorrect for both British OO and American HO Scale. Peco H0/OO Streamline Fine (Code 75) system was introduced in the 1990s in response to demand for a finer more accurate rail section by both OO & HO users. There is little to choose between the original Code 100 & 75 systems in terms of durability, ease of use and range of points, crossings and accesories. Peco have since introduced an American HO Code 83 scale track system in response to competition from American track manufacturers and British Bull head track systems in response to increasing demand for a OO gauge track system from the scale end of the UK market. The American and Bull head track systems may be less suitable for an experienced user or someone with a restricted space than the the Streamline HO system. The track may be more fragile to work on than the earlier systems and a larger space may be required to build a layout as the points in the American and Bull Head track systems based on full size railway geometry rather than the small, medium and large radius points available in the Code 100 & 75 systems. Peco Streamline track uses a flatbottom rail traditionally used by railways outside of the United Kingdom. British and the majority of Irish railways used bullhead track with an I beam rail profile for main line track until replaced by flatbottom track from the late 1950s onwards. Irish railways tended to use a mixture of bullhead and flatbottom, with Bullhead mainly used on main lines with the heaviest traffic, with flatbottom used on some main lines incl Dublin-Galway-Sligo and Westport and the majority of secondary lines and branches throughout the country. I Bullhead track & point work Irish standard flatbottom track on baseplates on wooden sleepers

American 3' Gauge track. Como Colorado Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad Irish Broad gauge jointed track flat bottom rail on baseplates.

Try and get your hands on a copy of R.M. Arnold's NCC Saga https://www.amazon.com/N-C-Saga-Scottish-Northern/dp/0715356445. it includes quite a bit on the Derry Central & NCC branch lines. The line appears to have survived mainly on traffic to and from the local linen mills and a brickworks, the section from Magherafelt to Kilrea survived as a goods only line until 195, the Derry Central and NCC Cookstown Branch lost their passenger services in 1950. Mac's Arnolds books focus as much on the "kitchen sink" drama of the personalities that worked on the railway as the locomotives and operation, retired railway men and women became anxious when he announced that he was about to publish a book.

There is an IRRS paper on the early stages of CIEs plans to modernise freight handling in one of the 1969 Journals. One of the plans was to design and build special containers or swap bodies for specific traffic flows including bagged-fertiliser and keg traffic that could not be accommodated within a standard ISO 20X8 container or half height. Other specials included an ISO hopper container for malt traffic, a hopper was selected as it was not feasible to discharge the container by tipping due to height restrictions in the customers premises. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swap_body Besides being wider and longer than a standard ISO container the open containers in the photos of the B+I Liner are particularly unusual in that the floor of the container is considerably higher than the floor of a standard ISO container. The open swap-body appear to have been designed for a light but bulky packaged traffic to the UK mainland which would not fit in a standard ISO open container. Its possible that the swap bodies on the train and B+I trailer are a hangover from the widespread use of" Lancashire Flats" by haulage and shipping companies for unit load traffic between Ireland and Great Britain during the 1960s before the widespread introduction of ISO containers and direct road transfer using ro-ro ferries using accompanied and un-accompanied trailers.

The 1st photo is a great discovery the B+I liner possibly at East Wall yard (The Polling Fields) late 1960s with a reasonably clear view of those unusual open containers and 25436 series flat wagons in grey complete with load securing stanchions. The B+I truck on the right appears to be carrying a similar open container which indicates that they were used for Cross-Channel rather than domestic freight traffic. The B+I Liners initially ran from East Wall yard to Cork Goods as a replacement for B+Is Cork-South Wales cargo sailings before a siding connection was provided from the Alexandra Road Tramway into the B+I North Wall Terminal. The silver container appears to be the CIE aluminium equivalent of the British Railways B container used until replaced by ISO containers in the early 1970s.

It happens often enough with mast forklifts one of the reasons for the shift to reach stackers for container handling.