BSGSV

God bless your eyesight if you can see the back of that train well enough to know! Looks like a 6-piece set, 900, trailer, 700 series, two trailers and another power car.

My apologies. The preceding posts were about the chassis and that's what I was commenting on. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have known you were asking about buffer spacing!

Very different from each other on the prototype too! As a general comment, I am a bit taken aback at the heat that seems to be there regarding the buffer spacing, given most folk seem to use tension lock or kadee or similar to couple their vehicles. I would notice these rather more than buffer spacing.

Yes, the aluminium one does look like an ITG production which were produced for selling on the sales stand on railtours, and also got kept by some to put on their wall, as the mounting studs on the real ones make that a slight problem. Some were also drilled and used on the preserved ones, A3 and A39, as the originals had disappeared by the time the locos came into ITG ownership.

The platform went when the third road was extended over Sarsfield Road bridge and up to meet the four-track section at the west end of the Works. The Platform wasn't just for the Works. There are references to Summer Sunday trains to and from DSE destinations in earlier Irish Railfans' News. The Down Home signal attached to the footbridge is unusual.

Looked at the wonderful IRRS Photographic archive. Not an Annett's key either, but control levers between "A" and "B". "B" would have been a small ground level cabin of the same design as Birr or Charleville "B". I'd still like to know what the staff was for though...

Perhaps, but I would have expected "B" box to be released by an Annett's Key and not a staff machine.

Given Kilmallock should not have needed a single line staff, that one is odd. I guess there could have been temporary single line working, but that usually is associated with bridge renewal.

I suspect it might be Kilmallock.

Stanley Street is where Dublin Corkporation had their refuse depot and incinerator, going back 120 years ago and more. Track was laid to connect to the North Quays tramline, to move wagons of refuse at night, to a landfill at Fairview. The landfill is now Fairview Park.

The first carriage looks suspiciously like 1097 or its sister, before it was got at to make it an Ambulance coach.

From Irish Railfans' News: Ballylinan & Palace East: On Saturday July 9 loco 184 (in GS&WR livery) headed the first IRRS dining car special ever out of Amiens Street. The train consisted of HV 3122, second 1469, ex GNR dining car C144N, brake second 1905 and the 1912 GS&WR Officers’ Saloon 352. The special travelled first to Athy and then diverged to traverse the 4½ mile Ballylinan branch - the first occasion of a dining car working on this line! The train returned to Athy and continued to Muine Bheag to travel over another semi-closed branch to Palace East - the subject of “Station Survey” in this issue. The return trip to Amiens Street was made via Macmine Junction and Enniscorthy.

Looks like a batch of posters obtained to be on hand at short-ish notice, which could then have the details written on, whenever they ran an excursion. As a guess, they could have used ink, but that might run if (rain-)water got on it, whereas pencil wouldn't.

That's a new one on me, but of a piece with other schemes that seem to have been floated in the mid-1970's. Aside from Blue Pullmans, CIE looked at re-engining the Sulzers, and I was also told by someone who would know that they looked at buying redundant Westerns from BR. I'm sure the new 071's they did go for would have seemed quite pricy given the times, but haven't they got their money's worth out of them since!

When the carriages were newly repainted/refubished, the set would be all Galway livery, 5 standards, buffet, standard, gen van. As the Mk.2 air con ran down, the Galway carriges could turn up in ones or twos, mixed in with IE livery carriages.