Maitland

Michael McGowan was born in Cloghaneely in Co Donegal in 1865, and went to America in about 1885. He made a small fortune in the Klondike gold rush, and returned home in about 1904. Sean O hEochaidh recorded his story in 1941, and it was published in English as The Hard Road to Klondike. This is his first encounter with the Burtonport Extension, which had recently opened when he arrived back in Ireland.

As soon as we put our feet down on the quay at Derry, we

saw that there had been big changes since we had left home.

We went towards the hotels and the one we went into

was fairly full. We ordered a drink of ‘The Derry Hag’ as the

old people used call Watts’ whiskey. There was a man in our company

that got very friendly and it wasn’t long until he started to

tell us about the changes that had come over the country since

we had left it.

‘You don’t have to walk to Cloghaneely this time,’ he said,

‘as you and your fathers had to. The train goes now and you’ll

be able to take it as far as Cashelnagor.’

‘It’s good to hear that,’ we all said together.

‘And what‘s the reason for this sudden change?’ I asked the

gentleman.

‘I’ll tell you that,’ he said, ‘if you have time to listen to my

story. A Board was set up called the Congested Districts Board

and some years ago a man named Balfour visited your parts.

He enquired about the condition of the people and when he had

done that, he conferred with people in authority about schemes

to help the poor districts that stretch from here westwards to the

sea. As a result of that, the railway between Letterkenny and

Burtonport was started.’

‘It couldn’t be that this work took very long,’ said one of

my friends. '

‘It didn’t,’ said the gentleman, ‘and that's where the

workers did themselves damage. They were so enthusiastic at

the work that it only took two years to build the railway.

Gangs of them all worked together and they tore hills away and

filled in little valleys and it wasn’t long until there was silence

again all over the place. If they had had any sense, they could

have made the work last much longer. And the pay they were

getting wasn’t even all that good—they were working from

dawn to dusk for a half-crown a day.’

‘What way did they bring the railway?’ asked Hugh

McGinley.

‘They brought it out the very cheapest way for themselves,’

said the gentleman, ‘and they’ll rue it for more than today.

They built it as straight as they could over hills and dales and

it doesn't go within miles of any village from here to Burton-

port. If they had built it along the coast, as they should have

done, the land would have been dear but instead they bought

the cheaper land and built it around by the foot of the hills.

Of course, from the tourists’ point of view, it goes through some

of the loveliest countryside in Ireland.’

‘The fishermen of the Rosses have benefited by it,’ said a

man from Burtonport who was in our company.

‘You could say that,’ said the Derryman, ‘and it will do

this town good too. It has done so already. There’s a man in

this town that has made a. small fortune out of clocks since the

railway started—a man named Faller. He began making

clocks and selling them for a pound each and there isn’t a house

between here and Arranmore that hasn’t a clock now.’

Next morning, we left; Derry. We were longing to see the

old home itself. The train wasn’t in too much of a hurry, even

if it was new. If you were a good walker, I’d say that there

were many stretches where you’d have had no trouble keeping

abreast of it. There were times when you’d have the urge to

leave it altogether—-like one man who went to America long

ago and who grew impatient with the sailing boat he was on.

He said he'd be better off walking - that he’d get there quicker.

Once when one of the two men who were in charge of the

train came into our compartment, I asked if it wasn’t possible

to make it go a bit quicker. He didn’t answer but sat down for

a minute at my side.

‘Did you ever hear of Columbkille’s prophecy?’ he asked.

‘I did, surely,’ I said.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it was about the Black Pig's race: that the

day would come when the black pig would race from Deny

Bay to Burtonport. This is the black pig of the prophecy—and

you never saw a pig going fast!’

He got up then and went off roaring wit.h laughter.

In the end we got to the station at Cashelnagor and I don’t

suppose anyone ever got off a train feeling as good as I did then.

Manchester Museum of Science and Industry hold the Bayer Peacock GA drawings archive, but the search front end has changed completely and I can't find it any more. If anyone has used it lately, a link to it that works would be much appreciated.

Frightening. Three passenger trains passed over it before Network Rail stopped traffic- even though it had been reported. That line of larger stones in the collapsed area looks interesting, as does the baulk of timber and stakes apparently associated with them. It looks to me as though there had been problems there in the past, and that was the repair, which itself collapsed causing the problem. Perhaps the terracing originally had a retaining wall, which started to fail so they dumped all that clay up against it.

No doubt no records of the patching exist now, though given my experiences with Network Rail they can't find the records they do have.

One clip to the track, the other to the far end of the wire.

How the buzzer works- the buzzer itself is a battery and a sounder. There's no sound because the circuit is open, at the croc clips. Close the circuit- touch the clips together- and the buzzer sounds. Open it again, and it goes off. Now you want to check if your solder joint is good, so connect one clip to the track- it's still open circuit, so no sound. Touch the other to the (bare) far end of the wire. If the joint is good (and the wire isn't broken) the circuit is closed and you get a noise. If you don't, the joint is bad, or the wire is bad, or the clip on the track has pinged off while you weren't looking.

It was really a standard(ish) design- the Ballymena & Larne (and later the Castlederg and Victoria Bridge) used an earlier version of the same loco, and it was exported to Norway, Sweden and maybe other places, so its sort of "within bounds" for freelance Irish as it stands. Belbaught might go mixed gauge!

Garfieldsghost is right- they are available, but only from the Isle of Man government. Hutchinson and Car 21 ordered. I'll tell you how easily motorised when they are when I get them.

This promises to be a cracker:

http://www.oxforddiecast.co.uk/collections/oxford-rail/products/isle-of-man-no-10-g-h-wood-indian-red-1945-1967-or76iom001

Pity the preview has "G.W.Wood" rather than "G>H"- I suppose they'll fix that. No motor, but that never held back the old Airfix pug...

I believe there's also a Manx Electric Winter Saloon to follow - also unpowered.

This Maeve? That disc would be her shield I suppose.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Maev.jpg

True indeed; and they built the Foss Dyke too, no longer carrying much traffic beyond the odd duck here and there. But the point I was making was that Ireland needn't have been a minor appendage of Europe. Look at Holland. As flat as that bit of Erin that still apparently needs repairing, with mineral resources limited to a bit of Brabant brown coal even worse than Arigna. Yet they were a major international merchant power from their independence at the end of the 16th century to the middle of the 18th. They had the good luck to be contended over by both Protestant and Catholic powers, and as a result unexpectedly and perhaps reluctantly became the first country in Europe to officially tolerate multiple religions. Sort of Ireland inside out.

Ireland could have done that, in another history.

Ireland did beat England to canal building - the Newry Canal was opened when the Duke of Bridgewater was still in short trousers. I think the slow industrial development might have had something to do with the state of Ireland in the aftermath of the English Pope Adrian's grant of a country that wasn't his to someone else who didn't own it. Yes, Ireland is rather short of mineral resources compared to the rest of these islands, but had (and has) immense agricultural resources- and don't forget that it was the wool trade, not coal or steel, that kickstarted the Industrial Revolution in England. That and the profits from slavery.

However if the land was sold to farmers they could have valid concerns about security, trespass and liability, which may or may not be addressable.

Greenway or not, it has always been stupid to sell off land formerly used by disused railways or canals. The area of land involved is (generally) very small, and the tiny bit of advantage to the public purse is massively outweighed by the destruction of the asset- a potential transport corridor. It's probably not as bad in most of Ireland as it is in England, but transport projects here, from urban fast transit tramways to HS2, cost many billions more than they would have done if disused routes had been left intact.

As for liability, well Ireland doesn't seem to have the tradition of rural footpaths that pervade most of England and Wales, and in Scotland there is a general presumption of freedom of access for those passing through (though the very rich always have means of bending the law in their own favour).

I road terms, the kind of accident that wouldn't even make the parish newsletter.

This is devastating. The cars are over 120 years old- they represent the bleeding edge of technology in 1895, and are almost unchanged since, thanks the history of tourism within the British Isles- two world wars, a depression, and the rise of road transport and charter flights saw to it that there was never the capital to modernise it. There were only 6 cars built- one was lost to a fire some 25 or 30 years ago, and now there are four. We had a trailer on the "flat" line, the Manx Electric, overturned a year or so ago - fortunately without much damage- and I'm left wondering if they aren't paying enough to get the quality of staff needed for historically sensitive material like this.It really is of World Heritage standard, and should be protected as such.

They illustrate it with a picture of a guy playing a piano accordion in nearly the best Irish style- for the very best Irish style, it's in its box in a locked cupboard at home, with the banjo, the bodhran and the shaky egg.

In your innocemce, you call those strange?

get big/small ones (obligatory Fr Ted reference)

Instructions on loading cattle wagons: the small cows should be in the wagons at the front of the train, and the big ones at the back. The longer the train, the more cows you can pack in.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-35384707

Douglas Corporation (Isle of Man) has announced its intention to abandon the seafront horse trams, believed to be the only such tramway surviving (as distinct from tourist revivals). There was a proposal to replace the current double- track tramway in the centre of the promenade road, with a single track on the seaward side, so as to free up much- needed car space, so this announcement comes as a bit of a shock.

driving in a cold icy cab until the heating kicked in.

That's about as daft as you can get if they really did that. Heating is free on a Diesel - over half the energy in the fuel is pushed out through the radiators. You may as well warm both cabs all the time. As for the psychological problems of front cabs, by the fifties electrics had been running on ground level, underground, and overhead railways for half a century. And for tank engines in reverse, if it was a matter of coal and dust, why did British drivers not object? BTW I think the BCDR ran tank engines in reverse at least sometimes, but I haven't got that book.

Where's the turntable?

Or more to the point; why did everywhere except England, Scotland and Wales (and perhaps the Timoleague and Courtmacsherry) turn tank engines? In France, even tiny tortillards with Corpet Louvet 030T's had turntables. The few times you see a loco running backwards in most of the world is when they've had to stop short for some reason. Despite the fact that most tank locos have better track visibility running in reverse- some French 0-6-2T's were actually cab- forward 2-6-0T's- and it seems to have taken British diesel designers a while to realise that the cab should be at the front, even on single cab locos. Several of the designs managed to have no view in either direction.

They'd have been better off buying up some of the SR N1 class - the same as N's but already 3 cylinder. What would be the advantage of using a bogie anyway? Apart from adding a couple of tons to the front end.

If Ireland had joined in the war, the Great Northern might have had V2's as well as V's.

Are modern points more reliable with regard to absence of potential derailing

Generally they are - if they are looked after. See "Grayrigg" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayrigg_derailment.

I got out my private helicopter (kindly supplied by Google Maps) and took a flight over Drogheda just now. There are points either end of the viaduct, so it's ordinary single track. I don't know the technical term for the safety rails, they aren't check rails as such which are set just inside the back-to-back gauge. You see them on a lot of bridges though.

Don't be tempted to try what some idiot near here did a few years ago. To stop people breaking into his shed, he rigged up a sawn off shotgun and a tripwire, aimed at groin height as the intruder came through the door. It worked perfectly, as he found out when he went in the shed and forgot it was there...

http://cspmodels.com/abante/index.php?rt=product/product&path=65&product_id=127

Avonside 0-6-0ST in 4mm scale.