jhb171achill

I've booked the 12:50. Fingers crossed it isn't a 2-car 26 class towing a tara wagon.

I've to go to Belfast by train tomorrow. Are any of them guaranteed to be DDs? Second choice an ICR. Maybe the 12:50?

Yes, but I meant another pic I've seen....... (I think!)

There’s one with tanks….. maybe one was? I’ll see what pics Barry has.

On page 78 of "Rails Through North Kerry" (self + Barry Carse) we have a photo clearly showing one of the pair of "tin post office vans" that were converted to gennies in later days. You can see the (added) fuel tanks underneath. If you don't have the book, ebay would need to be your friend; to Barry's and my delight, it sold out in no time. Neither of us have any spare copies left ourselves. (As an aside; I have a few spare copies of "Rails Through Wexford" and "Rails Through Tipperary" here, normal price about €22-€25 / £20-£22; I will do either for €20 including postage anywhere in Ireland if anyone's interested).....

Yes. There were only 4 of the "post office" types. All four were converted later. two as gennys and two as the PW things, one of which is now at Downpatrick. They were instantly noticeable by the fact they had three full sixed "carriage" wondows on one side and no windows on the other, as this side had full-height postal sorting pigeon-hole racks inside. So those vehicles are extremely niche indeed, and I would expect that if anyone did any production run of ANY of these late-era four-wheeled vans, the luggage vans and genny vans would be the way to go. Liveries - silver, (later light) green with waistband, black'n'tan. When CIE were turning out new coaches, tin vans and the like in silver, some had the normal pale green numerals, and some had them in RED. I have yet to establish whether the difference related to different colours on different types of vehicle, or different eras (e.g. they try one, then don't like it, so from the Xth of Septober 195X they use the other colour), or was it just random! I suspect the date idea.

I'd probably take 4 or 5. Maybe 3D is the way to go for these.....

Not to be forgotten too, is the fact that mail trains in the 1960s often had two or three of the luggage vans in amongst a mixture of all sorts of other random vans, including a six-wheeled mail coach built in 1877 which ended its long career on the Sligo line about 1960! The newspaper trains from Connolly to the north could also see several, with one detached at Portadown for the Derry Road. Yes, black'n'tan "tin vans" got as far as Great Victoria Street, Omagh, Strabane and Derry (Foyle Road). I would not be surprised if they got to Waterside via the NCC. Sometimes you'd see one at each end of a train, so no need to limit them to one per train.....

100% RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!

There's something VERY MGWR about that coach! Remove the end bit and make it a 30ft vehicle and it would certainly pass as such!

It's dark green, and probably plain, though given the degree of weathering and fading, I would not rule out full lining, which is more likely to be what would be expected. The yoke behind it is - I THINK - a GSR heavy rebuild of an older vehicle which was a brake third of some sort. The contours suggest GSWR to me, though in and around Wisht Caark, boy, sure ye never know, boy! The roof looks too high for a Bandon vehicle.

Could well have been 1075, yes. 69, though, didn’t have two gangways at the end…. one blank end! Diagram might be wrong….

There was one other - number began with 1xxx series. I've a note of it somewhere. Got the BnT, but I don't think it ever had gangways. No. 69 of 1888, now being rebuilt into a (non-prototypical) brake first at Downpatrick, had a gangway at one end only!

In general, old branch lines that survived the fuel crisis suspensions of passenger service (Clonakilty, Baltimore, Valentia Hbr, Loughrea, Kenmare, Ballinrobe, Ballaghaderreen, Foynes, Ballina*) tended to go on using the same six-wheelers they had when they opened, well into the early diesel era. Sights of brand-new tin vans and "C" class locos with elderly six-wheelers became commonplace between 1957 and 1961. However, as Mol mentions, during the fifties these were increasingly replaced by a bogie composite, a six-wheel brake or brake 3rd, and a tin van. Once someone markets RTR tin vans, I predict good sales - as with few exceptions (one being summer weather and long daylight!), a "genny van" is NEEDED as much as a locomotive on a train of that time, and later times. It is worth commenting here on coach types and uses between 1945 (formation of CIE) and the early 1970s, when the last timber-bodied pre-CIE passenger stock was withdrawn, especially in the light of recent moves for our community here to place orders with Alphagraphix for MGWR six wheeled types. When the GSR was formed, they basically had four types of "main line" stock. In some cases these stayed very much where they had always been. In others, they ended up widely spread, often as far away from "home" as they could be; e.g. a MGWR coach at Baltimore, or a DSER dining car on a Knock special at Claremorris. So if we fast forward into the later days of the grey'n'green era, we get a pattern, which is this.... 1. Ex CBSCR stock. Fewer numerically, and most examples never operated anywhere but home territory. A train mostly of CBSCR stock in Sligo was something seen about as often as a Lough Swilly brake van on the Orient Express. Just didn't happen. So, of modelling these obscure types, only appropriate for a West Cork themed layout; so no J15 haulage! 2. Ex DSER stock. As long ago as 1925 when the GSR came into being, it was evident that there were arrears of maintenance on both locos and coaching stock. jhbSenior personally recalls that within months of the GSR taking over, ex-GSWR & MGWR locos and coaching stock (and a Bandon tank eventually) migrating into the south-eastern section, even his local Harcourt Street line. When CIE came into being, the process of sorting out old stock accelerated and within only a couple of years a standardisation drive had added to the woes of ageing south-eastern stock, and substantial withdrawals took place bettwen 1946 and 1950. Thus, by the time the early diesels came along, DSER six-wheelers were gone (or as good as), and even bogie stock from that company was rare - and not to be seen off its home turf. 3. Ex GSWR stock. Numerically superior by far, and with its home base as Inchicore, hardly surprising that stock from this company survived to include the very last six wheel vehicles of all - a couple of full brakes only withdrawn in 1969 and 1970; and a number of old third class bogies, including several non-corridor ones, still in use in the Dublin area on busy days until 1972. However, as for the specifically six-wheeled, PASSENGER-carrying stock, by the time the last of those were withdrawn in 1963, we had the curious situation that most of these were gone, replaced by MGWR types, and yet passenger brakes had survived - both bogie and six-wheeled. However, most BOGIE stock by 1963 were ex-GSWR (only a handful of ex-MGWR bogies ever saw black'n'tan). 4. Ex MGWR stock. Opposite of GSWR; their six-wheelers survived, while their bogies were gone by about 1965 - few enough of these having even seen the 1960s in. In summary, if authenticity is sought in diesel days, the following would be typical for pre-1963. Branch lines - mostly Midland six wheelers, with either a Midland full brake or a GSWR one, or maybe an old brake 3rd of either company - OR - an old GSWR bogie composite with a tin van and maybe one old six-wheel brake of some sort. Main lines - mostly GSWR bogies, mixed in with Bredins, various types of laminate, and Park Royals, plus old GSWR six-wheeled full brakes on mail trains. All with tin vans! On the DSER the odd ex-GNR coach too, after 1958. After 1963: Well, after 1963 there was only the Ballina branch - so a wooden, Bredin or laminate bogie with a tin van. Main lines - same as above. Of all the six-wheelers of all types, only about half a dozen survived 1963 in traffic, and they were all (a) full brakes, and 9b) GSWR types. Two were withdrawn and gone within 18 months, and of the others three were painted black'n'tan, the only six-wheelers ever to have this livery. Last credible record of them in traffic was on the up and down Galway mails in 1968, but one was withdrawn officially in 1969. The other was withdrawn in 1970, but a picture of it a year earlier that I saw some time ago shows it looking as if it hadn't been used for some time. As an aside, this is why the Hattons Genesis six-wheel range only offered a full brake in black'n'tan. Every single other type was withdrawn before black'n'tan became the official livery. Thus, it's historically impossible to run a black'n'tan six-wheeler with green passenger-carrying ones; the former only received the new livery after the latter were all withdrawn! So, a BnT 6-wheel van lives at the back of a mail train of Bredins, old wooden bogies and laminates - not old six-wheel coaches! (* The only one left!!)

Midland coaches, yes, of 1890s parentage - some 60-70 years old then!