jhb171achill

And Cork. Those CAFtle trucks will remain in Dublin, and the naughty of Maynooth, Drogheda and the DSER will be condemned to travel in them for years, as the even naughtier of Belfast suburbia were condemned to MEDs and 450s in turn, for some hour and a bit decades! Oh! How these townies must suffer! Then there were the plastic seat ex-AEC, pre-DART things. But, I digress; purgatory is for a different website.

I believe it’s all defunct now.

That one looks pretty good! There actually were occasionally minor variations in the real thing, though perhaps oddly a greater variation in the styles of the Roman characters....

I would agree with this. Despite rumours that 29s displaced by Dart pluses will end up in Cork, I am informed by a highly reliable engineering-background source that this is highly unlikely. Thus, unless the 28s go down to replace the 26s, and if so what would replace them?.... then the 26s will be there until some sort of battery / vegetable juice burning things appear. In my youth, talk was of closures, closures and more closures, and the complete replacement of ALL steam traction by diesel. Now, it seems to be about the complete replacement of ALL diesel-powered trains and locomotives by customer tubes which have battery-clockwork-hybrid engines fuelled by jojobi-juice vegan extract, water, eco-friendly air, or calorie-free biomass juice. And no toilets, despite suburban area line speeds of a 46A in heavy Friday evening Christmas traffic.

That is absolutely top class. Love the scenic background too.

That’s just a G scale one, John. €76 extra per stripe.

I join in your commemoration!

Exclusive! IRM tell me that the grasshoppers on sale from Tuesday next. DCC extra, with working chirp recordings. Livery options: green (as shown), browny-grey Northern European version, or Norwegian blue. Preorders now - €27 without DCC, €87.50 with DCC, and VAT and Brexitcustoms fees combined with postal charges €248.64.

Correct - some RPSI and later IRRS tours (eg Youghal) did cover the area and did indeed have trips to Cobh, but no RPSI May Tour ever actually started from Cork.

Very nice!

Weren't there two of those coaches? Where are they now?

On Thursdays there’s a connection off the morning Tralee to Castletown West train, operating locally as a mixed. Here, it approaches Dugort Harbour in summer 1967……

Excellent. That's a copy I don't have.

It’s not black, as such; that much looks clear. If not black, it has to be green, as it’s obviously not silver either. I have seen a picture of (either) an A or C so utterly filthy that you couldn’t make out the white bit at the top at all, but if this engine was (a) black, and (b) as exceptionally dirty as that, you wouldn’t be able to see such a clean number on the front. So we can rule that out. A very small number of A & C classes were painted in the older dark green around 1960-2. While obsolete on diesel locos and passenger stock since 1955, it was still used on buses and lorries. i think there were two or three “A”s and at least one “C” (231). Some had lining, some not, same as the normal lighter green. There appears to be no rhyme nor reason behind this variation, same as dayglo patches on the fronts of 071s & 141s etc in the 1990s. As for numerals on the side, and the metal snails that “A”’s generally had, these simply haven’t been added. The loco could be the normal lighter green - variations in lighting on the day and the type of film can make blues and greens appear lighter or darker. I’m inclined to suspect this might be the case, however it’s equally possible it’s the darker “bus” green. Cork and Limerick painted a number of secondary-use coaches in the plain darker green in late days. Finally, re the snail. This lasted about a year after the black & tan livery came in. Same on the road - first repaints of buses into either red and cream or navy and cream have snails. But no railway vehicle ever carried it in even the earliest BnT times. The BnT livery on the railway first appeared in 1962, but was very rare until well into 1863. The “roundel” first appeared in 1963.

Originally cattle trains awaiting entry to the Dublin area, or coming off the Meath branch, I'd say.