jhb171achill

Senior transferred from the GSR to the NCC about 1944 for several years, when the latter was going through a phase of concrete engagement syndrome. The coastal erosion on the Larne line, following a period of very bad weather, was critical, and that was his area of expertise, learned the hard way round Bray Head! I always thought the NCC obsession with concrete was unsightly and bland; even ugly - but it wasn’t built to hang in an art gallery. It was efficient and very good at what it was designed for - a bit like a “Jeep”!

Why?

Love the old van body! I've several under construction at the moment....same idea....

I'm happy enough to call them 800s! (B1a class sounds a bit nerdy!)

They're neither "Queens" nor "goddesses". They were all different. Maedb was a queen. Macha was a goddess. Tailté was the wife of a High King of Ireland. The dark green with "G S" is the livery she carries now, since 1994 or so. She arrived in the north in standard CIE lined green, which she still carries, but without any markings. In her thirty-year stay in Belfast, she remained without markings. It was only once she entered the UFTM in Cultra that she acquired the "G S"; this variation of the livery was never, of course, carried in traffic - in fact she has never so much as turned a wheel carrying this lettering! So, IRM are simply giving another "fun" option in providing the model in what might be called its "Museum livery", in the same way they're offering it in the works grey it carried simply to have a photo taken when new. With the real thing only every having two operational liveries, it's a nice - and unique - additional option.

I must have a look for some details I have somewhere on W & L stock. They only had six bogie coaches, one of which was the beautiful but deceased saloon which they used as a Director’s Saloon too. W & L stock, like DSER stock, suffered a large clearout in the late 1940s and early 50s, and very little of either passed into the 1960s.

905, 916, and 931-3 were Waterford & Limerick coaches rather than GSWR. The tell-tale clues of W & L / WLWR stock are: 1. Curved in ends. While common on several British companies (GWR, Somerset & Dorset, Midland, early LMS and at least one Scottish company), they were unique to the W & L here. 2. When the WLWR was swallowed up by the GSWR in 1901, their carriages were numbered in the 900 series usually. For anyone interested W & L / WLWR stock was painted a burgundy maroon with gold lining while independent, and repainted in the very much darker GSWR colour after 1901.

I spent the day at a family gathering chez Daughter-the-Elder & her expert Christmas-dinner-making partner; within those premises dwell SIX cats.......

Even while still working on the railways, many of the longer-lived locos contained almost nothing from when first built - even new frames, wheels and boilers and cabs - the latter two often of completely different design. Different wheel arrangements even; and a tender loco could become a tank or vice versa. Long before CIE withdrew them, no J15 was at all like its original self, and look at No. 90!

Harcourt St?

Fantastic pics!

Since the MGWR was adjacent to the canal, what about something like "Royal Canal Junction"? (You could even make up a logo for it in the shape of an oul triangle...!)

Whitworth Road / Sherriff St / Ballybough / Clonliffe / Cabra

Likewise; mostly poor.