jhb171achill

I’ll ask Barry Carse when I see him. He probably has photos of it.

Not sure, I could be mixing this up with something else, but was this where they used tractors to push stuff into wagons?

There were more than a few “one-off” alterations. I suspect you’re seeing opposite sides of that coach and for some reason they’ve altered one end of one side from original….

That four-wheeled van it’s towing was one of several mobile tool vans. Operating between Kingsbridge and Inchicore would be typical of their use.

That looks VERY well.

Absolutely superb! If I hadn’t already got them from Leslie I’d buy thirty! On any pre-1970 Irish layout you can never have enough cattle wagons….. On a historical note, from researching the Loughrea and Kenmare lines among other things, I have gleaned a few facts relating to cattle traffic. Volumes carried were still huge into the late 1950s, but between about 1957 and 65, overall volumes more or less halved. By the early 70s even that had halved. By 1971/2, few places were still handling “bastes”. Other than Loughrea, a few were still being loaded at Athenry and Ennis at least, unsure of other places. They ceased carrying cattle in 1974, by which time volumes were way, way down on even 1971 levels. As late as the mid 50s, Loughrea could have your extra locomotives and crews, an inspector, a cattle mart representative and a sleeping van (or two!) brought in. Wagons started arriving from 02:00. Loading commenced about 04:00 and went on all day. The two passenger trains and one mixed were in amongst it all. Several passenger specials had arrived the day before carrying dealers from as far afield as Cork or Tyrone. Operations went on until 01:00 the next morning, 23 hours. One station master was known to stay on duty the whole time! All in all, several hundred wagons would arrive and depart, on top of normal traffic. By the time the last cattle left Loughrea by rail, there was but one train, of five wagons. Kenmare was similar, though not quite as busy as that (Loughrea was one of the biggest in the country in the past). In the 1950s, Kenmare cattle was handled by the two daily mixed trains (think a J15, GSWR bogie compo, tin van, two ordinary goods vans and maybe 15 or 20 cattle trucks behind that!) plus a special train, maybe 35 or 40 cattle trucks, often double-headed by two J15s. Barry Carse went to Ennis one day when there was a fair on, about 1972/3. A SINGLE cattle wagon was loaded - at the southbound passenger platform! That was the last cattle he ever saw. That picture is in one of our books. Around that time I was in Cork one day, wandering about the tracks as one did with impunity, and without dayglo clothes! I wandered around the goods yard. A 141 was shunting wagons. At the former cattle bank there, lines of withdrawn cattle wagons were parked up, awaiting the torch. One or two still had flying snails.

Seems the South African way too. A SAR class 24 or GMAM Garratt looks outright wrong on 00 Peco track! But all of us, after all, inhabit an extremely niche world in terms of hobbies. Someone wanting South African steam engines charging round their attic (me!) has to be just about as niche as it can possibly get!

Extremely neat work!

A typical Irish rural branch would have but one loco out-stationed at the terminus and it did two or three return trips to the junction each day, with the same two or three-sixwheelers, or a single bogie composite and a 6-wheeled brake van (later a tin van if it was a C class diesel). Two trips, typically, would be passenger and the other mixed - so a full day's (one-man!) operation would be three return trips of the same set, with maybe half a dozen goods vans and a guard's van at the back of one of them! On many of these branches (Achill, Loughrea as examples) virtually all the traffic was inwards, with mostl empty wagons going back to the junction. Beet, GAA, pilgrimages and fair days might bring another loco in - very often of the same type! So, on the negative side, a bit like today's Tralee or Sligo; zero variety, nothing but ICRs coming and going, like a Luas stop. On the p[ositive side, easy for ONE person to operate prototypically, and every operational session can be a fair day or a GAA special day as well.... I wondered about this when designing Dugort Harbour.It is a basic end-to-end set-up, with a fiddle yard at one end and a small terminus at the other. In the middle is a "main line" station. This is in place for operational interest. I COULD have had something I could operate like the Waterford & Tramore. If I wanted to be realistic, I'd have a J15 and four coaches, or a three-car AEC set, just going back and forth like a shuttle on a loom. Anyone would get tired of that in 2 minutes flat. Thinking of Baltimore and Valentia Harbour, where the "main line" stopped short (Cahirciveen & Skib), and what almost amounted to a local service went on through the overgrown hedges a few miles more to a barren and tiny terminus seemed the answer. Westport and Westport Quay would be another example. So, a train leaving the fiddle yard is a "main line" set - a Woolwich and four corridor bogies, or a 141 with later designs. This has come from Dublin, ir Cork, Athlone, whatever, and is bound for the station in the middle, which in my case is a fictitious Castletown West. A separate goods train with a larger engine and all sorts of stuff on it - grain, timber in Bullied opens, goods vans of all types galore. Large cattle town (Castleisland / Newcastle West). There the main line train terminates, with a connecting service of a mixed train from there to the Dugort Harbour. This gives operational interest - main line goods, main line passenger (with one a day perhaps working through to the harbour), then a branch mixed. Even a set-up like that in steam days would likely have had a sole diet of J15s like Valentia or Kernmare did, certainly in latter days. From 1955-63, Loughrea almost never saw anything but a J18/19, even on fair days (though earlier it had more variety). In diesel days, you're looking in real life at a system operated by nothing but an AEC set on passenger, and a C on the branch. Even the main line goods might be a C (or an A). Fast forward to the 60s, 70s and 80s, and you've thiry years of little but 141s! (Which is why I've 6 or 7...). There is a timetable, but this is basically a running sequence, e.g. first movement of the day is main line passenger heading off to the fiddle yard "metropolis". Then the ex-Cork goods arrives, followed by the ex-Tralee goods. Much shunting ensues, followed by the branch mixed bumbling off to the harbour and returning in time to transfer wagons to the departing goods. And so on. I had considered full signalling, bell codes, the FULL works in that regard, but in all reality life's too short and I am not in my first flush of youth. So what I have described does me fine. I have a WTT with the basic timetable, plus as in real life paths for beet, cattle, GAA, pilgrimages, fair day extras, summer Sunday excursions, and the like. When you have a winter day with 2 beet specials and a busy cattle fair day, the shunting challengers are surprisingly complex and an extra pilot loco is needed to deal with everything in a realistic manner. When operating steam, the branch is a former MGWR 2.4.0 (JM Design), with an ex-CBSCR 472 class 0.6.0ST (00 Works) as station pilot, and the main line has Woolwiches and J15s (both types; 00 Works). When it's late steam days, main line goods are beginning to see (silver or green) "A" class, and I had two Silverfox "C"'s. Into the 1960s and the black'n'tan era, and it's A's on the main line goods, and 141s on just about everything else. Should a RTR "C" class ever appear, I'll be in for a few of those, as such a line would probably have been monopolised by them (think West Cork, especially if the Bantry passenger had remained loco-hauled - the whole system would have been worked by the C class in its final years). I based operations on the real life 1960 West Cork timetable, where you've two return trips a day from Bantry to Cork and back, plus goods. But in my scenario, it's as if there was a Westport-Quay-like "extension" from Bantry, but with a passenger service, worked as a separate branch locally. I concocted suitable times for that which would logically connect with a real-life main terminus whose arrivels and departures mirrored those at Bantry. So overall, much to occupy me in the attic on what otherwise is a basic end-to-end single track line. Each to our own, of course, but that suits me as a good compromise between absolute, 100% fully signalled operation, and just playing trains. I saw Drew's layout once, and Sam Carse's once. I'd love to have seen Richard Chown's - I recall the article about it in a Railway modeller in the late 1960s - that's one copy I read and re-read from the day I bought it. Sam's sons, Barry & David Carse, were among the extremely privileged few CHILDREN to be allowed to see Cyril Fry's layout in full operation - normally Fry didn't allow children in at all, but Sam was a friend of his! Barry told me that they were warned to stand still, and not ask questions until they were asked if they wanted to!

Was curious about this. Like most of us, I’ve an attic full of stuff I’ll never use, and a head full of undeveloped ideas. Amongst my interests are South African and Indonesian steam, dating back to visits to those places (chasing operational steam) in the late 1970s. Some years ago I considered a small portable shunting / terminus layout using 12mm track, but 4mm scale, which seems to be what many South African modellers use. I became aware during investigation options that some Brazilian modellers use that too, to represent their narrow gauge. But I was disappointed to find out that many South African modellers (AND Indonesian ones - yes, they’ve a few, but seemingly all modern image) use 00 / H0 track to represent 3’6” gauge. If 00 track looks odd for 5’3”, it looks ten times worse trying to represent 3’6”, especially if (as is often the case) what’s running on it is to H0 scale rather than 00. I can see why they use it, of course - or feel they’ve little option but to use it. Same as us here with 00 track instead of 21mm. So; just out of curiosity, what is the norm “down under” to represent NZ or Aussie narrow gauge?

I will need to contrive an excuse for it to turn up in a remote west Kerry branch line terminus! Actually, I suspect that with the “Cultra livery” (CIE livery but with “G S” on the tender) being one available option, a “preserved” one hauling IRM RPSI Cravens or Mk 2 stock will be a credible option for many. The option I’ll be using is “Rule 1”!

The drooling continues! These will surely be the event of the DECADE, bar nothing! Having seen samples, even by IRM’s extremely lofty standards, these raise the bar again. And now we’re also starting to see pre-1960 rolling stock to run with them!

Far, far, far too many of his jaunts he made little or no notes about, took no pictures, and some I’ve only discovered about since he passed away….! HIS father took but three photos of railway subjects (two in the one place) in his lifetime, but dozens on my great-aunt’s farm in Co Offaly!

Don’t tell the postal and customs, delboys, brexiteers and tax people that, or they’ll dream up a special range of fees for those things! Item price £5.40 Tax: £11.28 Brexit surcharge: €21.13 Customs charge: €7 Surcharge: €3 Parcels post: €18.56 € / £ conversion: €5.70 Total: €107.88.

Having only very recently joined the ranks of brass kit modellers (I’m only on my 3rd), I’m informed by the more experienced in this field that things like soldering wire, soldering irons, flux (both liquid and paste), brass sheet and fibre pens are also only stocked by a tiny handful of suppliers now, and in many cases nothing like the extent or range as held before. Thankfully I’m OK myself as I’m being guided by a lifetime brass modeller who can point me in the right direction, but for those who perhaps live in provincial turns or rural areas, mail order (increasingly very expensive) seems the only way.

Delving in the depths of the Catacombs for some material relating to Kenmare, I came across this lot, misfiled of course...! Methinks I was born a lifetime too late….. the Buncrana trip was in the cab, and another cab ride to Burtonport has no ticket, while the Newry-Dundalk trip was via Greenore (note the DNGR was using NCC tickets!) and the Dingle trip included a journey to Castlegregory the day before…. I cannot for the life of me think what he was doing going from Courtmacsherry to Birdhill in 1941, and third class at that!

They'd have ended up in the maroon Hunslet livery, then later something similar top what NIR's three 071s had. An interesting idea for the maroon! Had they got these things, 111-113 would never have been needed, so they'd probably still be kicking about Ballymena and York Road.

Which sort of adds to my point!

This is precisely what happened. From day 1 they were over-worked, thus becoming unreliable quickly, plus maintenance was skimped. And that’s from the horses mouth; I was told this by the man who was in charge of them for their whole working life. It is also well-known that York Road wanted 181s the same as CIE, but political pressure from the Stormont government meant they had to purchase something from Britain. Senior told me that too, before the things had even been delivered!

Looks very well! Shows what can be done conveniently and / or on a budget.

To be fair, it's close to CBSCR coach livery (but, of course, not a CBSCR coach!)

That would make a very interesting model!

NCC colours! Nice.

Heard one of these yokes at a friend's house on Sunday. Sound effects very impressive! Took me back to my teenage self who heard them often....

I'm trawling the McMahon Bibles right now to see what might be a possibility for this loco! Certainly, with a different cab of some sort, dropped into a bucket of dark grey paint it would certainly look Irish. Some 50% of ALL types of steam locomotives which ever ran on all of the Irish railways put together, were of the 0.6.0 wheel arrangement.