jhb171achill

19:30

Tonight (Friday 7th November) in connection with the above event, I’ll be doing an illustrated talk on the North Wexford line in the Rua Glen Hotel & Country Club just outside Waterford city (South Kilkenny). All welcome!

There are not two single components in this yoke that are in proportion to each other!

SECOND to the above abomination, here is the 2nd ugliest thing ever on rails. Highly reliable and long-lived though, some were working well into the 1980s hauling heavy coal trains on the West Sumatra system of the PJKA (Indonesian Railways)......

I had seen and read those articles, yet never realised who wrote them! I've copies of them here..........................

Awful negative, though - so blurred that even a new print wouldn't be any better - but of massive historical interest! Looks like the main line, of course, any idea where? And, I wonder, do we know who took it? Sounds like the type of thing that someone like Joe St Leger would suss out.... Up da rebels!!!!

This just HAS to be the single most pig-ugly thing ever to run on rails in the world (joint worst with Sumatra's C33 class (steam)!).... was it designed by the company sports and social committee on a Friday afternoon, or a disgruntled employee on a wet February Tuesday morning? HIDEOUS!

The first narrow-gauge was, yes, but the first railway in the pronince was the Ulster Railway Co. (1839) Tram still in its original maroon - long before it got its navy blue and cream "railcar" livery!

Middle picture, man with bicycle on platform - could very well be jhbSenior!

That's such a pity!

“Yeah, but you owed me seven shillings from Friday!” ”Oh - I forgot about that, yeah. OK, then all you owe me is a shilling…” ”Jaysus, lads, ye play cards, ye remember the money, like! It’s all about the money!” ”I gotta go now, need to ring Jimmy. We can’t go till he brings his stuff for the van…” ”Ye better not let PJ find out ye are holdin’ the train for that eejit….”

“I dunno about that, Tommy. There’s going to be work on the Bandon till they’ve lifted it all - that’ll be a couple o’years anyway, and they’d probably put him out to grass on the shunt in Glanmire Road after that. Sure he’ll be retiring in ‘66, I think, he joined the Bandon in 1917, he told me…. “ “We’d better go inside, that’s a bad oul sky coming in…”

“Stop! Stop!” ”It’s OK, he’s stopping! CALM yourself! He’s STOPPING! But you’ll have to climb up and open the door…” ”Sure ye know he wasn’t going to leave you behind, ya eejit….”

I went to see him a few weeks ago on a social call. He is physically weaker now, but 1000% sharp-minded. He still retains a few paintings, which he told me "are going nowhere!".... Likewise, I cannot understand why he has sent his stuff to such an auction house.

They don't actually own the copyright in the first place, interestingly - a lot of these photos are from the collections of Henry Casserley and James Boyd (whose wife may be seen in one of them...)!

Agreed entirely. His books were - well, somewhat unique....! But, the information in those and his notebooks is, as you say, gold dust, especially as this system, due to its remoteness, was very neglected by enthusiasts over the years. My dad travelled the whole system bar Kinsale, and included the Schull & Skib on his travels, and took but one photograph! (In Albert Quay!). Even people like Fry, Henry Casserley, Lawrence and others paid scant attention to it. More's the pity. Rough and / or amateurish material, if that be the case, is light years better, any day, than nothing! Superb pic of him! And the carriage.....!

One of, from memory, only three images I have ever seen showing GSR maroon in colour, and in use. One is this; other then the second coach (a MGWR ex-first), I think all are still maroon. The second was that video clip at Castlerea. The other is of a LRTL or IRRS special on the Arigna branch in the late 1950s when the very decrepit regular brake compo was joined by another tatterd old relic, in very badly faded GSR livery, possibly the latest date anything in GSR guise was still ever to be seen in use.

Yes, a very rare foray away from Dublin for one of those! In later years, I saw E421s in Cork and Limerick as well as Dublin.

That’s an E401 in silver on the quays, not a D….

There was a model A in the less common variant of this livery, with a large number on the side where the snail is, but no small cabside numbers. Both A & C classes had both variants. Not sure about the 101s.

A couple of not-so-old ones from the late 1960s in Waterford, copyright Barry Carse…

“London & Scotland”???? It must take a very special breed of utter abject moron to dream up such nonsense!!!’

This one was taken just after the line opened in 1895. From top; one of mine, I think, and immediately post-1925. The loco is still in MGWR livery. Middle - that’s the one I was initially referring to. Only to / from Westport; the opening of the Achill line was then over forty years into the future.

David Trimble holding it?

And there’s me wishing that I had witnessed what my dad and grandfather did! When my grandad started in Inchicore in 1895 they were still building new six-wheel coaches! Bogie vehicles were the very latest thing; very few lines had them…..! And of course, all was steam (bar the Fintona tram and a couple of early electrically powered tramways….