jhb171achill

Me too.

Re that GSR committee, I believe my grandfather had some part in it but I don't know any details. All I know for certain is that a whole lot of recommendations resulted re the J15 class in particular, and he was tasked with doing the design work for a number of hopefully standardised ways forward. Mind you, by the time the last J15s were withdrawn, hardly any two were identical in every detail, an issue with any numerous and long-lived class. Family folklore suggests that the main bugbear was money, as a result of the lack of which, serious attempts at all sorts of standardisation were curtailed or never properly completed, and even where attempts were made, it was too little. They had similar thoughts on standardising passenger stock, which would have included replacement of most 3ft gauge passenger stock with a GSR standard, had money be available. But it wasn't. The "standard" GSR passenger coach for 3ft gauge would have been bogie vehicles of 35-40ft long, broadly based on Cavan & Leitrim types, with end balconies (possibly enclosed). I would love to see a drawing of a thing like this, as many PROPOSED locos, wagons and coaches DID have drawings made - but again (through family folklore, anyway) it seems this vehicle was not even drawn. There just wasn't the money.

For the timberwork, the MGWR would have painted this red, and the GSR (later CIE too) darkish green, which soon faded to exactly the shade shown.

Well deserved.

The Carbon Police will have you on their wanted list (and me today too)

Seems that despite most Belfast services actually being on target and normal, the 1st, 7th, 12th, 22nd, 45th and 119th Laws of Sod are fully invoked every time I plan to go to Belfast! Sadly, I drove today. I don’t do “bus”…..!

I know, yes - the railway is getting busier and needs to be maintained to an uncompromising standard of safety - but have we reached a stage where between DART works and main lines, we may as well assume that henceforth there won't be meaningful train services on any bank holiday weekend?

There’s just something about middle management in large companies, isn’t there! They even have their own (inevitably inane) language. In the bank, they used to refer to completing a task as “covering off” whatever it was; and the task in hand was a “piece”. How could ANYONE even begin to take seriously a 40-something clown in a natty business suit standing in front of a flipchart wittering on in faux-urgent tones about “covering off the investment piece”…. Yawn. The room we had our meetings in, I can assure you, had exactly 273 ceiling tiles, or parts of them at the edges. I know - I counted them all, many times. It gets worse. They don’t agree to SIGN a document. It has to be “signed off on”. The real world and the English language never got a look in, still less any form of critical thought.

Guinness loco livery was traditionally a very dark olive green, as in the one preserved in the Guinness storehouse in Dublin. The RPSI’s No. 3 would have been like that for much of its earlier life.

As Mol suggests, there are unresolved issues about Park Royals; e.g. how many were silver, how many were dark green, DID any dark green ones have an upper EdN band (despite some thoughts, I do not think so), and which coaches and when had green ends, and / or green roofs. What we DO know is that some were silver (as Mol suggests, almost certainly not many), some were dark green (ditto), but most were the lighter green with a single thin EdN waistline, for most of their lives (including in many cases from new) up to the introduction of black and tan. I've pretty sure I've seen a pic somewhere of one painted new in 1962 - right at the start of BnT - with the tan band not quite window height, and the coach number on the black background. Must try to find it - it might be in Cyril Fry's daughter's collection.

Colour wise, a lot better, yes! Interestingly, the flying snail on that railcar is thee "normal" way round. In some cases, on THAT side of a railcar it was reversed, as on the same side on a lorry, bus or steam loco tender....

Superb stuff, mol. The pic above in Sligo, though, while interesting in terms of whart was painted what colour, is so badly compromised by age and printing processes that as far as actualy shade is concerned, it has become completely inaccurate. Colour hues on the track, the two vans, the station roof glass and the station stonework are wrong too. Interesting, as a separate issue, to see the two ancient Midland mail vans there too. There was one (not one of those two) still in use up to about 1960, which dated back to 1877!

Fantastic scenic detail for a corner, which has given me an idea for a similar unused corner that I have on the "not-yet-sceneried" part of my layout.

OUTSTANDING work!!!! Light years more interesting. This WHOLE LOT is truly inspirational!

Yes, the GSWR had several of that ilk!

Great to see a layout in full 1950s mode. What's that carriage in the middle of the rake?

You should have fitted a X5S4 to it….

I haven't the beginnings of a clue what yizzer talkin' about, lads. My reply to the above is therefore F6T1 89YG H4W7.

The two-coach train on that LRTL / IRRS jaunt in 1953 had the leading one still in very badly faded GSR maroon, but the one nehind it, while in CIE green, was every bit as badly faded due to the false economy in the 1930s of removing the carriage shed at Ballinamore. The loco, naturally, was dark grey.

Colour pictures exist of this incident. Apparently, the loco crew and some passengers put the car the right way up again, and it was actually able to drive away, with the driver thankfully not having any injurioes beyond bruises and scratches....

One similar GNR coach which a short time on the Loughrea branch and also made visits to West Cork. You can makle out on this one that they've roughly painted out the GNR(B) crest, but I have a photo of a GNR vehicle like it on the Loughrea branch and still in GNR brown, WITH a crest. Long distance displacement happened in other instances; in the 1910s or 20s the BCDR had long-term hire of about half a dozen MGWR six-wheelers and a similar number of GNR ones. And of course, an NCC 4.4.0 was to be seen at one time on loan to the GNR in Cavan. But of all the widely travelled yokes there were, Midland six-wheelers have to be up there in sheer numbers. Very many of them ended up (post-1925) on the DSER (especially the Harcourt St line), North Wexford, the isolated Waterford and Tramore, and working out of Cork to Youghal and Cobh, as well as in West Cork. South-westerly branch lines like Kenmare, Valentia, Newmarket, Fenit and even Mitchelstown were visited by them too.

Oh yes, the odd one here.n.there, I'm sure! But dem lads in Albert Quay seemed to be very independent, boy! Serious point, though; just as in the dying days of standard British Rail corporate blue, there were some depots which added their own embellishments to newly painted engiones, thiongs repainted in Cork or Limerick tended to be more likely to vary from the standard comp[ared to Inchicore. One ex-Bandon coach, for example, was tuerned out in plain dark green, with unlined numerals and flying snails (thus showing they were painted, not the usual transfers), but no lining at all. Also, despite being a six-wheeler, it had two "snails" per side. Other better known variations were several Cavan and Leitrim coaches which were dark green but with the upper lining only, not the lower, on the dark green standard background. On the West Clare, a number of vehicles were plain light green, others plain dark green, with no lining at all - some didn't even have snails.

A few hung on in fully lined older green livery right up to around 1960, though by that stage very few. And there was still one coach as larte as about 1956 on the Cavan and Leitrim in extremely faded GSR maroon (by now a dirty brownish pinkl!) That's exactly it. No carriages would have been repainted dark green with full lining after 1955, though it seems that a handful of West Clare vehicles, at least one West Cork coach, and possibly a handful of Cork's large fleet of secondary stock received a coat of plain dark green on or about then. As you say, large scale withdrawals of old stock took place around then.

I think two or three 121s got red buffer beams while grey. Not sure of numbers.

Indeed - on a mail train, yes - there were the priority!