jhb171achill

I have to agree with you 100% on that! He's like a bagful of monkeys at 13 months old - but give him time - he'll soon have his first train journey and he's already got Thomas the Tank toys (in the correct livery, of course...............................!)

Well deserved

Sadly not...babysitting all weekend! Looks like I missed an excellent one.........

Correct. Until CIE became IE, they had the 6 inch upper black line like other stock did, and no lower one. All waistline white stripes on both PRs and Cravens dated from after 1987, when IE started. However it was many years before all had them - long after the last PRs were withdrawn, quite a few cravens still didn't have the "tippex-ified" variant. Only a few PRs got this, but unlike the Cravens they didn't have an orange line under the cantrail. Just the white line added at waist level.

Absolutely fantastic news. This is a major item of importance for Irish modellers. Very well done to IRM. I look forward to seeing and getting a few! Like most other coaches the sides tended to be kept pretty clean. Expect roofs to be somewhat tatty, and ends, bogies and chassis caked in a patina of brake dust. It was mentioned somewhere that this pretty much amounted to a "livery" for the ends! The first ones painted in green had green ends, but later ones had the standard black ends, continued into the black and tan livery.

It’s worth adding that you’d get them in the middle of AEC railcar sets too…. So what locomotives and liveries? A B101 B121 B141 B181 071 C E shunting! Liveries: Silver Green Black’n’tan Black Black, yellow ends Original brownish-orange 071 livery Supertrain And for the last few, 141s with “tippex” stripes.

For a green or silver Park Royal, all the passenger-carrying six-wheelers will too! Just stick a silver or green IRM “A”in front, and you’ve a perfect 1955-63 train.

Very much so. Throughout the lives of these coaches, they’re a modellers dream because they ran with, and among, ALL types of genny vans, mail coaches, diners and parcels brakes, with the exception of air-con stock from 1972 onwards. Therefore they are compatible with all of the following, until the last of them were withdrawn (dates in brackets): Six-wheelers (until 1963) Six-wheel full passenger brake (1969) Bredins (mid 1970s) ALL types of laminates (1986) Cravens Wooden-bodied bogie stock (c. 1972) Ex-GNR stock taken into CIE stock (c. 1970 I think) ALL genny vans; both the 4 & 6 wheeled tin vans, Dundalk and BR types.

That late - a set of two on Waterford - Limerick. One of them - I think - was Downpatrick’s No. 1944.

“Let’s get the rest of these loaded an’ then get the kettle on…..” ”Did ye get the Rich Teas?” ”Paddy’s got Mikado biscuits - ever tasted those?”

When you’ve a fair day and a large consignment of wagons for the mill, an “A” is yer only man. Here, one very busy day in 1964, A55 is doing honours. There hasn’t been a goods this long on the branch for years. Here, A55 slows from a breakneck 20 mph to little more than walking pace as it comes into Castletown off Carrowmore Bog. IMG_7209.mov

“Ye hear all that stuff about Dan?” ”Ah, listen. He’s the biggest bluffer in Kerry. Not one word of it’s true” ”Well Patsy Mike says he heard him in O’Donoghues…..” ”Sure don’t ye know he’s an even BIGGER bluffer….”

Absolutely stunning workmanship. That weathering (a favourite theme of mine!) is just outstanding.

Or you could have said "Yes, please!"...........

MIGHTY stuff there, Owen. I'll be looking for a few!

Wow! I remember those.............! Very much a relic of the "Troubles" - you'd get onto a bus with hard plastic seats and a "civilian searcher" might get on and go through your stuff..... or the RUC or British troops...... and Horslips were playing in the Ulster Hall, or the Undertones in the Pound.............

Could be - several old 4.4.0s were banished there too!

Was thinking that, yes - though after the Jeeps were delivered, these locos were apparently much less seen anywhere other than the Larne line. According to the late Harold Houston of the NCC, they "couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding", so by 1950 (according to the late Nelson Poots plus jhb171Snr) were primarily found between York Road and Larne. So while I'd agree it's Ballymena, it begs the question what the loco is doing there.......probably a local passenger from Belfast. The Midland TPO is an interesting one too. I would agree that it's possibly a "cripple" normally used on the up Sligo Day Mail (as suggested above) en route to Limerick for attention. It's tempting to guess it's run a hot box and been shunted off there, As per Mayner's opinion too, I can't see one of those in use on the Sligo - Limerick line - in fact I'd lay money on it that they didn't. None of the stations had snatchers for one thing. When I travelled over that line (albeit from Ballina to Limerick, not from Sligo), mail bags were being loaded and unloaded by hand into and from the tin van on the train at Claremorris.

Correct. The UTA painted some in a light grey, dark green and (bits of) red between the GNR takeover and the mid-60s; mostly on the Derry Road, plus a few on the NCC (Antrim and Ballymoney, in particular, surviving well into NIR times). CIE, for their part, either left stations unpainted, as they had been in GNR days, on lines they had no future for, such as Oldcastle and the Dundalk - Clones - Cavan section. In other cases, they got the then-standard scheme of green (their green) and cream if repainted between 1958 and the very early 60s, but after the modernisation plan from the mid-60s they got the quite attractive and generally well-kept scheme which many of us will recall, of several shades of grey, white and black. I'm guessing, by the green, that this one might possibly be CIE.......... but who's to say it's not faded UTA! As always, this will be a fascinating thread as the story unfolds.

One of the components is not called a "crank" pin for nothing.................

Can you get real ones too? It's just that I do be gettin' hungry at these things.............

Wow - that is spectacular! The level of detail is amazing!

I'm largely on babysitting duty this weekend, Owen - but I may make it on Saturday.......

I blame @Niles Maybe he thinks I spiked his drink in Caaark, boy, the other week...........

Amazing stuff, Owen - very well done!