jhb171achill

Locomotives of the GSR (McMahon / Clements) This publication is not known as "The Bible" for nothing. The amount of research that I know went into it is quite staggering and it is an absolute must - no matter what the cost - for any student of locomotives in Ireland.

Pre-preservation Festiniog. This may have been taken by my grandfather in the 1920s, though the severing of the bottom of the locomotive's wheels tends to point towards a teenage Senior as the culprit, a decade later! Still, highly interesting image, without a camera-totin' gricer in sight. Finally for the moment (from Senior's Brexitstan material), the Vale of Heavy Rain in about 1956.

Out of curiosity, re. that last book you have advertised, "The Railways of West Cork - Reflections and Remiscences". I had a copy of that, but the binding is bad and all the pages fell out - it's a bit of a mess now, a pile of papers in a polypocket. But I looked at it to try to find who write it and who published it. Not a syllable. Privately produced, persumably, perhaps for some event? Does anyone know? No author, no publisher, no printer..........

Dave I echo what others have said. Between Leslie McAllister's Provincial Wagons, John Mayne's JM Design wagons, and Des Sullivan's Studio Scale Models, I thoroughly recommend all three, plus a few others I may have forgotten. These are easy to make, especially the Provincial ones. Between the three, I've dozens and dozens of 'em; many still awaiting making up. For carriages, you've Studio Scale Model's kits of a number of prototypes but they are not for the beginner, I'd say. However, in ready to run state, you've the forthcoming Hattons series of 6-wheelers of broadly GSWR design to look forward to; they were announced only a week or two ago. Order soon, as the run will be limited - they are VERY reasonable. Locomotives - you can get Silverfox A, B101 and C classes in made-up or kit form - but for the real high-quality stuff, look at the output of Irish Railway Models for inspiration, and those of Murphy Models. While the former are sold out, WRENNEIRE of this parish may be able to assist you in sourcing some. In the case of the Murphy stuff, they have announced a further run of their beautiful and highly-engineered 141 and 181 classes. All in all, never a better time to be a modeller of Irish stuff, and i9t is very encouraging to see another modeller interested in the "grey'n'green" era, prior to the "back'n'tan" era!

Is there one with black'n'tan or green with flyin' snail?

Steam to seventies means, quite simply, the standard CIE vans!

Not "Great Way Round"? .....

"Full service"? Two trains, six days a week? Havin' a laugh, as always with this route for the last forty years. maybe they'll lift the line speed limit from 21mph to 36mph, though?

The bit on the left is in keeping, if it had a stone finish. The Dermot Bannon thing in the foreground is light years beyond hideous.

Ah - Tom, Dick and Harry have just told me they each have picked up seventeen rakes each on fleabay. Ye missed that one, didn't ye. Tenner a pack, with a free "A" class thrown in.

But they’ll be happy when they see new IRM stuff on your layout!

We certainly appear to have hydrogen-powered politicians making these announcements! (or is it methane, or flatulence?)

Wow!! Never knew they had a depot there, OldBlarney! Most interesting, thanks for posting that. Airfixfan - do you know of this?

On the all-first, you'll notice a rudimentary repair that Cyril Fry had done to the left-hand pair of wheels!

Superb stuff, Ken - I was unaware of those. A rarity. Found a pic in an old IRRS journal of a Macroom six-wheeled coach of later design. Also, below, the three Fry models of typical 1880s six-wheelers of GSWR design; thus, the Hattons coaches. One is in the short-lived late 1920s GSR chocolate & cream, which it is unlikely to have carried, and the others are in standard GSWR dark lake livery.

While the LLSR was more a case of long lines with long trains, who's to say it might not have had a shorter line? Derry out to Moville (though this could have had busy passenger traffic) or somewhere further north. Bearing in mind that lines like the Carn and Burtonport extensions were built with government grants, and in a million places throughout the west funds were often sought for some very short lines (or long sidings) such as, for example, Gubbardletter or Inishlyre off the Achill branch, a loud and persistent local community with an idea how their village coulde become a major port - however utterly deluded and unrealistic their notions might be - could well have attracted such support. Add two six-wheelers or a scruffy bogie brake 3rd, one of those beautiful Lough Swilly 4.6.0Ts and a few wagons, and there ye go!

Interesting!

Those things had completely different body details and (especially) window spacing and shapes. It’s definitely been built as a carriage rather than even a comprehensive conversion of a railmotor.

That can only have been in late 1962 / early ‘63; no BnT before that, no steam after…. The chassis - most definitely not a six-wheeler; other than on the BCDR (where the very last few alone were up to 37ft), the standard six-wheel coach length was 30ft. In fact, the very term “six-wheeler” is a construct of railway enthusiasts, like that ridiculous term of “wok-through” for 6-car railcar sets on NIR. Railwaymen always referred to them as “thirty-foot(ers)”.

I’d be with you on the lack of any real Kerr Stuart connection in this instance. I wouldn’t think there was even the remotest likelihood of anyone thinking if a new-build railmotor at that stage. Way more likely it’s been intended to be towed - perhaps. Railmotors, per se, has already been widely discredited when this thing was built; all of the several railway companies in Ireland who had ever had them (DSER, GSWR, BCDR, GNR etc) had found them to be a disaster.

It wouldn’t have been an actual railmotor as such, LM - though possibly the chassis alone was made at some stage with that notion in mind.

Food AND heating? Well for some!!

The 15:40 from Achill to Claremorris departs from Newport in the last light of day on 11th November 1973.

Hi I would perhaps go into Marks Models in Dublin (Hawkins St) and ask for a decent quality train set which would fit the bill.

Very interesting post, Steve. Why it was built to a length which was non-standard not only to the GNR, but to every other railway too,is something I would have no notion about. However, I would discount any idea that it was built using railcar / railbus parts or chassis, or as something specifically to be hauled by one. It would be too heavy, despite its length, for a glorified road bus to haul. It might well have been built for that branch, though. My best guess would be that somebody decided that a full-length coach was an extravagance, as passenger traffic on this picturesque little branch line never amounted to that much.