jhb171achill

Problem is, you're probably dealing with people who know no more about railways than the man in the moon does............ and a public who not only know no more, but couldn't care less!

Don’t worry, it’s after 12…… Had it been 10:00, she would have been hauling a De Dietrich set with a six-wheeled passenger brake and three cattle wagons at the end…

Outstanding!!

If the artist was so meticulous in tracking down the individual carriages, I’d be curious as to what the 3rd & 4th carriages are behind the locomotive….

That was the work of the great Kevan Macintosh!

Indeed - I forgot about the Worsley etches!

You'd make a great - and historically accurate - model of that place, with a compact "large"-looking terminus occuping less space than you'd expect. Track plans and photos are readily available (even my father, often quite cheeseparing with his expenditure on film!) took several shots there. You've enough wagons - the Provincial Leslie output adequately covers all eventualities. Cattle, covered vans and coal in open wagons, and bob's yer whatever. If you got three of those tanks, plus a GNR 2.4.2T or 0.6.0 to mix it up a bit, plus Hattons 6-wheelers, you actually have every single thing you need bar a railbus of DBGR or GNR provenance. For the "what-if" style of layout, liner trains in more modern times; had it been eaten by CIE and the UTA in 1949, UTA would have soon lost interest and shut the Newry line, but we might at least hope for a large container facility. I know some here are interested in all sorts of colourful boxes on modern flat wagons, a la Ballina; this would be a perfect setting for a layout like that. In the 1980s you'll have a "C" and a motley collection of old carriages working all-stops Greenore - Connolly rather than Dundalk - Connolly; today you'd have a 29 class set going in and out. Greenore - DDK - Malahide - Connolly - Pearse. I am sure i've a timetable for that line somewhere.... Maybe a 2-car 28 just serving Greenore to Dundalk.........

Correct - that's exactly what it was.

Ah! That explains it!

I must assume it's been under cover. Where is it exactly now? Looks as if it's had a comparatively recent repaint. If a laminate - by its very name this being obvious - had been left in the open for some 30 years, it would have physically fallen to pieces by now. I did not know there was anything Five Fut Three there at all. They have a Brexitese railbus, sister of the much-loved RB3 at Downpatrick. Oul heaps! They brought over a working steam loco from there too; naturally all narra gauge. They loaid a bit of track including a curve too sharp for any railway vehicle to traverse, locked the lot up in a shed and off they went to leave nature to reclaim it all.

I had seen it online - it's a kit, but I do not know who makes / made it.

Indeed…… I wonder what a “train carriage” is, and if the writer of this drivel is aware that apart from not being specifically for this line, it’s highly unlikely it often - if EVER - traversed Claremorris-Collooney; and that it certainly wasn’t running anywhere in 1874! That whole Riverstown thing was put together by people with zero knowledge, it seems, if anything you’d need to know to undertake such a project…. The coach would find a better home at Downpatrick….

Always thought Greenore would make a fantastic, versatile, unique and highly interesting modelling prototype. Obvious Cyril Fry did too; here are his DNGR models. If anyone wants a closer look, come to the model railway museum in Malahide and ping me in advance. With Hattons doing 6-wheelers in LNWR livery, Provincial’s GNR goods vans, cattle trucks and opens, a Ratio kit suitable for one of their few bogie coaches, and several GNR locos available in kit form, as well as a British 0.6.0 saddle tank that isn’t a million miles off a DNGR tank, tis surely a viable project?

A Fry SLNCR brake and a GNR cattle wagon. Straight out of Drumnagortihacket, between Glenfarne and Galtimore…. Note the extremely rudimentary passenger accommodation, usually only used by cattle drovers….

Indeed. I was pottering about the layout yesterday with several steam engines, but also five "A"s and two "B141s". Couldn't agree more about the super-smooth running.

Ah, but you haven't seen the OTHER side, Leslie.....................................

Great stuff! I'm hoping to have some good news for him in the next few weeks........

That brings me back. Jim was an absolute gentleman, always extremely courteous and helpful.

Yes, it would have been - though I don't know who made it, nor do Brendan or Steve - if anyone here knows, let me know! No - the guys who made the "Castle" layout were no longer apprentices by then - some had left the railway, others promoted.

The "delivery grey" was an utterly impractical livery - bear in mind when they went into traffic they were surrounded by black smoke belching A & C class Crossleyfailures and still quite a few steam engines! Both of which added to their cosmetic woes.......

“Jimmy, I see you - get outta that bush right now. Judge won’t be so lenient on ye this time. Not after robbin’ Guinness barrels TWICE as well as all that oul business you caused two weeks ago….” —- “…..no, that won’t work either. It’s FAR too heavy for us to move. We’ll need Dan, PJ and yer man as well as us….”

I did get the impression that the person from whom I bought the pair of them hadn't a clue - no boxes either........

I've two current-issue ones in black'n'tan which I may sell (I don't need the 6 or 7 I have!). Both are DCC fitted, but whoever owned them before me inexplicably chopped the handrails off!!! I got new ones which would be supplied with them.......... Haven't decided yet if I will sell them, but we'll see.......... I will certainly want a new B147, as that one is a particular favourite of mine from runabaout travels in 1976. I think I had it on the Limerick - Ballina train one day, and somewhere else a day or two later (maybe the Nenagh branch).......

An addendum; while the "Castle" Layout was built by various apprentices in Inchicore, under the tutelage of Tommy Tighe, the models were built for the castle by a number of people. Perhaps half were built by the late Kieran Magowan of the Model Shop in Monck Place, which many of us have fond memories of. Of the remainder, most of the locomotives were built by our own Brendan Kelly, with the other stuff built by perhaps half a dozen other people, most of whose identities we no longer have a record of.

Indeed! Well, it's "alternative" history is that after withdrawal from the Wisht Carrk-boy system in the early 1940s, it was sent to the remote West Kerry area where it was used on the Castletown West - Dugort Harbour section, a remote outpost of some 5 miles long. Later, it was retained at Castletown itself and lasted almost until the end of steam, the last CBSCR loco in traffic, as the resident shunter and spare loco.