jhb171achill

Ah! It's that oul crew van again. Since they started lifting several local lines in the area in the late 1950s, this van and its accompanying rail wagon has often ended up stabled in the old loco shed road at Dugort Harbour, as that's where they loaded lifted rails onto a ship heading for a scrap dealer in Liverpool. Spotted through the hedge from a moving Ford Popular in 1958.

Track renewal is under way; it will turn out to be the last. It’s May 1960. The local train has A42 today, as it slows across the repaired IMG_6695.MOV track as it enters Castletown West. It shows the excellent slow running of the IRM “A” class. IMG_6694.MOV

In 1961, you’ve some people with tried-and-tested black’n’white photography, some with colour. Three views by different photographers of a mid-day local goods extra leaving Dugort Harbour for Castletown, one of the last regular steam rosters in the area. Within a year, a “C” would take over.

Lazy day in 1966; B165 shunts at Dugort Harbour while the old crew car, an ancient 6-wheeler with the centre axle removed and a pair of wagon doors fitted, reposes in the disused loco shed road. It’s been there since the lifting trains on the Valentia line finished.

It’s spring 1966, and the afternoon train to Tralee awaits departure at Castletown West…..

A55 has a burst fuel pipe one day in winter 1963; A12 to the rescue. Not often you see two “A”s out on Carrowmore Bog…..

“…..Ah, there’s the afternoon train…. bit late, isn’t he? I thought he was due at the harbour about half an hour ago?” “Well, yer man with the turf for us is worse - we’ve been waitin’ HERE for that time…..”

Good spot!

All we can be sure of is that it's an RPSI train some time in the 70s or early 80s......... someone must recognise that bridge, though.

A very short life (34 years) for a steam locomotive...... Many were in traffic well over their century....... On a related note, in 1980 I witnessed a 101-year-old, 1879-built, tall-chimneyed, wood-burning 2.4.0 tender engine in Indonesia, setting out on its once-a-fortnight local working. Near where it was based was an ultra-modern military aircraft facility with the very latest in technology all over the place. The trip working this loco was employed on was to bring up-to-date modern tank wagons of aircraft fuel along one of Indonesia's principal main lines as far as a long siding off the main line into the military base. If ever there was a railway vehicle which looked out of place, this was it. Its other duty was a once-a-day branch mixed working which it or one of its sisters worked. When steam ended in Indonesia (other than sugar mills) in 1987, there were still two of these elderly machines being occasionally used for shunting in their home base (Madiun). These were the famous B50 class (google 'em). A friend of Provincial Wagons' - Lance King - was an authority on these locos and was very familiar with the area. I still have set of his excellent and comprehensive "Continental Railway Journal" - a monthly magazine which documented the gradual wind-down of steam worldwide in the 1970s, 80s and 90s; no longer in publication as there's no longer anything to report. I owe the late Mr King a massive debt of gratitude for the comprehensive and detailed cover of such matters; it was the CRJ that had me chasing remaining steam from 1977 onwards, all over India, the far east including Indonesia, Africa and South America during those times. Sometimes I'd strike gold; other times I would arrive somewhere to find that what I had travelled 13,000 miles to see - e..g the world's last functioning urban steam street tramway - had quietly succumbed only weeks earlier, with locals now living in the carriages and station buildings, sans doors, parked just where they ended up. Maybe, somewhere deep down in Kerry, there's still a J15 whose sole duty is to push an ICR set once a week in and out of a valeting shed........ I digress; back to the BCDR, a fascinating railway itself.

Yes!!

Indeed - and all the others in the film are ex-GSWR, of various types, many of which Hattons are doing.

I’m the one going mad. I can see this CIE roundel as clear as day now, yet I couldn’t in 2016!

Do you mean “The Quiet Man”?

"............a group of wasps stuck in a jam jar............."

It's 1965. Left to right, first track. Courtaulds coal wagon and ex-NCC loco now used to shuttle between Lisburn and Brookhall Mill. The 121 came as far as Lisburn with the Derry goods, as the "Derry Road" closed a few weeks ago, whereupon that train was taken over by a "Jeep" to go up the NCC. B125 will return light to Dundalk, but has been told to come into the mill en route to collect two linen vans to go eventually to Dugort Harbour via the North Wall and the Tralee goods. The GNR van is also being used to carry linen products out of the mill - it must be the last still not in UTA green. A46 has two old coaches on an IRRS "outing" (visions of men in white coats when the IRRS talks about "outings"!). It did a farewell run into Newry (Edward St) this morning, this also having closed a couple of weeks ago, and then for the track bashers into Brookhall Mill before proceeding to Bangor via the soon closed Belfast Central line. The GNR 4.4.0 remains in store, having been withdrawn by the UTA five months ago. It will be destined to remain there for some months longer while the RPSI consider whether they can afford to buy it from the UTA. Sadly, despite being cleaned up in anticipation, this will not come to pass as the UTA requires a price of £800, well beyond the RPSI's ability to raise; besides, it needs two new boiler tubes. The Woolwich was towed north three days ago by a dirty grey and yellow B130, as the Belfast Transport Museum is interested in it. Like the GN loco, it's been cleaned up too - unfortunately it will end up being scrapped as Witham St. has no room for it. Various wagons are in the background, being loaded or unloaded off the Portadown - Grosvenor Road goods, the B141 from which idels in the background. Mr Weaver ponders over his cup of tea. "I wonder", he thinks, "would there be ANY mileage in me purchasing one of those old steam engines as some sort of an exhibit here?"................

I just cannot understand why those otherwise excellent vehicles ended up with those blue seats. They never had anything of the sort. For most of their lives, particularly in the earlier livery, the seats are best painted a dark grey, almost black - top bits and all.

Great result!

Wagons are often the least understood and least appreciated things on rails. Irish modelling is no exception. We have now a pretty good array of locomotives, even steam, and carriages are now beginning to get serious attention. But by FAR the most numerous rail-borne vehicles in all time were the various unsung four wheeled wagons and vans. Until Provincial and a few others appeared with their very fine kits, Irish wagon modelling remained in the 1960s era of buying something very vaguely Irish-ish, a model of a British vehicle, and slapping a flying snail on it. There was nothing. British wagons were in almost all cases totally, completely unlike their equivalent Irish designs. If JM Design and Provincial Wagons didn’t exist, we would have not a solitary wagon of the pre-40ft fitted flat era. We may hope for the offerings to expand, but here are the standard designs adhered to by the main companies - GNR, MGWR and MGWR. In later times also the DSER and belatedly the NCC. Naturally, the BCDR, CBSCR and SLNCR were….. odd. But there ye go. Always thought the water tasted funny in Ardglass, Glenfarne and Wisht Caaark boy.

A much-neglected, but superb locomotive. Scratch-build, anyone? From a 1924 edition of the Railway Engineer magazine.

From the Railway Engineer magazine in 1924.

The earlier ones were “GSVs” = “generating steam vans”. The boilers were, I believe, under the brand name of “Swirlyflo”. In later days the diesel generators were of several makes. Cummins rings a bell, yes, possibly Perkins too? ttc, of Tara Junction, would be the expert on this, I would think…,

Good stuff - they’ve come out well. I got done too but haven’t got round to applying them to anything yet…..

Are these waterslide or rub-on types? (Wagons just need grey or brown chassis now, too!)

My late mother worked in the GNR catering department and on one occasion she had to stand in for a supervisor on board a Bundoran Express. At one stage, and she wasn't entirely sure where, as the train rounded a curve, a pile of dishes and glasses, just washed up and stacked on a counter in the kitchen car, crashed down onto the floor, leaving her and others ankle deep in smashed cups, saucers, plates, teapots and beer glasses. The kitchen car had a double door in the kitchen area (like the RPSI's 88; perhaps the same vehicle). Whilst in motion they opened the doors and just swept the whole lot out onto the track, where the fragments will remain today! They opened the "customs" shutters and raided more beer glasses out of the "northern" bar part, as they would have run short otherwise! On arrival in Bundoran (where she was based in the railway-owned hotel), she ordered the hotel stores to stock the diner up before the train left again......... On an entirely separate tangent, last summer I spent a very pleasant afternoon in the company of a large group of retired CIE men, a consequence of my ongoing research into the Loughrea branch. Some 20 years ago, I assisted Selwyn Johnston in his researches into finding old GNR, SLNCR & CDR men to be recorded (by him) of their railway experiences. When you get a gathering of old railway people together, the stories you get out of them are absolute pure gold dust. While naturally it would be impossible to condone, let alone tolerate such things nowadays, the things they got up to behind the door, out of sight of rule books and health & safety men, often fuelled by Guinness - would make your hair stand on end........... tales of a boy porter and fireman taking a goods train up the Lisburn - Antrim branch during the war years, while the driver slept in a drunken stupor like a baby on the coal in the tender....and so on. As the man says, "ye couldn't make it up"! The late Billy Lohan recounted a tale of a loco crew overnighting in Limerick Junction to take an early cattle special to Ennis the next day. They knew that the crew of another special included a notoriously awkward, paranoid and over-cautious driver. They decided to extract the wee-wee out of him. They rigged the dorm up with thin wires which allowed them (at the other end of the wire) to pull objects under his bunk at dead of night - this dorm always had a reputation for being haunted, and our Cork man was always highly reluctant to go near it. All night, our driver heard all sorts of unexplained bangs, scraping noises and the like. Eventually, he jumped out of bed, wrapped his blanket round him, and scarpered across the frost-covered tracks to the station waiting room, where embers in the fireplace had kept it warm. Upon his return to Cork the next day, he sought out the loco foreman, grabbed him by the lapels, and explained extremely graphically what he would do to him if he was ever again rostered for an overnight in Limerick Junction.......... I digress; back to the Enterprise and its relatives.