jhb171achill

Black with a yellow end was on quite a few (though not all) but one of them for a short time carried (as an experiment) a yellow buffer beam too. Also - I think there was just this one example - C231 received the dark green with a line round it, just as one "A" (or maybe two) did. All the others were the standard lighter green used after 1955 on rail vehicles. It seems, also, as an aside, that while the earlier "C"s were delivered in silver, the last few were green from the outset.

Perfect locos for a wide range of prototypical uses. For late 1950s, they were to be found on branch lines and all over the Wisht Caark system. They made it to places like Cavan on goods via the MGWR route, Ballina branch train, Loughrea after 1964-ish. All through the 1960s, they had been displaced from branches (bar Loughrea and Ballina) by closures, and displaced from passenger services by unreliability and 121s / 141s, but were to be found snuffling round goods yards, shunting, and keeping in their practice on passengers at Loughrea when the G's were out of action, or requisitioned in the autumn to shunt Tuam beet factory sidings. I remember them on ballast trains too - I got a cab run in a ballast from Clonsilla to the North Wall in one in the mid-70s. Then in the 1970s and 80s, until withdrawal, as we know, they graduated to Dublin to be used on push-pulls. Add to that the several that went to NIR in the 1980s, and worked into the 1990s on ballasts on that network. So they were very versatile and to be seen in a wide variety of locations and uses, over almost four decades. Thus, WELL worth a model. Eleven potential livery variations, too, although two of these only applied to one locomotive that I'm aware of. Good for collectors as well as operating layouts.

Some workings at Malahide this week…. 1. Light engine comes back from Drogheda. 2 & 3. Drogheda - Connolly locals formed of 29s. 4. An overscale thing, operated by DCCCC.

That’s a B-and-a-half class….

Tell me what year you want. I have most WTTs for that period.

Anyone got an oul bogie chassis with whels suitable for the above, for a rough freelance thing? Needs to be 171mm long or cabable of being altered to that length. Nothing fancy. Carriage rather than wagon bogies.

Enniskillen, circa 1952, c/o Senior.

I've two of those and they look OK. An IRM one, or equivalent, would be on a different plane altogether, if we dare hope!

You'd see it in the papers next day, on a scorched football pitch in some sink estate with a crowd of blue-bag-sniffers round it..... and it would be alight.............

Probably Senior's last PW job IN the station; maybe he got tired of looking at the shabby old stuff right outside his office window.......!

Those dolphins can be very dangerous all right...........

Yes - get 'em in, send them to Blarney, Ring of Kerry and the Giant's Causeway, charge 'em plenty in Dromoland Castle, and away ye go. Next please! There's more to Ireland then little green leprechauns, Temple Bar and "Pattys Day"....... It's seen as old, irrelevant, stuff for nerds - by a lot of people. Education needed! 100% correct on all counts. Look even at a recent thread on this IRM board where the all-too-common myth that the British built all our railways - usually mentioned in a dismissive way - was referred to.

Often wondered about that. I'd say that the company would have become part of CIE in the split of 1958, but if it hadn't, and remained today, I suspect it most likely (on financial grounds) it would simply have increasingly leased CIE stuff - which would have meants a diet of 141s from the late 1960s to early 2000s - and perhaps bought a pair of new 2-car 2600s when IE were getting theirs - as EU and Peace Money grants were all over the place then. A "G" might lurk to this day at the back of a shed in Manorhamilton, still in faded CIE livery, used for shoving things about when necessary. Goods would have vanished about 1975/6.

What on earth is "Ulster broth"? Something that foams from the mouth of Paisleyite preachers on the Sobboth?

And it’ll have to be regauged to narra gauge! Ill tell yiz a wee secret. On the basis that it has little real history here, HAD it been reliable at Downpatrick, and HAD SLNCR “B” been fully restored, I had this notion of getting both painted together to save money (the treasurer’s job…) …….in matching SLNCR livery. Yup, jhb171 promoting a wrong livery…..

Answer: yes! To include black’n’tan B209 which hauled the last train out of Loughrea….

A thing of very great beauty!

Really? Didn’t know that. I thought DCDR owned it now…..

I presume the wagons are stored there on a Saturday to allow a clear run for several rugby specials on the main line, seein' as it's this time of year? Onwards to Barrack St. later in the day.......

There was a funding app prepared for "B" some 20 years ago, for which the cost was Stg.£160,000. The app passed its first stage, but during the convoluted correspondence the funding criteria changed, so that closer to the time it would be going anywhere, there was no longer funding. I had kept the firm to whom it was to be sent, fully up to date with developments, as I tried to sort out what instalments would need to be paid, and when. The company was based in Shildon in England. Those who are familiar with recent RPSI restoration projects will raise an eyebrow here. Yup - it was the very same firm to whom No. 171 was sent some time later. They went bust, and the RPSI (very luckily) managed to repatriate 171 before the scrapman could sieze it to pay their debts! SLNCR "B" would very probably have ended up in the same precarious position, so it is lucky that it never went there at all. Still, with a proven background in bus restoration, and a great familarity with Gardner engines (which "B" was going to get), I am sure a good job would have ensued. It would have been great to have it operational there now. As for RB3, yes, indeed, it was part of the UFTM collection. Under museum rules, a museum in possession of a listed artefact can't just chuck it if they get tired of it. They must first offer it to kindred bodies, properly registered with museum status, thus pre-fulfilling all normal standards for the care of the artefact. If nobody wants it, then they can sell it to a farmer to keep chickens in. Nobody wanted RB3. While I stand to be corrected on this, I think it is now DCDR property - and THEY don't want it, as it has never proved to be reliable, and in all reality is of very little indigenous Irish railway historical interest. Maybe it'll see chickens yet. It was in use one St Patrick's Day, as I recall, as an extra train. It did a single return trip. I was travelling as guard on it on the way back in, and the driver struggled with it to persuade it to exceed walking pace. That's the walking pace of a chicken, by the way. As far as I am aware it was never used for fare-paying passengers again., even though DCDR's experts did try to persuade it to behave. Useless oul thing.

Excellent stuff, folks, thanks!

Always thought the 50s were elegant looking beasts. I remember reading about them being built new; an earlier summer holiday in Brexitland having been before they were built, and memories of what I think were green 47s hauling maroon coaches. I wonder what a BR blue one might look like amongst 141s or J15 steam engines on a layout set in west Kerry, a decade before the 50s were built............. well, Rule 1. And all of this reminds me, courtesy of Senior;

Ladies & Gentlemen; a query. For many years, the Waterford & Tramore line had an elderly ex-MGWR four-wheeled luggage van, which they used to carry prams and larger luggage on the W & T, as from early GSR days the carriages where possible had extra seats crammed in, leaving little room for such things. When the railcars took over in the early 1950s, even they had bus seats. This van was retained until the end, being hauled by railcars and push-shunted at each end by the crew. Does anyone know of the whereabouts of any decent pictures of this thing? I have seen pics, but not really good ones to show it in detail.

Very very true. That bit on its own is soul-destroying. Obsolete parts, more often than not, have to be manufactured, carved or cast from scratch. Even that can involve very intyricate and time-consuming making up of templates, drawings, patterns, etc, beforehand.

Ever since the 1860s this area has been very flood-prone. From the day the railway opened into Downpatrick, the BCDR had bother with flooding in the area. Once a generation there's a really bad one, like recently. The DCDR, like the BCDR before it, has experienced pretty bad floods here before but the recent one was exceptionally serious. Given that the ITG has their operation base here too, it hit the ITG also.