jhb171achill

Mostly ballast, but rare passenger turns. Of the passenger turns they did, most would have been Enterprise or rugby specials, but they had become unreliable. 103 was a lost cause, almost never used and set aside. They also shunted Adelaide goods yard, especially 102 which was the only one to get the darker blue livery (despite being withdrawn not long afterwards). At least one got to Derry, I’ve been told - though I am not able to verify this. 101 did a few runs between Bangor & Portadown at the end; I was on it one evening as it pushed a scruffy three-car set of Mk 2s (only one in the latest livery). It was meant to do all stops Central - PDN and back, but it threw its toys out of the pram when it got to Portadown and I don’t think it ever ran again. After that, 102, minus vacuum bags, shunted Adelaide on and off - with a Dundalk 141 filling in when it was ill. By this stage, ballast was in the hands of 111s.

Ye need to get that guy out for a feed’o’pints in the Robin’s Nest in Railway Street…..loosen him up a bit. He’d have to miss his corrugated iron mission hall “meeting” on Sunday morning, though…..!

More from Fry, for our SLNCR fans. Fry has reproduced the rich maroon coach livery nicely, as this was rarely clean in traffic. In Senior’s time in Enniskillen, he only ever saw two coaches repainted and none cleaned. The two were six-wheel open brake 3rd No 4, shown by Fry here, and one of the bogies. The others were so utterly woebegone looking that where the paint hadn’t actually peeled right off to bare wood, the vehicle was so caked in soot and brake dust that you’d never know what colour it was at all! All postwar repainted were plain dark red / maroon, none with lining. With the locomotive, he has picked out what is believed to be the original livery the SLNCR used. At some stage at the start of the 20th century a very much darker green was used on at least a couple of locos, but by the time Senior first visited the line in the late 1930s, it seems that unlined black had taken over. Certainly, by 1950 all SLNCR locos were inclined black. On Lough Erne, the UTA added red connecting rods and their lining.

Very true, yes - though you might add that many GSWR J15s ended up on the South Eastern too, and even one WLWR 2.4.0 ended up in Wexford! It's interesting to contrast this with carriages. GSWR bogie vehicles strayed deep into MGWR territory, with examples seen even on the Loughrea, Ballinrobe and Ballaghaderreen branches, and nat least one GSWR TPO being a regular on the Galway Mail. In return, the ubiquitous MGWR six-wheelers strayed even more - there was one on the waterford & Tramore at one stage, and Senior recalls an influx of them onto the Harcourt Street line about 1930-2. They ended up as far from Broadstone as you can get - on the North Wexford, West Cork, Valentia Harbour, Kenmare and gawwd knows where else - as well as Cork retaining a significant amount of them for Youghal excursions right up to 1963 - the last six-wheelers of any sort in use anywhere in Ireland. In contrast, it is my understanding that not a single West Cork vehicle ever operated anywhere else - they'd have probably fallen to bits; and DSER vehicles rarely strayed from home, expecially after a CIE pogrom of them in the very late 1940s. By the 1950s, those services on the DSER which were not composed of AEC railcars seemed to be a mix of the remaining DSER stock, Bredins, new laminates and Park Royals, and quite a few GSWR bogies, as well as a few MGWR six-wheelers. And now - the whole line appears to be operated by two ICRs. Better than a greenway or a station obliterated in favour of a block of gleaming A-rated identikit apartments, but....................... I won't go into this here for fear of diverting the thread, but I was looking at a photo of a train on the Galway line in the 50s the other night. I counted eight different types of coach - in an 8-coach train! And it occurred to me - in the WHOLE of Ireland today, there are only eight different types of passenger train, and if we allow that 26s and 28s are broadly similar; NIR's 3ks and 4ks are similar, and two types of DARTs are too, that means we've really only about five clearly different types of passenger train, and two of loco - only one of which is in use on passenger - on only two services........... And no, I do not accept the "Wok-Fru" NIR sets to be different - they're simply six-car versions of a normal 3-car set. Move on, nothing to see. To be fair, today is a maintenance man's dream, while prior to 1970 must certainly have been a living nightmare for maintenance regimes, from budgeting to maintaining on the ground......

If it's in post-1929 condition, and if accuracy is desired, all-over grey is the only show in town. It was never black. I'm still, out of interest, trying to track down what way it was decorated on delivery........

I’ll have a look, Odhran - I’m not sure. If I find it I’ll ping you privately. I suspect it’s gone, though.

It's actually a loco that would have been absolutely ideal for Downpatrick.....

Looks the business!

Quite possible it was delivered like that, though I'd have to look it up. But throughout its GSR and CIE life it was never anything but grey.

A little more from Fry. These are his two Waterford & Tramore locomotives.

They certainly are! And he used coarse scale track!

Certainly no such thing as "wheelie" luggage at that time! It's a little trolley for lifting sacks or things like that. No smoke, so one must presume it's a diesel up front, which means a "C" probably - though they were well capable of producing MORE smoke than a steam loco whwn they were of a mind to........ Very interesting photo. As an aside, i remember all those types of cars very well, and the van and the lorry. That Morris car on the left with the ZF (Cork) registration - I learned to drive in one of those....

In response to a request, these are Fry’s Blessington tramway models.

Correct. No shunting engines after the station became nothing but a goods yard. I must dig out details of where I saw a pic of an E401 in there. For all I know, it could even have been a one-off.

Very short lived, though. I’ve seen pics of an E401 there in silver. I think that once the west cork system closed, it was shunted by the loco which brought the goods train in. I’ve never seen any evidence if an E421 going in there.

Now THAT would be telling! When the RPSI’s No. 4 was last being repainted, traces of the UTA lining could be seen when rubbed down, plus, if you look at the erstwhile Royal Saloon in Downpatrick, one end remains in original UTA green, with traces of the lining colours on it.same colours on coach lining, though different style.

Indeed. There was a cull of them in the early 70s - they were commonplace up to then, but a few did survive in use. I saw one in use in Kilkenny I think in 1976. Same with wooden opens and, indeed, other wooden vans - quite a few 1970/2, but no wooden opens at all after that, and few if any wooden vans like ex-GNR ones, for example.

I'd stake me IRM "A"s on it. Saw them daily, and I know where an actual example can STILL be seen.....

So have I, but it ain't right! Nothing a bit of weathering won't cure, anyway............!

Why, oh why does every model made in UTA livery have to have yellow lining? It's supposed be be red and "straw" - a light beige colour, not yellow................ Mind you, it IS a beauty.

There’s also Drumawhey near Bangor and somewhere else in the north. There used to be an amazing set-up at Cultra, but that had to close.

On a B101 model, yes, that's an issue in the green livery! On the later black, or black'n'tan liveries, it was (mercifully) lower down. Incidentally, the number is in light green, not white as it looks here - this is due to the age of the photo. The green looks pretty accurate though.

One for IRM, hopefully some day! I’d love to see a good quality RTR one of these. This was taken by Cyril Fry in Waterford. (From P Dillon Collection)

It is A46, you're quite right; and like many another example of the A, C & B101 classes, the green waist line seemed to vary. Obviously, it isn't on the loco there, but equally obviously it was at another stage, as photos exist (which is what IRM correctly relied on). In 1958, it's been repainted from the awful plain silver (i.e. plain muck!), but the lining hasn't been added yet. The application or the waistline in the 1958-62 period was a bit like the application of the "dayglo" patches on the front of locomotives of the A, B121 and B141/181 classes in the post-1987 era; some had them, others never did, and others again had them for a while only. I suspect the example above, as you suggest, was very short-lived indeed.

Another highly valuable addition to the growing range….