jhb171achill

Superb!! But - have we set a stopwatch to see how long before it’s vandalised?

I’ll be there!

Very good thinking indeed - or donor chassis for 141s in that scale? It's interesting to look at my own available layout space and imagine what extra could have been included at 3mm scale. It's probably an ideal scale for portable mini-shunting layouts.

Bit of a cold bug stopped me going anywhere yesterday, but I'd have gone to see that Rathmichael one alone - never seen it before. Excellent, pure South Wexford.

Looking VERY good, David! Don't forget to give it a name in old gaelic script, if you can find it - Gráinne Mhaol maybe!

Yes, it absolutely IS the opposite of logic. Certainly, looking through my own records, this seems to be the case in a few pictures I've just looked at. It is the case here too. I have a dim recollection too of an image of a mixed coming into Loughrea with the one coach, one "H" van, one container flat and the guards's van - I THINK being in that order, which would bear out what you say. However, I cannot verify if this is coincidence or not, still less what the reason might have been if it wasn't coincidence. Jury has to remain out on that one. And, indeed, it's a secret hiding in plain sight - in all the obsessive perusal of photos that I've done over fifty years or more, I never noticed that!

Here’s this old horse box yoke on the last Sligo - Limerick goods. Photos courtesy of Barry Carse from our book “Rails Through The West”. And yes, as Mayner says, the container flats, as per usual practice, were running loose-coupled within a loose-coupled goods train.

That leading vehicle is a converted horsebox, done up as a mobile tool van with, I think, space for an ovenight crew to stay in it. It spent the last few weeks of the loughrea line in Loughrea station aganist the old carriage shed buffer stops. After both this line and the Burma Road closed (on the same day) it seems to have vanished. I will post a pic of it later. This, on the other hand, was an entirely different vehicle. Another mobile tool van, but this time a GSR outside-skinned 1930s goods van derivitave. It remained in "flying snail" green well into the 1980s; the last time I saw it, it seemed to have been laid up in Kildare.

First, congratulations on your developing interest. You will find all the information and support you could possibly want here, from information on models, to advice on building, to availability and quality of models, to historical details, you name it - just ask. The first things to look at are what budget you have and what available space. You can fit a small shunting layout, even in 00 scale, into a surprisingly small space and all you need is a locomotive and a dozen or less trucks. Quality varies. If you want accuracy, you need to pay a bit more. If you're not fussed about how accurate your layout is to be, anything goes and you'll get bargains at model railway shows or on fleabay. beware of customs and brexit charges from buying in Britain, though - as Broithe says, contact Wrenneire on this forum to discuss needs. If you're in Dublin or Cork or nearabouts, contact Mark's Models or call in (see them online too). Good luck!

Very nicely finished and weathered trackwork too. Silverfox do indeed seem to default to grey roofs for pretty much everything - CIE never put a grey roof on ANY diesel locomotive or carriage before the Arrow railcars in the 1990s! Another thing they do is to put black lettering on silver diesels - should be light green - SO easy to do properly; and also white lettering on locos like the above (green liveried coaches, railcars and diesels) - this should NEVER be white, always pale green.

CIE seemed to cotton onto the "re-branding" a bit later; obviously, such agreements were not binding therefore different companies or countries might have abolished one or other earlier or later. I think that publicly at least, the NCC was the last to offer all three classes within this island. I actually have a list of dates somewhere which I will post if I can fish it out.

An 071 hauling easily twice what they do here…..

Indeed! Give me 121s. As, J15s and 141s any day! What is that loco on the left?

They’d be very gratefully received, Wrenneire. Over time more and more of his “bits and bobs” will be displayed.

Off to the Wisht now. The MGWR Directors’ Saloon was reckoned to be the single most luxurious railway carriage ever to run in Ireland.

I'm getting senile in me oul age!

Love the G S van! Kits of these badly needed - though pretty easy to scratchbuild!

That would be VERY rare!!!! I didn't think they were compatible? Had one failed (inevitably, the Hunslet) and the other was rescuing it?

And double headed once on a goods - yes?

Now that you mention it, yes, they turned up in Derry with the CIE goods - possibly more than once?

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........