jhb171achill

Cyril Fry used LNWR transfers on quite a few Irish models! I’m in coach-heaven: what are those?

I was going to try to form one out of a sheet of plastic. If it looks OK, I’ll add torpedo vents and leave it at that.

It’s 1946, and CIE isn’t a year old. Most carriages are still in GSR livery, a handful still bearing the short-lived brown & cream. Here, our intrepid photographer, Box Brownie* in hand, captures this 1880s GSWR beauty on the Dugort Harbour branch set. * Anyone under 50 years old, google “Box Brownie” - and it’s NOT some sort of carry-out from Starbucks. Recently I got 3 of these old Hornby relics. The wheels are too coarse for code 75 track, but that’s easily remedied. A coat of green paint, a few “snails”, new roof and they’ll do until IRM have a range of Irish wooden-bodied bogies(!) The brake 3rd version of this coach, (and my other two are that type), if it is fitted with an arc “flat” roof, a la pre-1903 GSWR stock, actually is close enough to a pair of WLWR brake thirds which managed to last until 1954 & 1955, if memory serves me right. The full third, shown in pic, actually doesn’t look like anything Irish. Point of note: British lines widely made use of curved-in ENDS on carriages, especially the GWR and Midland Railway - but this feature was entirely absent from all Irish railway companies, bar a few of the WLWR’s stock.

Problem solved, then! Railtec to the rescue - excellent!

Absolute beauty - excellent model. Perfect for a small shunting layout. Never mind the "Irish" bit - a loco such as this would be at home in an industrial type of setting in almost any country on the planet!

I might add that in the short-lived GSR chocolate brown & cream "main line" livery, a couple of years either side of 1930, crest info was the same, and while the lining was in the same positions, all three lines were black; one line separating the lower brown from upper cream, and the upper two lines contrasting with the cream background. ALSO forgot to add - if converting any of those Bachmann or Hornby coaches to look GSR-ish (or, indeed, NCC), get rid of the light grey or shiny silver roofs! They should be a matt dark grey.

The above highly accurate (!!!) scale drawings show (upper) correct style of GSR coach lining post-1933 or so. Lower shows position of crests. On a recent thread somewhere, mention was made of British stock RTR which could approximate, given a very long two-foot rule, for Irish, and the subject of Bachmann LMS coaches came up. As bought, these are obviously in LMS livery, with a crest in the middle as shown in pink above. The GSR used TWO crests on bogie stock, as had the GSWR before them, at least till the early 40s. "Beware of imitators"; some warnings read - some LMS models bought off the shelf have all sorts of livery inaccuracies, usually involving the lining. But the style shown above, which is correct for GSR, is reproduced accurately on some of these models. So, in order to "convert" a LMS Bachmann coach to GSR, remove the (pink) LMS crest and apply two (green) GSR ones, plus of course the "L M S" lettering. With the allowance of a "two foot rule", the class designation numbers on the doors will do, although in accuracy terms the LMS ones are a bit too small.

Didn't know SSM did them - they're not advertised (Des - could you comment?)...... There are original GSWR, DSER & MGWR crests in the Railway Museum (Headhunters) in Enniskillen; also both UTA crests. All ripe for the measuring. The Malahide Model Railway Museum also has crests of GNR, DSER and MGWR.

This afternoon I was discussing GSR carriage liveries with some esteemed colleagues, and I mentioned that I had a GSR crest mounted on a board which could be photographed or scanned by someone who might be able to make scale transfers of it. If anyone is interested in this, let me know. At the moment I have no need for them, as I'm fixed in a sort of 1955-68 mode, but in the long run if I get more "old" wagons, like KCME's and other offerings, and if the Hornby or Hattons 6-wheelers are looking good, maybe GSR liveries. With growing interest in the "grey'n'green" era, before the "black'n'tan" era, maybe there might be a developing interest in 1930s / 40s times - if so, a transfer of this crest would be needed. Many of us have the grey "00 Works" J15s, and who knows what other offerings might appear. Add old wagons, Provincial's old guards' vans and other wagons, and six-wheel coaches, and you've everything you need for a GSR-based layout. I would be interested in anyone's thoughts on making up GSR transfers. I know of two people who might be interested in using them at the moment.

I'll hopefully get an expert eye over it tomorrow - meantime I am expecting four more six-wheeled vehicles, but given the provenance of the maker of them, I know I won't have any worries. Anyone have any experience of running the new Hornby six-wheelers?

Good to see things like this which financially benefit one of our less known and in my opinion very underrated railway attractions. My copy is en route, I believe…

Is this now the normal 071 grey? When the 26 class railcars first appeared they also had pale grey bogies - I thought they looked odd, but like a “silver” tin van forty years before, got very dirty very quickly. This seems an improvement to the 201 livery.

That’s where I pick up a HUGE amount of info - examining details on old photos. Very often it’s a case of “never mind the “what a great photo!” stuff", but examining nooks, crannies and details within that photograph. In terms of wagon plates, many old BNCR and MRNCC plates would be replaced with LMSNCC ones. A wagon with the latter on it might well have been built by the LMS NCC, but equally either of its predecessors. And there were two styles of NCC lettering on those purely within LMS days, too. Without seeing the whole wagon, my money would be on it being of BNCR origin and the low number would suggest that as almost a certainty. PS: see if you can enlarge the axle box cover - I suspect it may say “BNCR” on it. Like the BCDR, CBSCR and DSER, the NCC wagon designs were for the most part entirely unlike anything else, and nothing like the “big” companies.

Indeed it is; a Provincial favourite - I've kits for several more. Many of these graduated onto CIE in 1958 and were to be seen in traffic as late as circa 1970, along with the very last of the GSR wooden equivalents. Given the lower priority given to the cosmetic aspects of wagons as opposed to carriages or locos, quite a few were still to be seen with "G N" on them into the early 60s, as per the two currently running on the layout. Of the same type of kit which I've still to make up, I think I'll do two with "snails" and one looking a lot more newly painted with a "roundel", as they'd have got after 1963. Plus I've more cattle trucks to make up!

Was thinking Carrickbrack, Carrickmines and Camolin Railway............

Only one sleep to go…

Once the reincarnation thing is sorted out, and in the next life each week has nine days, each year 17 months, and each day 32 hours, I will place my name forward to volunteer on trawling such material!

I think you may know the maker, Leslie…. While I’ve two (see above) myself, I say to the wider modelling world, “highly recommended”!

Some of the growing family of wagons at Dugort Harbour….

Any idea what "C C C" means - presumably something "coal company"?

Indeed - the more photos, the better, and scanned and improved where necessary too. Covid has of course meant that visits to the IRRS to browse anything at all, let alone conduct detailed research, are not currently possible. Let's look forward to the times when all can reopen safely!

Midland six-wheelers

Many of the “notes” made by folks like this need to be written up in the form of articles, sometimes even with the most eminent and highly respected authors, having errors or potentially misleading information corrected. This all takes a lot of time, and like preservation schemes, there’s only so many volunteers….. Anyone ever trying to make sense of much of my own notes over the years would end up with a Herculean task!!! I have “stuff” among my own “stuff” which was the work of a couple of long-departed, but very knowledgable persons. One lot is neat little index cards, the rest is random material which makes little obvious sense!

Ahhh!!! Excellent - wasn’t aware of that!

A12 is a perfect “crossover” between the end of steam and the re-engining programme, itself finishing the same year the “supertrains” started. A black “A” with or without yellow ends will be happily accurate with “snail”-clad loose coupled wagons, and a 50/50 mix of green and black’n’tan carriages, passing along beside a loco shed with rusty withdrawn steam engines in it; but also it will be happy alongside a class sister now hauling squeaky clean new Cravens, with its new GM engine, tan lower band, and “R” after its number. Place it on the GNR main line, sitting in Drogheda, and the new Hunslet-hauled Mk 2 “Enterprise” can swing by, taking this comparison to its ultimate extent. The 1960s saw the biggest changes in Irish railways in their history, and the black “A” - with AND without the yellow patch - was at the centre of it.