jhb171achill

Wow - this will be a MOST impressive project! Will it be set in pre-NCC days?

Very nice collection indeed. I remember that 1967 diagrammatic one coming out. Even then I thought it was weird. Some of what you have are very rare beasts indeed, especially the Macroom one and the Parknasilla booklet.

Bring back a Vs and some old bogies....

Blue 216 has been kickin' around at Connolly shed several days this week. Dunno what's in Belfast.

This is precisely it, in a nutshell. Culturally, we’re just not that much interested, as a whole!

Forgot to mention, the reason there were never any narrow gauge wagons is that with the possible exception of Strabane to Stranorlar, no narrow gauge line had a sufficiently high and wide loading gauge to take standard gauge rolling stock.

Indeed, it was the other way round. Zero narrow gauge transporter wagons, but a few standard gauge ones, used to bring narrow gauge stock to Inchicore, Dundalk, Limerick or York Road for repair.

Many lines all over this island had trains going through them almost 24 hours a day. Even places like Omagh had signal cabins manned 22 hours a day. Even West Cork, with its sparse services overall, had goods trains in the wee hours leaving Cork for Bantry.

I'll try to have a look for you. I might have one or two duplicates.

Like that, with no train behind it, yes!

So sez the seagull........... just thinking, had that branch existed, it's very probable that the service would have been a single BUT car in and out from Drogheda maybe 3 times each day....

Yes, I have two of those. They're near enough to what you'd have seen in the mid 1950s to mid 60s. My background is that at Dugort Harbour the local twice-a-day bus to the back'o'beyond was stabled at the station, a la Westport Quay, so every week or two a tank of diesel is attached to the goods to be dropped off there, and the empty one taken away....... it makes for an interesting extra light engine movement for the Castletown West pilot engine.

Looks like you'll need to insert a chip well and truly into that seagull..............

Very nice indeed! I take it this is the Drogheda shuttle which follows the Entetprise, but runs ahead of the Ardee goods?

Quite simply because nobody - either private or state-funded - is prepared to put up the cash to build it, and pay to maintain it thereafter…… sadly!

Very certainly seems that way!

The question was asked above about livery in Ernie's book. Those are maker's photos, where they painted wagons (or carriages or locomotives) in varying shades of black, grey and white, with ironwork usually black, to emphasise detail in official (black and white) photos. This would not have been the livery they entered service in - manufacturers photographed them like this, and then painted them in the actualy livery of the customer's railway. In the case of the WLWR this was medium dark grey all over with white lettering. I THINK - but can't remember where to call up any hard evidence - that the grey used by the WLWR was probably not unlike the (later) LMS wagon grey in England, with roofs a very slightly lighter shade. This was a maker's photo livery. Grey in traffic.

And a populous, busy, local market is essential.

Indeed; I share that concern. Despite good noises being made, freight facilities in Dublin have again been reduced, Taras have gone, and there’s even less left now. And still not a syllable about Foynes.

You’re 100% right about the 1967 bubbles, and I suspect others too. ALL my recollections were of all over grey ones, and going to school beside the GNR main line I saw them daily. I never saw a single black chassis - in a world where every single solitary goods vehicle was all grey, it would have stuck out like a sore thumb. But - there’s photo evidence of black too. My conclusion is that some were black but most grey - and when they painted the “bubble” bit orange eventually, the grey continued on the chassis.

You have it in a nutshell, Mol! I doubt if a solitary wagon type which ever ran anywhere on any line of either gauge on this entire island ever had less than almost as many variations as members! Your excellent research and posts have not only pointed this out and illustrated it, but illuminated this fact to a new and younger generation, who have unfortunately never seen anything but trains comprising a standard number of entirely identical wagons or coaches….. hence the excitement when an ICR has 5 instead of 6 coaches…..!

Trailer part way too big for Irish equivalents.

What’s the older corgi one? I could use a few of those.

Very much looking forward to that!

September 1968, and the goods for Tralee is ready to leave. At Castletown Junction the first five wagons will be detached to be added to the Tralee - Cork goods. At Mallow, two will be detached, one for Thurles and one for North Wall. The other three will go to Cork, with one onwards for the West Cork system over the Cork City tramway, to go to Dunmanway. The remaining wagons on the train are all for Tralee, Lixnaw, Abbeyfeale, Newcastle West and Limerick, with one for Nenagh. That's the way it was..............