jhb171achill

They’re behind the photographer…..

A quiet evening at Dugort Harbour, after an hour of attempted indoctrination of an enthusiastic four year old…. As of now, A42 rests on the centre road after bringing in a goods train, while tomorrow’s down train from Tralee sits in the fiddle yard entrance awaiting an A class for its next jaunt to Castletown West… Meantime, silence in the fields above Dugort Harbour station, apart from a low breeze and the sound of lambs….

Gimme a shout when you’re coming and I’ll meet you there!

Activity in Malahide this afternoon….

Here we go;

Encouraging to know that far from any door being shut on future railcars (all here will be aware of the challenges); this gives the impression that an 80 or most importantly, an AEC is not beyond the bounds of possibility...

Awful, Noel, all our sympathies from this household to you and your family. A truly traumatic and dreadful thing to happen, but as long as life and limb are OK, that's the main thing.

An absolutely superb set-up! And to the usual high TTC standard! You’re putting me in mind of a (very) small terminus portable layout myself….

Seems ok on those scores…. Maybe a small weight on the bogie might be the answer….

Th AEC railcars commenced ther lives befre the light green livery was "invented"; thus, all were dark green initially. But they had the later style of a single thin pale green "waistline" rather than the two broader bands above and below the windows. The post-1955 green continued the same thin lioning style, again in eau-de-nil. A Fry photio of all 5 vehicles tends to suggest they were all dark green until the line closed, and considering none went to Inchicore while they were there, that would be logical. As can be seen in the pic above, dark green rules the roost there. (I'd love to have travelled on that line!)

I'll get a pic tomorrow - cant go up there now or I will wake a 3-year-old en route! It was made by a friend out of cardboard. The design was mine and, yes, inspired by the style used on some West Cork stations, and the Kenmare and Valentia branches. Incidentally, that Park Royal - an old IFM one, one of two I have - one bogie keeps derailing over several points. Nothing else derails on them, sop it's not the points. The other IFM Park Royal I have doesn't either. Anyone have any ideas how to tame an errant coach bogie?

A42 trundles through Castletown West tonight (well, tonight in 1959) with empty wagons from the harbour, as the branch local with No. 472 sits at the up platform, having arrived twenty five minutes earlier. When A42 has passed through, 472 will run round and return to Dugort Harbour after the evening Tralee train has arrived.

The lack of birth control 80 years ago was the problem!

I count myself very lucky that my very earliest railway memories just about date back to the tail end of that “traditional” era - bells and clanking levers in signal cabins, the last few steam engines, old wooden carriages with compartments, etc etc… shunting of loose-coupled goods vans in rural stations, old fashioned ticket offices and creosote smell off newly replaced sleepers in warm summer days…. And NO graffiti ANYWHERE.

Very sad news. May he rest in peace. I've H vans, 9 & 10 ton wooden-bodied (GNR) vans, twenty cattle wagons, brake vans and guard's vans!

Must say I’d quite like to hear that!

It was my first attempt at brass kits - it doesn't bear close inspection, though, and the paint job could be a great deal tidier (painting is not my strong point) - but it does look appropriately weathered!

C231 shunts at Dugort Harbour in 1959, C201 seen passing in 1964, and the civil engineer arrives for an inspection visit in 1973….

Indeed; but Cultra does have a venerable tradition of livery errors; witness the "G S" on a CIE-liveried "Maedb", for example! Is this the Dart Plus Dundalk - Port Laoise service?

Sounds EXACTLY like I remember it! I saw them throughout their lives, from an early trial run and their first week in service, to being in the very last service train hauled by one (an ailing 101)… about 1993. It was last-minute deputising for a failed railcar that evening.

Keep well, Ernie! Your continuing input here is very greatly appreciated by all.

THAT'S the picture I had seen somewhere!

I saw a picture online, and it wasn't that long ago - of a newly-built loco for some American railway (or POSSIBLY South American) in a yellow and grey colour scheme about 1960-ish. More grey than yllow, ad arranged differently. If I come across it again I'll post it.

It is possible. However, another possibility is that GM had produced other locos for American lines about the same time as the 121ss were being built, so it is possible that some influence came from those quarters; if so, whether it was suggested by La Grange or Illinois will never be known. Looking at those two IRRS pics of Paddy Flanagan's, I was unaware any of the £P£ class buses got the yellow and grey livery. And lo and behold - while the U class depicted in the posters has a grey "snail" (of course), that on the "P" appears to be a standard eau-de-nil one across the radiator cover! But - it absolutely does my head in to see yellow "snails" on model steam engine tenders - it's like putting a bright red "double arrow" on a BR diesel on 1970s rail blue!

No need to worry there - apart from grey 121s on delivery, not a single thing on rails ever had a yellow flying snail!