jhb171achill

Ah, ok, apologies!

Worth getting!

Mods - delete post. Posted in error

Yes, that’s what I did with areas round wheels.

Who’s the author?

That’s Monday’s headlines, Leslie. They’re trial-running the UGs between Enniskillen and Irvinestown this morning….

Are there trains to Kinsale, Ballycastle, Killeshandra and Achill again?

The late “Big Tom” did a song about the “GNR Train”….

A55 plus the other “A”s will be off for weathering soon - once I pluck up the courage! Next stage will be to extend “Dugort” across a river bridge & turf bog area to the “big” station up the line, and beyond that to a fiddle yard. Hoping to get at that within the next few weeks, though as usual, “life” gets in the way!

Many thanks, Patrick. Some were done by Kevan McIntosh who made a lot of them up for me. I will ask him what colours he used. Others were done by me, by simply rubbing a random mix of very pale brown and grey weathering powders rubbed into cracks, just as general muck will collect in real life, and then very lightly brushing more (dry) round the chassis, rooftop and lower ends. Many thanks, Noel. More you be done, of course. Still haven’t started buildings, which will be the sort of corrugated-sheet structures seen on lines like Kenmare, Valentia and the west Cork system. So many, indeed; including relatives of mine too!

Summer 1964. This morning’s mixed train crosses the river…..

Very true. O'Dea's collection features very many cabins, with and without staff, including many of which (after decades of examining photos of all sorts) I have often never seen any other internal view of. As many others have commented, he also has a strong emphasis on staff in all areas in his phots, just as the late Mac Arnold had in his writings (often to the exclusion of much else!). I spent several days during the lockdown this time last year trawling every single image of his that is online and making notes. Ten years ago I did the same, by examining them on microfilm in the National Archives; it took me almost a week! Superb stuff, very educational.

On a railway, much of what we call "weathering" was, in the past, brake dust from brake blocks. Hence the brownish colour of "weathered" rolling stock in photos. I have seen many a photo of a wagon which we would know to be grey, but with a brownish look at least to chassis and maybe ends; a note for the more artistic amongst us!

Nice! They're actually already in their initial livery! (OK, very slightly lighter in real life...)... Most never had any other livery, but maybe some 40% of them ended up brown after 1970, for their last few years.

CIE mail / parcels / brake coach, to an old GSR design dating from, I think, 1935. Modern bogies on this one, as most of them (there were maybe ten or so in total). The CIE ones were built in 1960, according to Doyle & Hirsch.

O'Dea wrote a superb article in the IRRS Journal at the time about his jaunt to Valentia Harbour on the last day - truly a marathon. Was a very nice man to talk to, I met him several times.

Yes, by the 1970s, very much so.

I remember seeing one in use with steel-sheeted body, but still planked end balconies...

Indeed - an important note for modellers of the more artistic variety - the amount of weathering and wear and tear, especially on wagons, cannot be understated. Some of the wagons were so rough looking, they were coated in brake dust - photos of not just these (ALL of which were grey!), but green carriages - would almost suggest to the uninitiated that the whole lot were light brown...... and as for steam engines, if you got a class like the 400s in which some examples were green, some grey and a few black, you genuinely could hardly tell which was which. Crossleys, of course, carried out their functions in between breakdowns under a patina of oil and gunk........

That is, in typical Kirley style, absolutely superb, so full of atmosphere, and very much what I would be trying to emulate by degrees!

Indeed - Senior travelled on the 2nd last one - but didn't take a SINGLE picture! Cattle was the reason that MANY Irish lines got beyond the 1930s, and the main reason that very many, from Draperstown and Dungiven in Co Derry, to Kenmare in Co Kerry lasted at all. ALL of the following - and this is only for starters, off the top'o'me'ead, depended on cattle traffic, many of them lasting almost as long in a derelict state for that one purpose only as they did in full use. Limavady - Dungiven, Draperstown, Mountmellick, Oldcastle, Carrickmacross, Cootehill, Loughrea, Ballinrobe, Ballaghaderreen, Dingle (narrow gauge), Kenmare, Bagenalstown - Palace East, Mitchelstown, Newmarket, Athboy, Edenderry...... and in between there were many, many, many intermediate stations on main lines (places like Ballinasloe being probably the best known - but many others too) which saw almost no use in latter days bar the cattle specials once or twoce a month, or sometimes even less frequently. Don't take that list as anything like exhaustive either! The importance of cattle traffic to Irish railways cannot be overstated, thus for any layout prior to 1960, and many a location between 1960 and 1975 (when the last cattle trains ran) is an essential part of the scene. Like carriages, designs used in Britain were so different that repainted GWR or BR examples just don't cut the mustard if any degree of accuracy is wished for. Up to 1960 all sorts of old relics were used, but CIE went into overdrive building new ones between the end of the 1950s and early 60s, so by 1965 any pre-CIE ones were as far as I know extinct. Prior to that, the Provincial GNR one will cover many a scenario, as it's not hugely unlike some old GSR (or possibly NCC) ones either - after that, the above provincial CIE one is the only show in town. Some even managed to gain the new brown livery after 1970! the last were withdrawn in '75 and assembled mostly in Cork and Dublin where they were burned and the metal bits scraped up and sold for scrap. Strangely, while I stand to be corrected on this, I never saw any being scrapped at Mullingar. At one stage cattle traffic was by FAR the biggest goods traffic in Ireland. We were carrying "beasts", while our neighbours on the "big island" were carrying milk churns and coal.......... Bizarre, almost, that of the single biggest non-passenger traffic ever on THIS entire island, not a SOLITARY complete cattle truck has survived. New build, anyone?

I recently came across an account of a fair day in the west of Ireland in 1968, at which forty of these were loaded. The gist of the article was that the same event a decade earlier would have loaded 120 of them. This is why there were so many on the railways, but also why they spent a lot of time sitting in sidings. Realism will be added to any 1950s or 1960s layout (or earlier) by having a siding somewhere stuffed with these things awaiting their next turn of duty. I've a couple more on order, in addition to a good few I already have, so that I can make up a 15 or 20 wagon "cattle special".

Very much so. That type were being built at exactly the same time as the "A"s came out. To run behind "A"s in ALL liveries up to the early black'n'tan, these cattle trucks were absolutely the norm. The right sort of rolling stock for an "A" is several Provincial Wagons products - the GSWR guard's van if for a branch (or West Cork!), the standard CIE "H" van, this cattle wagon, the GNR timber-framed vans and the Bullied open wagon. Also look at the kit for a CIE brake van made by Studio Scale Models, the wooden-planked standard CIE guard's van made by JM Design (excellent) and even the range of very much older vans made by KMCE of this parish; in West Cork, ancient relics like that were still to be seen almost until the old CBSCR system closed. Weather them within an inch of their lives!

Until the mid 1960s and quite often later, it’s practically obligatory that few if ANY wagons in a train were the same type. Typically, brand new “palvans” and “H” vans mixed and mingled with older CIE types, old GSR vans of at least three types, older still the occasional antique of DWWR, DSER, GSWR (many types of this alone) and MGWR origin. After CIE ate the pitiful remnants of the GNR in October 1958, GNR vans of (again) at least three varieties joined the gang, many retaining their GNR markings well into the 1960s, and many GNR Cement Vans (very like CIE “H”s, but with corrugated ends) lasting until the end of loose-coupled goods in the 1970s. Spotted at Dugort Harbour in 1960 are, left to right; “Provincial Wagons” standard timber-framed ex-GNR goods van, as yet not repainted in CIE style; a KMCE covered van of an earlier (DWWR) period (as yet not painted, and on temporary wheels; proper spoked ones on order); and another “Provincial” “H” van. Looking forward to getting a few more onto the layout. I’ve two MGWR ones currently without wheels, and a few more of both KMCE and Provincial origin. Superb models, gents!

Indeed! Nothing new about the idea or even technology at all!