jhb171achill

If anyone is bumbling about in the Newport area this weekend, I will be doing a talk on the Achill line as part of it on the Saturday. Throughout the weekend there will be a number of talks by various people on different historical and cultural topics relating to the area. Unlike Indakinny, I will neither be claiming that the line was narrow gauge, nor that it was specially reopened to carry the dead in 1937!

Rare to get one of it parked on its end, Jim................

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.