jhb171achill

Yes, agreed. The RPSI one at Whitehead is essentially subsidised by the RPSI's steam train operations; it does not break even. Cultra doesn't either. Museums of this type, across ireland north and south, unless they are very small and family run, or volunteer-run*, will not be commercially viable. If someone with exceptionally deep pockets came along and finded one, that would get it built; depending on what was put in it as a draw might determine the footfall. The Model Railway Museum at Malahide with which I am involved is subsidised by the local authority. For years the carriage gallery at Downpatrick was financially supported by the local authority. In my time I have been involved in about half a dozen feasibility studies for railway-themed museums across ireland, from Donegal to Clare to Carlow. Once the long-term financial sustainability was being scrutiniesed in each case, end of story. We differ from Britain in three ways, and it is thus often unrealistic in one sense, unfair in another, to compare the two; the heritage market over there is as different to the island of ireland as DCC microchips are from cabbages, or Indonesian puppets from Germolene. The three differences behind this are as follows: 1. For every person on the island of Ireland, 7 million of us, there are 65 million in Brexitland; that means there are almost ten times the number of people there. A very busy Santa season at Downpatrick or on the RPSI's Dublin Santas, or indeed a FULL season's visitors to the DCDR, are fewer in number than a somewhat above average weekend at the Severn Valley or Keighley lines. 2. Not only is the market here much, much smaller, but people here tend to spend less per capita on entertainment / days out of any sort, compared to Britain. Experience of my own - and I do not want to be controversial here, so I'll say this just once - suggests that NI market is particularly geared this way in terms of the all-Ireland picture. Either way, people in England - and I deliberately pick out England as compared to Scotland or Wales, DO spend more on sucvh things. A very large proportion of the more serious donations to the RPSI, in MY time anyway, came from England. Pretty obvious why, in the case of railway preservation - they have the industrial history that we do not have! 3. Quite a few locomotive or railway heritage operations over there have "big money" behind them; the Alan Peglers and Pete Watermans of this world. This has always been the case. In 25 years of being treasurer of both the DCDR and RPSI, I know of two here who were prepared to(very generously) put very large sums of their own personal money into projects. I know of one other who planned to but sadly passed away, and another who is some way along a road like that. But thyat's it. Over the years, there have been substantial projects proposed at Mullingar, Moyasta and other places. Local authority funding is largely absent; it took the RPSI decades to end up with funding for Whitehead - but it runs at a loss. Now, this is not a whinge. This is not anyone's fault. It's just one'o'those things. And, yes, I know it's tiresome oul treasurer-talk, but the sums have to add up; railway enthusiams is powered by emotion, but museums have to powered by cold hard business cases. A Shildon or NRM York type of thing would be amazing here, but it ain't gonna happen; even if it did, there's nothing much left to put in it! (* In this case, this doesn't save Whitehead!)

Certainly is! I'm hoping Fingal Council will fund some more display cabinets, as Fry's British models (mostly LNWR & LMS) still remain in storage..... Very much appreciated, thanks - and you'd be welcome any time, as would all here.

Best not to put ideas in people's heads!

What about the ghost train that goes through a few years later, as per the numerous tales on the Donegal - Killybegs section?

Saw a whole rake of the NIR "wasp-stripe" livery ones at Malahide Model Railway Museum today, behind a blue 112. They look absolutely outstanding.

LOVE that thread title! Someone will be doing a thesis on it in 20 years' time.... OK, here's one for you. Setting aside all the stuff that gets trotted out as "fact" in terms of closed railways being dropped on the Germans, etc etc etc, a new one: what is a closure date? Is it (a) the date of the day on which the last official public train ran? Is it (b) the day after that, namely the first date without public trains? Or, is it (c) something else? For example, imagine this. A line is to close on 31st December 1950, let's say. That day is a Monday, but that line never had a Sunday service, so the last trains run on Saturday 29th. Is that the closure date, or is Monday 31st? First correct answer can buy me a pint.

Yes. Each time new models appear going forward, they’re likely to turn up here!

And the 1990s have returned in Malahide today. But the driver of the Enterprise took a wrong turning and ended up heading for Wexford….

Different thread, yes; the above points are valid, but light years from the oft-quoted idea that "the brits built all the railways to control us" type of thing. That aspect of it is pure nonsense. Government aid, as you mention above, is a different issue.

Absolute beauty.

And there we all were, thinking there are no 141s left in use, no cement wagons still going, an’ the oul Taras finished an’all. Well, I saw them all in Malahide today.

That's so that their mothers can find them in a crowd when they come back from foraging.

Ah, OK, just manufacturer's serial numbers etc. No clues re ownership, origin or railway company! Nice item, anyway!

Standard lamp of its type - used on many railway lines. The only clue as to origin might be initials stamped on it somewhere - is there anything visible?

I believe that was in August 1954...... Superbly done with the seagull sound at the end!

V E R Y nice. I had three of those years ago but had to sell them..............! Regretting it now.

Tis my own childhood stamping ground, too! Early memories of a black "C" class going through...... probably on the way to Dun Laoghaire Pier... and the smell of cresoted timber sleepers on a hot summer's day, the ringing of bells in the signal cabin, and my dad chatting to the signalman........

Just a gentle correction on that point - Mountrath was nothing to do with the W & CIR..... Religious make-up of local population was also entirely irrelevant, both here and elsewhere. Pretty much everywhere in southern and western Ireland had a 95% RC population anyway; but it isn't relevant. It isn't physically possible to run through trains between Mountrath and Kilkenny anyway, never was, and was never planned to be; you'd have to reverse at Port Laoise. The line from Kilkenny to Port laoise was opened in the mid-1860s. Mountrath station, on the Dublin - Cork line, was opened in the 1840s.

If they took the amplifiers out of them, and cleared out 20 years of litter, maybe they'd be OK..............

Interesting point indeed - but perusal of records of plans to build railway lines, and records of who put the money up and why - show the same pattern as railway building elsewhere in the world; namely private enterprise. In the 1830s, interestingly, there was a British government commission set up to consider the building - presumably or possibly government-funded - of a network across Ireland. One detail of this which sticks in my mind is a main line north which instead of sticking to a largely coastal route as far as Newry anyway, would have gone inland via Navan, probably Carrickmacross, and Armagh. However this scheme was never acted upon. It is possible that any publicity given to the fact that such thoughts were even being considered, might have given rise to rumours of this nature. But, with nothing on the ground having come of these early plans, what railways WERE built were subject to entirely separate, but unremarkable circumstances. Quite simply, people with the funds to build railways built them, in the hope of making a nice profit. For a while they did, until someone invented the car. Once the main network was largely finished in the 1870s, a secondary round of railway building took place over the 1883-1913 period. These were also promoted by local people, but had hitherto been avoided by commercial companies as they perceived no sound financial case for them. Dividends to investors were guaranteed by the baronies. Few if any of these lines ever turned a penny profit, and many were closed in the 1930s onwards. None of these lines - not a single one - was planned by the British government itself at all, either for military purposes or any other purpose. The fact that following the Light Railways and Tramways Acts they were prepared to part-subsidise their construction was an entirely seperate issue, as was the fact that once built, they could transport their military horses etc. by them. The distance of stations from towns was the result of several causes, where it applied. One was topography; in cases where diversion actually through, or to, a town would cost a lot more; remember, railways were built commercially. Then as now, anyone wanting anything built anywhere, wanted it done as cheaply as possibly - though obviously within reason. Another reason could sometimes be pressure from a landowner. If railways were only being invented now, Dublin's termini would be out near the airport, as the commercial promoters would never countenance the colossal expense of building them right into a built up city - even if they could persuade the local authority to serve CPOs on everyone in its path. Many of the landlord classes didn't want a railway through their land, and many owned land adjacent to towns. Political perceptions of the views of townspeople were quite simply never taken into account anywhere. Had they been so, few lines would have been built at all, because right across the island bar four counties, rural areas were predominantly Catholic, and nationalist. LNERW1, you're right about Durrow / Attanagh; this line was originally the Waterford and Central Ireland Railway, whose aim was to go north from Kilkenny, up to Port Laoise and beyond to Mountmellick onwards to "Central Ireland". In fact, if never got anywhere further than Mountmellick and eventually became part of the GSWR. When it was beinf built through your neck o'the'woods, it was intended that it would some day be a main line of some sort, thus a diversion such as you mention would not have been considered worthwhile financially. That's the reason there. Mountrath is further down the Cork main line, so would have been nothing to do with it - it was simply a station on the Cork main line. It was opened some 20 years before the Port Laoise - Kilkenny line ever existed. Railway history here may thus be summed up as firstly, an early wave of strictly commercially-led building, with busines interests driving it. Most of these were in Ireland, some were based in Britain - but commercial, not at all military of governmentally-related. Any theories to that effect are simply historically untrue. Secondlky, a later wave of branch line and rural railway building, some of it narrow gauge (e.g. in Donegal), where lines were still promoted by local Irish interests, but once THEY had promoted them, grant funds from British governments could be made available. But the idea was local, the rationale was local, and the perception of benefit to communities was locally led.

Without wanting to divert the thread, a few other howlers I've heard over the years, quite often about more than one line - often, with apparent reference to them all: (a) "Sure the railways were all built by the British to control us" Fact check: Class 1 nonsense in all cases, though the British Govt. DID build the Wolfhill and Deerpark lines in 1918 for the coal. (b) "They should never have closed it. It would make a fortune today, what with all the tourists an' all". Fact check: Class 1 nonsense in all cases. (c) "When they closed it, sure they sold off all the scrap to make bombs to drop on the Germans". Fact check: Class 2 nonsense; ONE line, the Clogher Valley, closed in 1942, did have its track recovered for the war effort. (d) "Ah sure, it was only closed due to political jiggery-pokery". Fact check: In the case of the 1957 GNR / SLNCR closures and the "Derry Road", 100% true. For the closure of West Cork, arguably partly to largely true, likewise the BCDR and Ballycastle narrow gauge. In other cases, 90% - 100% nonsense! (e) One I heard implied lately, in this era of uneducated conspiracy theories which suggest that all freely, democratically elected governments are in some sense all inherently evil: "All them closures - sure someone was makin' money outta that, I tell ya. Brown envelopes, y'know". We're back to class 1 nonsense, again......and this time with bells and whistles. By the way, I like that thing yer man has in his garden! Doesn't bear close scrutiny, but no law says it must! Looks great in his garden!

Yes, the farm backing on the line is very probably true, but the rest is nonsense! If he's a "straight talker", it's probable he's simply repeating something that he believed from whoever told him..... but it's the "whoever" that was making stuff up! Bog railways - different thing entirely - I was referring to public railways. I was exploring the route of the T & D in the 1970s, at which time most of the route was still to be seen, and closed only 20 years earlier, so not overgrown at all. This oul lad informed me that there had been "trains up and down all day long" (whereas the timetable suggested two a day!) and that this included an "express train"...... I suppose such things are relative; the T & D did, in fact, travel somewhat faster than a local man would on foot.......

You're obviously cured fully! You are hereby discharged.........

You’re quite right - whatever it was, it very certainly wasn’t a railway vehicle of ANY sort; he’d have needed a low loader for it anyway! The only “old bits” you’d get on a lifted railway line might be a few old track bolts. The story appears to be nonsense! Old locomotives were quite simply never left abandoned out along railway lines. Usually they were put to work elsewhere, but otherwise scrapped. The scrap value was too much to just leave. Even in traction engine terms it still sounds like a tall story! These things are too big, heavy and cumbersome to just take home and polish!

Is there a fiddle yard each end?