jhb171achill

Very nice job indeed!

Strange American train horn sound for an IE loco! Interior shots are a laminate.

Easy to weather too!

These are good quality and broadside, and show the original condition. The liveries are "works grey", not the actual liveries ever carried. For official photographs, the first of each was painted up in various shades of white, black and light grey shades to show detail. Contrsats, such as dark ironwork and pale bodywork, were not carried into real life. Livery notes for all of the following are: GSWR wagons: All-over DARK grey, ironwork, roof & chassis included. Lettering white. GSR wagons: Dark grey as shown on the GS grain hoppers, equivalent to LMS grey in England - again, all-encompassing. Ranks wagon - at that stage, all over dark grey. CIE grey after c.1960 was lighter than any of the above. Locos: 36 & 123 lined dark olive green, same as 90 at Downpatrick. The four in light grey, lined or unlined, would also have got this livery up to about 1900, and lined black between then and 1915, after which the all-grey appeared (in real life)! The coach - very dark "crimson lake", lined - as per the shade used on Downpatrick's No. 836, or the RPSI's 1142. Loco 850 - not sure. The white motion certainly wasn't used in traffic - the rest seems very dark, possible poor light (hence the white?) This locomotive would have been grey when new. The pics are from an old collection in the hands of a friend of mine: 204 appears to be standard dark grey, while the MGWR tank, with no lining showing, must be in the 1918-25 MGWR black.

Yes, they were indeed - the initial glossiness of the black, same as on other CIE roofs in green and black'n'tan eras, would last about four seconds flat before becoming matt!

Nice looking book. I wonder if it starts in the early days with photos of 121s when new, and both them and 141 / 181s in black'n'tan? Or is it just modern photos (IE, Supertrain), does anyone know?

That would be weathering. They were all painted black in actual fact. If you want them to look weathered, which of course would be far more appropriate than anything pristine, a grey background would be too consistent - I would paint them a way darker grey and weather it heavily.

Brilliant! And your painting idea is a very good one too. That size will give many possibilities as you have outlined. Best of luck with it.

You mean colour of roofs? That would be black.........

That explains it!

Hardly "railway heritage", though!

What's the "railway heritage" bit?

That's one of the Malahide Castle (as opposed to Cyril Fry's) models from the 1990s Malahide Castle layout. If anyone is interested I will post pics of others next time I'm in the storage place.

It was painted brown, but a one-off. Departmental stuff was generally all grey, including carriages for transporting staff and used as crew quarters, except steam cranes which I am nearly sure were plain black all over. That particular crew van was seen all over the south west at the time when Valentia, Kenmare and West Cork were being lifted. I believe it was a purpose-built maintenance train van, not (as was more usual) a conversion of an old coach. It has a normal number rather than an "A" series number. In later years, departmental vehicles received several liveries. An old GSWR third, No. 837, was painted a brown colour, and while most other old converted coaches got standard wagon grey, albeit with all sorts of one-off markings, some old coaches were painted in old green paint, probably to use it up, with red ends. One old WLWR third, which had been briefly used as a camping coach in the early 60s, retained the Donegal-esque red and cream (which actually looked very well) into its departmental days and eventual scrapping at Mullingar.

Noel, this stuff is inspirational. Your in-depth experience and knowledge of the railway industry inspires what goes on at Tara junction perfectly - and of course, prototypically accurately.

Meant to add, if anyone is ever making a model, upholstery according to jhbSenior was red.

Wow - not a pay packet will remain intact all year! Great news, though..........!

The GSR had four of these, entering traffic in 1926 in Pullman brown and cream, which was probably the inspiration for the brown & cream colour scheme applied to many main line carriages between approximately 1927/8 and the late 1930s. Later, of course, they would be maroon, and CIE green in their final days. They were fully seated in later years with the snack bar removed. For modellers attempting a conversion, note the matchboard plank lower panelling, unlike British ones, and window spacing different from British ones.

Some more details on these unique vehicles, after which I’ll post a drawing of one If them in the scale drawings section of this website. All of these clips are taken from various issues of the “Railway Gazette” in 1925/6. Bottom pic is the 2nd page of top one….

The GSR Pullmans, from a 1926 article. They were tried out on the Sligo line and into Limerick, probably via Nenagh; one per train. They eventually “settled” on Dublin - Galway and Dublin - Cork.

Ah! Well, there we go - we might live in hope?

Possible easy re-livery job. Now, I preface this by saying that I know very little about buses at all, but I believe this one is a standard type, as its a 1950s bought model, now in storage in Malahide Castle. It's not Fry's - it was re-liveried for the castle layout in the 1990s, in CIE livery, though it's an old model - presumably owned by someone else. However, it is worth mentioning as yokes like this were commonplace in rural areas in the 1950s. My knowledge of buses does not extend to confirming whether this is an EXACT type used here, or one which is just very like one that did - nor can i say how common they were. In any event, one at least was based in Galway, it seems, as late as about 1961. I took pics of this one this afternoon as I was poking about in the castle looking for things, bits'n'bobs, and stuff. The CIE green is authentic for steam locos, buses, road lorries, station paintwork, and passenger coaches which were painted between 1945 and 1955. Would it be worth IRM doing a run of a 00 scale equivalent of these? This one is 7mm scale, or as close to that as needs be.

Correct. And it wasn't just when the GNR ceased to be. In "Rails to Achill", I have a photo of not just a GSWR wagon, but a DSER one as well - at ACHILL in 1934! I am aware of during the short period before the UTA stopped running goods trains, there were (albeit exceptionally rare - maybe one-off!) instances of UTA goods vans south of Dublin. As you say, wagons could end up anywhere. Consign a wagonload of linen from the Derry central to Cork, and you've a BNCR van in Penrose Quay. Not just wagons, though they seemed to have most wanderlust. In GSR & CIE days, MGWR six-wheelers migrated in huge numbers to Dublin suburban services, becoming regulars on the Harcourt Street line from the late 1920s. Larger numbers of them again went to Cork, where they were all over the West Cork system, Youghal and Cobh services, and the Valentia branch. There were a few in Limerick too. On the other hand, the MGWR and DSER became infested with GSWR stock - many Midland branchlines having lengthy residencies of GSWR composite bogie vehicles; these were regularly to be seen on the Ballinrobe and Ballaghaderreen branches for years, Loughrea in the 1950s, and Ballina on and off. Only Clifden seemed to stay true to old MGWR six-wheelers throughout its entire life. GSWR bogies and six-wheelers were regulars in Wisht Caark too. A GNR coach was seen on the Loughrea branch about 1960 and also as far away as West Cork - could have been the same one, an old wooden clerestorey-roofed one, and still in GNR brown livery to boot! Locos - Loughrea, Ballinrobe and Achill had visitors from the WLWR and GSWR with regular slots rather than occasional appearances. And one of the D16 "Achill bogies" worked the GSR Portarlington - Athlone line for a while in the late 30s, while a WLWR G3 (think it was 291) worked for years out of Waterford - and don't forget the three J26 MGWR 0.6.0Ts which emigrated to the Waterford and Tramore, with 560 ending up in Cork (Glanmire), West Cork and the Fenit branch before it was scrapped in the early 60s! Many, many, many other examples.

The Taras and a local train pass through Malahide on the layout today. Meanwhile a ballast train pauses at Mallow......

More common than you'd think! Once the GNR fleet was split between the UTA & CIE (October 1958), for about four years there were GNR wagons all over the place, with GNR markings, but with an "N" after the number. Coach 114 becomes 114N, wagon 3452 becomes 3452N, etc. Often the older number was still there too. By 1963, numbers of ex-GNR wagon stock had become almost extinct due to CIE's modernisation of their fleet - even building a whole fleet of new cattle wagons, so older types vanished rapidly or (for the few that remained) repainted properly in CIE livery. Older GSWR & MGWR types also vanished largely at this time - DSER & WLWR stuff had had their own pogroms in the 1950s, and CBSCR items were almost without exception just scrapped there when that system closed.