jhb171achill

I’m sure Tara Junction is choked with specials from Westport, Ballina, Castlebar and Claremorris today!

I couldn’t be certain but it was well after the last of the fertiliser wagons. I guess about 20 years ago? Maybe a bit less?

I detest them. I also mute the sound the second they come on, and I make an absolute point of NOT EVER buying the product or service of the more annoying, longer or more repetitive ones. Current hates are anything to do with VHI or those beer ads with the creepy looking weird Dutch guy who ends every boring adventure by staring at you and saying "probably". Or maybe he's Danish. Who gives a toss.

Correct. NIR were at that a long time ago, but on IE it’s comparatively very much more recent. It was plain brown bogies on non-passenger stock, and plain black on carriages. The 2600-class had plain light grey bogies from Day 1, but that’s a separate story.

Very good job, that!

I've a dang good mind to set sail for Wexford that day. Is this place walkable from Wexford railway station or should I self-guide my own infernal combustion machine?

All the steam engines appear to be green NCC "Jeeps"! But - they have that certain atmosphere of old railway posters........

What's that yoke on the end of the train at Bray Head, I wonder? (Nice pics!)

Checked out the SE Finecast website - it's like something from 1988 with just lists - moving on! I think York Modelmakers have my vote on this one......

Outstanding. Just interested - where did you get the palvans? I need some!

Good stuff, gentlemen, thanks! Just found York Modelmaking online.....

Folks I need some odds and ends to make up kits and make buildings. Where's the best place to get small clamps and vices (no, not those ones), model gutterings and downpipes, and realistic looking windows and doors? Got a few bits in Mark's Models yesterday but more stuff needed.

I remember that weird padded interior indeed - good to see steam in actual RAILWAY work in the 1990s. (And later!)

No, I'd need a "WT" class 2.6.4T "Jeep" to haul spoil wagons! I've nothing later than 1968............I would, though, get a RTR 80 class set if it's ever available, but I mightn't admit publicly to running it!

“I don’t know why he does that. Every single time he travels, he has to look in every window first….” ”It’s as well for him there’s only the one coach…”

Happenings in Dugort…… On one day’s train spotting in 1966, C201 has brought in the goods, but expired with a broken fuel pipe in the siding, where C230 will rescue her later. Meanwhile B125 retrieves the passenger set from the back loop road for the 11:40 to “town”.

The livery is too narrow gauge............ (I'll get me coat.....)

“I wish there was Guinness in these - we could roll one away!” ”Charlie, that joke just gets funnier every damn time you tell it…..”

Some of the Swiss stuff is indeed truly amazing, and so far free from the sort of run-down privatisation which ravaged the Austrian narrow gauge in the 90s - I was lucky to see THAT 20 years earlier in steam days..... I had a holiday job on the FR in the mid-70s, amazing then and even more so now with the WHR appended, and through trains to Blaenau - when I was there the public trains only went to DDT. Sadly, my offspring resides in South Wales, not north - so the nearest thing is the Gwili Railway, and even that is the best part of an hour away........! Will probably pay it a visit in the autumn.

You’re right, Old Blarney - it was Donnybrook! Well remembered….!

Munster Simms had petrol stations, which I remember as a small child. There was one somewhere in Dublin but I have no clue where at this stage, and there was another somewhere between Dublin and Dundalk….. probably more.

They actually look OK in blue!

I went on a Railway Touring Company supposedly all-steam trip to Myanmar a few years ago. Over a week, due to the state of the track the train never topped 25mph, and was often slower for hours on end; and it was pushed by a diesel the entire time, only in very light steam with 50lbs on the clock. An absolutely catastrophic waste of time and money - the loco used wasn't even in proper working order. It was like as if they took it out of a scrap line and lit a few old newspapers in the chimney to make smoke, and pushed it along. The schedule was nonsensically over-ambitious too - one evening we arrived at our destination at 11:30 pm, to a cold dinner of bananas and some sort of sludge - Myanmar food is by a long way the worst in Asia - despite being promised we'd be there by 6pm..... we had not eaten since 11 that morning..... often we abandoned it at some point and got a bus onwards. Myself and others complained bitterly; never, ever again. A diesel pushing a supposed steam train is just a cop-out. I'd rather trundle at 15mph along a branch line with two bogies behind a steam engine that was actually working, than travel in any train anywhere with a steam loco up front and a diesel pushing!

That'll be the one number C018N..........

Superb!!!!!! (But can you not do it with a proper MGWR or GNR crest?)