jhb171achill

No, that would be cruelty to rabbits……! Seriously, excellent info as always, thanks!

Coming from a railway family, with three generations and both my parents behind me as railway employees, as a child I was straightaway interested in .... cars. And buses. I did have a basic O gauge circle of track as a small child but - cars. At age 10, we had to do a school project on any subject we liked. I chose television, as I was always fascinated by what went on behind the scenes, though we did have a TV until I was 13. (And with all the inane drivel on it, I'm glad; I still almost never watch TV...). I couldn't find any suitable material in the school library, so home I went - and got a brainwave. I will tell Senior I have to do a homework about the railways. And that's where it started. I got hooked. Next came another oval of track, this time 00 scale; a 2nd hand class 31 diesel with a loose roof, and 0.4.0 steam engine, a British Mk 1 carriage and three wagons........ And the cars? From the same point in time, my interest in those and the buses evaporated in its 100% entirety. I have not even the remotest beginnings of any interest in them since then!

Market Day, and there’s quite often a second coach on the branch train….. Brake vans tonight at Dugort Harbour. Why two? There’s a beet special as well as the goods on Monday.

“What ya mean your foot’s stuck? I told you not to play up there!!” The long goodbye. “Have ye got everything now?” ”Yeah, I’m grand. I’ll write to you from Boston”….. ”G’wan, you’ll miss the train…” . “…..because if we put them in the van HERE, there’s less shunting and the match starts in an hour on the wireless….”

Suppose you want to make a surface in 00 scale which is meant to look like an area originally gravelled, but most of it tramped down by now - smooth-ish but not exactly level, like a concrete or tarmac surface. I presume this stuff is perfect for it - but what colour, how to "weather" it, and would it be a good idea to sprinkle some sort of very light grit on it to make it look "gravelly"? Perhaps light sand?

Track looks amazing too. Perhaps colour the shiny wheels? Overall, excellent job.

Definitely odd looking indeed! Mind you, if one were to be pedantic, many other aspects of that livery are also incorrect, from the orange floor of the gangways, to the shade of orange, to the font of the numerals and lack of black shading!

The RPSI website?

Those of us who have experienced a particularly large number of birthdays will recall early days at Whitehead, when volunteers happily swarmed over several loco boilers and just ripped the stuff off with their bare hands, and threw it in the skip! I remember Senior doing the same with an old home heating boiler he was removing........ Mad, when you think of it these days! If the area has been drained as shown in that picture, what of the buried asbestos-clad vehicles? Once re-exposed, did they send in contractors to take off the asbestos? Or have they filled it in with landfill? And if so, will buried asbestos affect groundwater there in the future?

Ah, got ye. I was looking at a vid on youtube last night which showed E430 arriving for WISRA at Attymon. Incidentally, a local person in that area last year told me that the locomotive now at Dunsandle (An "E", for those who don't know - E428) was the "steam engine which ran to Loughrea", while another mention of it elsewhere maintains that it was "the first diesel locomotive in Ireland"! I get the idea of a different image; given that they "morphed" into a rail excursion operation, that's perfectly logical. Interesting you mention the RPSI carriage liveries. About 15 years ago or more, the then carriage officer had a dream of having all the RPSI stock in a sort of pseudo-"Orient Express" livery, with dark blue and gold lining. Thus was born the controversial all blue livery which eventually was on three Cravens. It seemed to divide opinion as badly as tRump's America; it was either loved or hated. Personally, I was no fan of it, but I said nothing, as said carriage officer would accompany me on Friday evenings to perform the Ancient Ritual of the Imbibulation of Falling-Down Lotion, followed by nocturnal prattlings of utter nonsense in Eddie Rockets over an Atomic Burger........ He obtained RPSI Council approval for his livery at the time, as he was utterly obsessed with rules and regulations and "doing things right"*..... then took umbrage when other volunteers had it changed later to the blue and cream, but that's for another day! It was he who put about the story that IE wouldn't allow their own livery on preserved stock; this idea was aided and abetted by one senior figure at the time in Inchicore - I believed it myself - but it had absolutely no basis in fact whatever! The idea was, in my colleague's mind, to add weight to his idea for the all-blue livery! I actually only found out that our CO friend had made that all up just a few years ago when he told me...... Meanwhile at Whitehead, the green scheme was devised. Since none of the carriages ever ran in any UTA or earlier liveries, and some never even ran anywhere in Ireland at all, it was deemed that this be "UTA-esque". The former CO there, plus myself, devised this to look vaguely UTA-ish, but not actually be UTA livery, hence the entirely RPSI-invented style of lettering and lining, but a green pretty much of UTA type. Meanwhile, the current blue and cream livery on the Cravens is also an entirely new one - it's been suggested it's like the GNR, which is not so. The GNR blue was way darker, and there was no blue above window level. End liveries are different too, as again is lettering. Thought that might interest some here! (* And very well ahead of his time on that one, actually, and rightly so; the whole regulatory scene we have today is as he insisted upon back then).

E429? Did they have that too? I thought it was 428 & 430 they had at Attymon? Did they get another, or maybe swop 430 for 429? Yes, now that I think of it - someone with BR sympathies……I can guess who that was….. and I have to say that I thought the laminates looked very well in maroon & cream (though the E and the G looked ridiculous in maroon….)

Wonder what part of Britain that was…….

That's €566.13 (Or £473.09 for our sterling brethern)......... PLUS postage PLUS whatever charges brexit creates......... I've 100 "A" class for sale at €4000 each - any takers? I'll even pay the postage......

Great to see it in progress. Outstanding job.

Totally agree about the "Yorkshire attitude" being no excuse. Ignorance is ignorance, rudeness is rudeness, no matter where anyone's from.

George, I know the mail order folks at Whitehead. Not sure if they read this, so I will pass on your message.

Yes, it was. I've a note of the number somewhere. That pic was taken near Poyntzpass. I think the UTA Jeep came on at Dundalk.

A string of open wagons to distance 800 from the loco hauling it while going over bridges, most particularly the Boyne Viaduct. It was being steam hauled itself at this stage, as you can see.

A pretty rare pic - probably unique now. Colour pic from "Maedb"'s footplate. Senior travelled with her Dublin - Lisburn in 1964. I thought that I had LOST this slide, as I lent it out once and when I had been given it back, I somehow misplaced it. Thankfully, the party to whom I lent it has a copy! (Thanks, Ciarán...) (H C A Beaumont)

How long ago are those rails removed / covered up? I thought I remembered seeing them as rails back in the day.......

That is an absolutely beautiful location.

By FAR my pet hate is people (be they suppliers or anyone else) who simply ignore texts or emails and don't answer them. Sadly, I've come across a few in the model railway world, though the above is not someone I've dealt with.

Love those scenes - pure "little England"! An excellent backdrop, I'm thinking, for a SR "Radial" 4.4.2T loco and a couple of old SECR bogie coaches.........

On the NCC / UTA, GNR and CIE all alike, it was common practice in the 1950s and early 60s for railcar sets to tow “hauled” stock - including six wheelers, other random wooden and/or non-corridor vehicles and even goods vans and cattle trucks! I saw a pic somewhere of a Tralee - Cork train in the 50s consisting of a 3-car AEC set with two cattle trucks behind it….

And in all reality, while this "livery" only lasted three years or so, many of them were still running about like that (albeit in a filthy state) until the early 60s.... so for a 1955-65 layout, they're a perfect buy alongside the lighter green one. Surprises me, actually, that A46 - attractive as it is - sells better than the lighter green one, as the dark green was only applied to one or two of the class plus one C class, and was much shorted lived.