jhb171achill

Four in one sentance! Good going!

I see they've taken to stabling Kingscourt / Taras locos there overnight..... I'm just imagining it. You're thrown out of the local Tamango's night club at 1 a.m. for throwing beer mats at the disco ball to try to impress that young wan over there from Duleek. You have to walk home, becasue your mate with the Austin 1100 with the bald tyres is still in there, and he disappeared with her friend. Chips at the caravan at the end of the road, and the sea air and chill, the seagulls in the distance, waves crashing on the shore, tonight's plans in tatters. But listen also - there's the ongoing throb of two A's up in the station, a dull background noise to the night air. Better luck next week; well, you've saved £3 or more by not having to buy more pints and a glass of Black Tower for the lady.... at over 45p a time, it's getting expensive these days.... Tell you what, let's take a quick run up to the station and see if anyone's about.... I did think I saw A3R on the Kingscourt gypsum yesterday morning...

I'm wondering about this too. I had at one time an idea that this might have happened, but I cannot find any evidence of it, or any info to confirm or deny it.

Indeed! C&L bogies and other bits incorporated into the bogie coach!

They were extremely short-lived. Once the green disappeared generally (i.e. the "black'n'tan" era commenced in late 1962), they were repainted grey. Estimates of how many were turned out in green vary from half a dozen upwards. One source suggests that some fifty were TO BE turned out in that colour - had the green livery persisted, it's possible this might have happened with the fitted ones. But most certainly nothing even close to that number were ever green, or they'd have been seen all over the place, and probably well into the late 60s. One contemporary source suggested that the initial plan was to paint just 3 or 4 in green specifically for the Cork - Tralee mails, though I have been unable to confirm this precisely. I believe that at the very least six were green, maybe more - but not for long.

100% - that's precisely what I (and others) experienced in over half a century of involvement in preservation finance and fundraising. the difference between the openness of mind and generosity of wallet of (again, specifically) the English - could not be more of a contrast to the attutude of the vast, vast majority here.

That's one busy fair special! Second carriage reserved for cattle dealers, no doubt....

They have every right, I suppose, to be proud of inventing them, but there's a bigger cultural issue, very very evident when dealing with railway enthusiasts (in my case over the last fifty years) on RPSI May Tours, IRRS groups, etc etc. Quite simply, there is a massively greater interest in, as a result of acceptance of, general industrial history (including railways) in Britain and specifically England, than here. It is not seen as "nerdish" to be interested in railways over there to anything like the extent it is here. So, they will invent railways, they will invent model railways, etc etc. The fact that this is so, unfortunately, feeds into the crassly ignorant narrative amongst many in Ireland, that railways per se are somehow "British" or "colonial", and are thus not worthy of any attention beyond closing them. As those here will know, as anyone with even the slightest inkling of railway historical knowledge here will know, this is utter nonsense, and very contemptibly so too. But it's there. The other matter is of course that until the 1960s, the whole of Ireland (bar Belfast city) was largely a rural economy, with something like 80% of people living on, working, on, or otherwise involved in a predominately rural lifestyle. Thus, even if the warped and ignorant narrative of "the brits built all the railways" was not there, the fact is that we were not an industrial, machinery-appreciating nation, so interest in such things was way down the scale. I travelled on my first RPSI tour in 1970, and my first May Tour in 1978. I worked on all of them bar three from the very early 1980s until 2019, and was set to do the same in 2020 but for Covid. In almost all of those years, a typical tour train had 8-9 coaches (I think 10 at least once), of which one was the diner, another the guard's van, another the bar car. That left 5-7 vehicles full of people. And full they generally were - virtually every single seat occupied. I looked after the seating plan for many years, so I'm well aware who was on it. So I can state with confidence that virtually never would the entire clientele from all corners of this island have filled one coach. Let that sink in. Every year. Add a handful of others; Phil the Welshmen, two Glasgow regulars, an American gentleman who came 22 years in a row, and virtually ALL the rest were ENGLISH. That is some showing. Bear in mind that while Irish people the length of this island whinged and complained that it was too expensive, our English friends were more than happy to cough up, DESPITE add to their costs a flight or ferry here, several nights in hotels in Dublin, Belfast and wherever the tour was on the Saturday night. Raffle? Sure! I'll take twenty tickets, says the Englishman. Irish enthusiasts would mumble "oh, I'm a bit short of change"... This sounds stereotyped, but it's 100% true. In reality, our English friends kept the RPSI going at a time when there were no cash-cow Santas. The May Tour was the piggy bank for decades. As treasurer, I knew to plan the entire year's finances around what profit the May Tour made. It is quyite simply no exaggeration to say that the RPSI would NOT have financially survived but for the May Tour profits of the 1980s and 1990s. We therefore owe the existence of main line steam in Ireland in this century to the specifically English supporters of this tour over a 20 or 25 year period. Again, let THAT sink in. Sounds like a big generalisation - but it's not. It was stark. Then we also had the benefit of groups like "The Syndicate", Irish ex-pats over in Blightly attending events there to raise funds for preservation here. All went into the big financial pot, which - had it run empty - would have seen Whitehead become a scrapyard. I recall one English gentleman who himself travelled on the May tour for years, approaching me in the bar car when I was working there. "Pint of Guinness", says he. I obliged, pulled him his pint, and said "£1.40", which was the price then (yeah, I know...). He gave me a tenner. "Stick the change in the pot!" he said, so it went to what was then a No. 4 fundraising drive. £10 was significant then - I do know that I had just moved into a new 4 bed detached home and it cost about £40k. A brand new family car would have been about £3500 at that time. I could regale the assembled company here for hours with similar stories, but the bottom line is this. We do, and should, take our lead from what happens in Brexitstan, as they did invent much of this, and did, do and will lead the way. We have our own stuff now, thanks to Saints Murphy & IRM, etc., but the association of the latter with Accurascale makes perfect sense given the above - and, indeed, illustrates it. So on the day that English tourists in Benidorm are perhaps a little quieter than usual, with Spain having won 4.12 to 3.09, I say that it's just as well that railway enthusiasm and railway modelling is somewhat less of a "niche nerdism" on the Neighbouring Island than it is here. And long may this continue, and long may we, here, try to educate our own indigenous public and get them to be a interested in a little more of our own RICH industrial heritage.

There's not much information to be given out, as there are now only three freight flows in Ireland, and two of them are just containers; Dublin - Ballina and Waterford - Ballina. Plus Ballina - Waterford timber. Even when the Taras were running, thery frequently ran out of path (i saw them daily passing my window), so even armed with official times, you'd have been left standing half the time!

I suspect lack of commercial viability would be the case here, but RTR Isle of Man tanks, Tralee 2.6.0Ts, or Donegal 5As, plus Walker railcars (West Clare / CDR / IOM) would certainly give a boost to 00n3 modelling, I am sure.

At some stage, you'd expect a "Jeep" to be a good candidate for a RTR loco.... not a favourite type of mine by any means, but I'd feel compelled to get a couple! I hope this is an AI image! Crisps and chocolate seems to me to be a bit like broccoli with raspberry jam, or coffee cake with jalapenos..... or bread with fish and germolene.......

Yes, that’s correct - they often looked pure black. Same as steam engine domes, no matter what colour the thing was actually painted!

Excellent weathering, reflecting that that these coaches were (until their very last days) kept pretty clean.

“I tell ye this. If yer man expects me to load all this on my own, what with me back, I’ll be off on the sick for a fortnight…” ”Where’s Jackie?” ”Off on the sick. See what I mean?” (And just like that, the 11:40 was loaded and ready to depart…. a van full of parcels and eleven passengers on board (there were 25 in the bus)….another day at the harbour!)

Every two weeks, CIE deliver a tanker of diesel to the storage tank at Dugort Harbour. This is one of the reasons the extension from Castletown is still there at all by 1967 - the fuel is for the two local single-deckers and the school bus which are stabled there at night. The loco is off the Tralee-Castletown goods, and it takes the wagon out of the incoming goods, brings it down to the harbour, and takes the empty one back up.

The joys of Crossleys… “Can ye get down there and have a look?” ”Yeah, but there’s no point. It’ll have to be towed. Tim can take it back to the junction on the back of the goods, but we’ll need to get it to Castletown first, that’s the problem”…..

Yes, only one!

Janey mac, can they not get the livery even half right!

He's inside it finishing his sandwich and tea! Very useful van indeed. Several just about made it into the 1960s, so can certainly be seen with A, C, G, & B101 classes plus anything steam.

On and from 19th July, the museum will be offering guided tours, as well as normal self-guided admission, for €12 per head (normal entry €9) for groups of ten or more. These tours will take place, subject to demand, each Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 11:00.

This is a fantastic job coming along very well. Looking forward to seeing the final result….

So everything else is DDs?

Looking great!

It comes with a taxidermists's certificate.