jhb171achill

NOW ye're talking!

I never saw them myself, but it has to be also said that my sightings of them in use were very few!

Correct, sadly.

Most who saw B101s in use will remember them in black, as this was the livery most carried, most of the time in the 1960s.

In all reality there’s only one solution - give the thing to a bona fide heritage railway.

No. It had the trademark triangular worksplate on it, and the clear family resemblance, like a somewhat narrower Donegal engine. When i find details I will post; I sold the Indian locomotive book which would have given me the answer years ago! I can't recall, but my guess is that it was built about 1900-10? The one in the pic above LOOKS very like it, but I don't think IS it.

This unique version of the black’n’tan livery was applied for a very short time to just a few B101s, never anything else. Full height tan, but no CIE logo, and only a white flash on the ends, as if it was all black. General rule: if no tan, white on ends only. If any tan (low or high band), white line continued round the side.

Yes!!

No, that's where Ed lived. the loco was to go in a public park which contained a heritage railway, with which he was heavily involved. He made the decision to buy it while travelling through the Barnesmore Gap in the sole surviving six-wheeler, No. 1 - now in Cultra - when he was here with several friends. They had come here to get the last of the narrow gauge, covering the C & L one day and Strabane - Killybegs and back a few days later. I can't remember if he told me that he did the West Clare - unlikely as it was all diesel. He and his friends had come here specifically to get as much steam as they could. He was disappointed at the politically-motivated decimation of the GNR, as he had seen it all in action some years earlier on a previous visit. Someone asked me once if Edgar knew the famous Dr. Cox, who assembled the Donegal stuff at Strabane for people to, eh, travel to, in order to retrieve anything of scrap value; as far as I recall, he didn't. Interesting side anecdote: travelling with us was James I C Boyd, author of much superb material on Irish, Manx and Welsh narrow gauge. It was a highly interesting trip.....

Yes - but WHERE! I will try to find it. It's in a box somewhere here in an old album.......... It was on the Dhaulpur system which I travelled on. There were Baldwins and all sorts of 2ft gauge beauties - but we're talking Lough Swilly proportions, not Bala Lake! Huge beasts. Had a footplate run on a 4.8.2 tender loco..... The Gwalior system was a treat as well, but that's another story. All was 100% steam, among less than a dozen lines I ever did where not even a trial run of anything non-steam had ever taken place!

Edgar Mead was an absolute gentleman. I travelled round india with him in 1979 and we found a Nasmyth Wilson 2.6.4T in service - a 2ft gauge version of a Donegal Class 5 tank engine - blue instead of red...... Very knowledgeble man. I kept in touch with him for years..... he often invited me to The U S and A to see that loco, but I never got around to it.............

The only ones above not likely ever to have been hauled by an "A" class would be a SLNCR vehicle of any sort or NCC "Brown Van", though a very slim possibility might exist of the latter. These vans were not much used in goods trains. A UTA "Spoil Wagon", or the "2459" van - no. In all of the remaining cases, all liveries would have hauled them, as follows: Silver, green or black, early black'n'tan, or black with yellow ends - all of the wagons bar the exceptions above, the skeletal flat and double beet, and all wagons grey at the time. Supertrain - in either grey OR brown, CIE Bulleid Open CIE Bulleid Covered H Van CIE Sundries Double Height Beet CIE Gunpowder Van CIE 20ft Skeleton Flat Guinness Beer Tanks GNR 15T Coal Wagon CIE Cattle Wagon GSWR 10T Brake Van - PLUS the palvan, if a model appears. After the "tippex" stripes appear, it's all bogies and modern stuff (shale, fert, bubbles, etc) in brown.

True, but a “what-if”.

First, a risk assessment would be carried out on the matter of holding an enquiry. Protective hats, dayglo, PTS, PPE & steel-capped boots would be needed for the people who wrote the report, with a three month line closure if the report exceeded the normal seventeen 2000-page volumes. Secondly, (do you have an hour?)........

The green started being replaced when the grey and yellow 121s appeared, and the following year the first Black and Tan appeared. For several years, through the 1960s, the norm was a mixture as the next few pics will show. This was in 1963. The first vehicle is one of quite a few wooden-bodied brakes or mail vans still in use. This one is of obvious GSWR parentage. It’s in faded green - non-passenger-carrying vehicles never got the cosmetic attention that locos and coaches did - it’s as if they were treated like wagons. Then comes the obligatory tin van. Also seen are laminates and (I think) a Bredin, in both the new and old liveries.

Very true - I had the misfortune to board a Portadown train in (the old) Gt Vic St one time, in which there was a swarm of them. Politics aside, and I won’t go into the details, they were the vilest excuses for human beings I ever saw in any train anywhere. They trashed the train. I got off at Lisburn.

Seems to have been random, Popeye. Some always seemed to have them, others seemingly never did and others again were seen in both forms - but it’s worth remembering that both the lines, and numerals (and “snails” on the “A” class were light green, rather than white)....

More tomorrow.... From P Dillon / C Fry collection

Since the next lot of pics I'm posting are not "A" class, I will post them instead on my thread "From the Catacombs".

In their exact form, only Irish railways. However, the Americans had (not sure which line) an almost-lookalike bigger 121 with six-wheel bogies, and several countries had designs based on, but not looking like, 071s. I am unaware of anything anywhere else even remotely resembling a 141 or 181. An interesting quirk was five 121 types built as (shorter) six-wheeled shunters; I believe the remains of one is still lurking at the back of a depot in Argentina. An interesting future scratch-build model, and any old six-wheel chassis would do, as protective guard rails along the lower sides hid the wheels from view!

That shorter wheelbase type of van was almost standard prior to 1910 or so, and thus many examples lasted until the “H” vans were being produced at a serious rate of knots in the early 1960s. The West Cork system had loads of very old vans until closure in 1961.

Old GSR stuff such as Bredins - and much earlier (GSWR) all-wooden stock, with old double footboards, even a few non-corridor ones, were used on Dublin and Cork local services until 1974; even longer in the north, with the very last GNR and NCC coaches (now converted to railcar intermediates), in use until 1980 / 81.

Exactly! I always think 70ft coaches look downright peculiar on 2ft or 3ft radius curves. Behind a “C”, two six-wheelers, three goods vans and a guard’s van is more than adequate, and many of the wooden bogies seen behind them, or the A or B101 class were 50ft or even 48ft.

More realistic rendition of post-1955 green. In background, a "silver" "E" on the left, and on the right a wooden GSWR bogie and what I think is the end of a Bredin.

Yes, black bogies (with green or blue bits, things, and oddball Lego bricks amongst them) were only seen from the early to mid 2010s onwards - on anything at all.... Prior to that, brown.