jhb171achill

Very good cause indeed, Jimmy; the very best of luck with it. Great to see the Donegal railway heritage centre thriving.

The owner passed away? Sad - but at least he saw it finished. Any idea what will become of this work of engineering excellence?

That is seriously good!

Superb!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Certainly would!

Yes, she got the dark colour after that - but it would have soon been replaced by black.

I was in Sligo on a runabout ticket once. I had travelled back in the cab of 135, I think, piloting another 121, a few weeks earlier, so I thought I'd do the same again. It was a beautiful warm sunny summer evening, probably 1975 or 1976, and I went walkabout in Sligo. Too young for bars, and only £5 in my pocket, so walking about was the order of the day - and back to the station. JUST in time to watch the tail light of a Dutch van disappear off the end of the platform. No money for food or an overnight, and my aunt ready to collect me at Amiens St. in pre-mobile days..... so I rang her from the station landline and told her I'd make my own way. The mail was due to leave, I think about 7 or 7.30pm. One side-corridor brake standard - and old 1951 Bredin-design CIE coach, plus mail vans. One old GSR one, one CIE one, and 2 or 3 tin vans. I've an idea there was a BR van on it too - by far the newest thing. Can't recall the haulage, but probably a 141. There was one other passenger, a lady who got off at Collooney. Then just me. It crawled and swayed along, stopping everywhere for five minutes or more, crossing here and there with at least one long wait (Longford?). It appeared into Athlone about 11pm. I was exhausted. I was told the train would be here an hour as it had to await the up Galway, so I wandered about the station, over the tracks and all without fear of dayglo jackets, PTS, uproar and prison, or steel-capped boots........ Eventually the up Galway mail hove into view and I transferred to that. The only passenger again, it seemed. The train left at midnight and would be due in Connolly about 1 am. So I settled across the seat for a sleep. It was an old laminate. Next thing a tall man in a long almost ankle-length coat walked past me; another passenger! And then he walked past again, then again in the other direction. He had a large bushy moustache, through which he incessantly mumbled incoherently. Up and down the one carriage about ten times, as we passed along the Midland main line via Moate. Then he sat down opposite me, continuing his mumbling and not acknowledging me (thankfully). I'm trying to sleep. The train guard came along, looked at me and nodded, then looked at Mumbling Moustache and said something to him which I did not catch, but did not sound complimentary; I got the impression that he knew him. I got to Amiens Street, and walked back to Ballsbridge - a fair oul hike. It probably took me until about 2.30 am. I later discovered that my travelling companion was well-known on the railway, and I've a notion someone told me that he would turn up on IRRS tours from time to time(!)....................but that was the Sligo mail story, anyway. Hard to think it's almost fifty years ago.

I had a look at this - shows several interesting things. First, on p30 / 31 you've three locos in the lighter shade, including A42 in 1966 - clearly light green! And yet it is equally clear that it shows as dark green in the pic posted above; it's obviously been repainted right at the end of the "green" era, from one shade to the other. It does occur to me that somewhere in the depths of history, I picked up somewhere that A46 was only dark green a short while too. Again, the dark paint was non-standard by then, unless Broadstone had over-ordered bus paint. You mention the following page, DiveController, with A4. That and the C beside it are the light shade - heavily muckified. Some lovely pics of Barry's - he just missed the green era, as he took his first picture in 1964, and his second and subsequent from 1968 onwards. But he has some black locos and a few black with yellow ends in his collection. I'm not sure he even has green carriages, though there were still a few about at the very least in 1967....but that's another story!

Excellent and informative pics, DiveController. Yes, you are right - IRM did absolutely painstaking research into every detail of anything they've done - liveries being but one detail. I can't recall whether it was in the old IRNs or in IRRS Journals - both well-researched by contemporary eye-witnesses themselves - that i read comparatively recently that as many as 12 "A" class had the dark green. That simply isn't true - and photographic evidence bears that out. Ihad long been under the impression - again, gleaned from reliable contemporary sources - that apart from A46, only one other (presumably A42 above - and with no waistline whereas A46 did have one - had the dark green, and not even all sources agree on that. Some sources have suggested only A46 appeared like that. One "C" did too - the preserved C231. I am unaware of any other "C"s which got the dark green. It must be remembered that for several years before they started repainting any diesel locos (or coaches) from silver to green, the railway had standardised for several years on the lighter shade. The dark shade was by then confined to buses and the cabs of lorries. Thus, painting anything the dark shade was something of a "retro" thing, a bit like NIR still putting NIR logos on their three 071s, some 25 years after "NIR" ceased to be the public logo of the railway there. All of the locos seen in your pictures, and all of the coaches, are of course in the lighter shade. As to the footbridge, around 1960 they started painting some stations in non-standard schemes. Grange received a scheme of pastel colours, as did Amiens St. about 1963-ish. Several stations received a MGWR-esque red scheme, particularly in Wisht Caark and several locations on the Waterford - Limerick line. But I am unaware of any which used the lighter railway green - the majority of stations remained green and cream or green and light grey, and the darker shade was used. So, to that footbridge - hard to tell; I suspect it's badly weathered and faded darker green. Pristine green on station woodwork at that stage on a model is barely prototypical at all - like a clean "silver" tin van - so would need to filthyfied. (Is that a word?) Postscript; at least one IRRS Journal or IRN reference suggests that 100 standard "H" vans were painted green and fitted, for use tagged onto the back of AEC railcars or the like. Some four were done like that, for sure, specially for Tralee - Cork mail traffic. but a full hundred most certainly were not. Either the source material was wrong initially - even the most well-researched or reliable sources CAN make mistakes - or else it might have been planned to do this, but it never actually happened. This is not to put anyone off these two journals as sources of information, notwithstanding the above the IRRS one is highly recommended, as is reference to the other, which is out of print almost half a century. It would actually be easy enough to apply a waistband to the light green A....... Same as the "C"'s; some had waistbands, others not.

Another visit to this layout today, and I caught the 14:25 goods going past. IMG_0930.MOV And standing by.....

Another visit to this layout today, and I caught the 14:25 goods going past. IMG_0930.MOV IMG_0931.MOV

Beautiful! Is that inspection saloon a kit, scratchbuilt or off-the-shelf model? Can we see it close up?

Quite possibly more common on the first of them to be repainted from silver to green - which I think was about 1958/9.

I doubt you'd get that yoke on a car trailer, unless it had a 141 class engine in the car, right enough..... Could it be 10 1/4" gauge?

Thanks, TimO!

Hi TimO Thank you for your comment - it's published by Colourpoint / Blackstaff Press, Newtownards, Co Down. Rails Through Tipperary: Limerick to Waterford | Blackstaff Press I don't actually know what the ISBN is yet, as I haven't received my own copies yet! It was only released on Thursday!

True, though paintings can't always be taken as the best guide... Patterson's paintings in his CDR and C & L books are both incorrect - black boiler and dome on a Donegal loco in the former and brown carriages in the latter... Either way, of course, that big 4.8.0 would look amazing if it was tartan and lime green with yellow spots, and burning blue lumps of coal with pink smoke....!

My impression was that the darker green was on the tender engines from the start (or possibly black?) - but from your info, Andy, that makes the lighter shade possible indeed. It's possible they got dirty - the earliest pics I've seen of them certainly isn't a light colour, but maybe it's under the gunk!

Two bogie wagons there - am I right? I think I read that somewhere.... perfect for a "mini-layout"!

Yes, indeed, it was extremely dark. It is quite likely that it was something similar to what the Harbour Commissioners had in Derry, and may today be seen (original paint) on the LPHC shunter No. 1 in Cultra. Even Fry's model has it wrong.... though livery errors on Fry's models are very few indeed and might - where they exist - be due to unavailability of the right shade when he was making a model......

I could well believe it. It's a monster! That is some serious feat of miniature* engineering genius (* well, not so "miniature"!). Is it privately owned or will it operate on some public line like Fairbourne?

An engineering beauty; albeit completely the wrong livery..... nothing remotely close to the colour it had in real life. (I just had to add that, didn't I!)

I don’t think they do car ferries, yet…….

Second coach there looks like 728 which is now operational at Downpatrick.

Superb!!