jhb171achill

The yellow doors with red diamond pre-dated what you call the "teal" line - and that came about in the late 1990s after NIR became the railway arm of "Translink" in 1996. Prior to that, of course, the NIR livery was the same except that instead of the turquoise / "teal" line, there was the well-regarded black-white-black-yellow lining there instead - but also, with the "teal" line livery, the blue went right up to the roof line, no grey line above it. When the 80s were introduced, the end doors were the same maroon and blue livery, and then at one stage they were all-maroon with a light grey diamond - this "door livery" appeared with the light grey with maroon waistline livery. The yellow things with red diamond appeared as these were beginning to be repainted blue. Personally I thought the older colours looked better - for all the advantages that yellow has in visibility terms, it matches almost nothing!

B165 is busy with wagons as B147 sits at the platform with the local train, a spare branch passenger set laying over in the cattle siding….

..........And that's just how the layman could tell them from original 80-class stock.

I think in later days quite a few ex-1970 Enterprise coaches ended up within the 80 class fleet.

A highly respected late RPSI volunteer and I were having a conversation about dialects in Quinn’s in Drumcondra years ago, after an RPSI meeting in Connolly station. He was a native of Larne originally, born and bred, and he referred to somebody who was being unnecessarily awkward or cranky as “thran”…… he would use that term himself. He had a huge vocabulary of what he said the “Ballymena and Larne men from out the narrow gauge” might have been familiar with. Wish I could remember them all, though few were printable!

80 class released along with a “C” in the accessories pack?

Lovely little scene.

Yet again, Eoin, you've absolutely excelled yourself! Absolute masterclass, superb stuff!

“What are the guards doing, meeting the train?” ”New crate of paper clips delivered, probably…” ”Maybe they’ll arrest yer man and send him to Dublin on the 11:40…..”

Quiet moments at Dugort….

Didn't know that - I will inform my learned source as well! Thanks for the info. Ditto! Thanks, folks!

“What’s wrong with you all of a sudden?” ”Yer man has me back on nights on the goods.” ”Sure ye were complaining ye hadn’t enough money last week…” ”Yeah, but it means 4 a.m. at Limerick Junction. Have you ever been at Limerick Junction at 4 a.m.?”

Ken, you've done a truly amazing job on what is clearly - as you show so well - a truly awful initial product - certainly not worth the €100 that Shapeways want for it. I had considered getting some of their MGWR six-wheel coach bodies at one time, but was firmly warned off by someone else who had bought some other carriage body from them. In this day and age very bad value indeed, and your experience tends to amplify what others have said. That said, your have done a (typically!) amazing job in making a silk purse out of a sow's behind quarters! May I ask, is your model "0" gauge? If it is, it shows that to expect a decent result in any smaller scale would be folly indeed, even for those of exceptional skill!

I checked with my sources for any further details of NIR Mk 2s and their travels beyond Dublin. Seems there weren't any, beyond extremely rare forays to Dún Laoghaire, so that's that; when NIR wanted to send a train deep into IE / CIE territory, it seems that they always used 80 class sets. So no rare visits of Mk 2s to Tuam, Mullingar, Limerick Junction, Kerry or Waterford!

“I had a first class return from Dublin - which is the first class part?” ”No first class on this line the past ten years - only from the junction….”

As often before, my own contacts from within those areas of governance and railway management whose thoughts would be the final arbiter on anything that happens in the future, suggest that nothing in the following has changed: 1. The Green Party taking a leading role ion anything but Dublin bus lanes and cycleways; no interest in railways. 2. At best apathy, at worst hostility; but in both cases and rather worryingly, a total lack of knowledge about railways, amongst NTA persons. 3. No more chance of Fine Gael ever promoting rail transport than there is of Arlene Foster joining Sinn Fein, Donald Trump uttering an articulate sentence of truth, or Boris Johnston becoming a communist. Little better chance with Fianna Fail. The above is especially the case when it comes to rail freight. So, like before, more taxpayers' money to consultants to produce a weighty volume made of half of a rain forest, which will languish on my own shelf along with all the others, to be sold on ebay in 2035 for €1.16 plus €45 postage.

In terms of where these coaches went to, I am still delving, but a learned and long-standing friend contacted me today having seen these posts, and advises me of certain interesting movements they had. On 10th February 1994, the RPSI's No. 4 hauled one of the Mk 2 vans from York Road, via Antrim and Lisburn, to Belfast Central Services Depot, at the former BCDR Queen's Quay station. he also suggests that a set of Mk 2s also reached Larne Harbour on an MRSI excursion in 1997. So there's a bit more information; at least one of them was hauled, on at least one occasion, by a proper steam engine instead of an infernal combustion machine.....!

Yes, I think it’s the printers not being the best, from a number of comments I’ve seen on a number of sites.

That’s when NIR’s track was beginning to resemble what my father encountered on the Lough Swilly in the upper shot!

2b or not 2b, that’s the question.

I'm only noticing this thread now, and the original queries on it. As suggested in the many answers, the yellow panel came with the darker blue, with the red / orange before that on the light blue. This was never actual RED, as such. What it was in reality, was a "day-glo orange", which like its equivalent on the fronts of many (but not all) IE locos, often looks red in photos when clean and new, but which faded to a more orangey colour in a relatively short space of time. Thus, there was not a distinct "red" and "orange" - as in separate colours at different times; it was the reddish-hued dayglo orange fading, and doing so a great deal quicker than its adjacent blue paintwork did. Yellow was probably used to replace it as it was at least as visible, but a great deal more practical and longer lasting. It had already served the Hunslets well enough in maroon days, and the UTA railcar fronts before that.

Apparently they’re a bit rough. Very crude prints with poor detail, much of which ends up inevitably being rubbed off when cleaning up.

And another

Back poking about in the old photos. Dunno if I posted this before, but here we go, for our Donegal modellers: