jhb171achill

Wow! That is QUITE a project! Yes, the Claytons and the railcar set would indeed look good. You've obviously done your research well!

I had a very bad case of ovoids one year, but I got cream for it, and it seems OK now. Quite embarrassing in public.

AAArrrrrgghhh I was about to go to bed. Now I can't. I'll have nightmares and an attack of the Screaming Fits, Multiple Conniptions, and Heeby-Jeebes. Where's me smelling salts? That actually COULD become an issue in the long term. Dromod gets away with wood-firing, and Stradbally with some sort of biomass stuff. Possibly, on account of their small size and small loads and largely level and short line, DCDR might get away with firing one of the CSET locos, or 90, with some sort of non-coal material. But the main line is a very different kettle'o'fish indeed.

Bring back steam engines! A J15 and a couple of cattle vans would be an improvement on a suburban 29.....

I had considered a visit north this week; I'll be postponing it.....

Bit like grey steam engines - they looked black so much, and so often, that many thought they were painted black. Same with domes, cab fronts, boilers and so on, with the sky-blue GNR and red Donegal liveries. Yes, some diesels had black roofs, some green. The black line round the red buffer beam was actually a throwback to steam days, when at least some grey locos had a black line rouind their buffer beams in the same way. Naturally, it soon became invisible!

I see even the fuel tank is green, but the roof isn't! Cultra need to get LOTS of tins of paint to correct the livery on virtually everything they repainted themselves!

I’m having nightmares about this contraption, and I haven’t even gone asleep yet. It’s the equivalent of a dinner of blacmange, cabbage, marmite, fish, marmalade, calamari, strong coffee, gorgonzola cheese, germolene and chillies, all mixed up, only worse. In its defence, it’s live steam. Otherwise it would be at best immoral…..

Jayyyysus…..

Bridge styles vary enormously on the GNR, with Dublin & Drogheda ones, solid INWR types, and even some surviving Ulster Railway sandstone. The two at Lambeg are, I think, the oldest surviving railway bridges in Ireland in original condition. GNR(I) bridge plates were oval.

Absolutely! I need to concoct a rationale for an IRM ICR appearing on a layout bnased in 1955-65......! Maybe if i put a "Tardis"-style "police box" in a corner in the goods yard.... The magnets are a very good idea.

Right-hand running, per se, was never used on any Irish line and as far as I know not British either. However, many lines both in the past and today, especially passing loops, were / are signalled for bi-directional working, so there's your "link"! My own layout, Dugort Harbour, is imagined to be in an impossibly remote west Kerry area, because some genius came uop with the idea of making it into a major transatlantic port in 1888 or something. A cursory look at any map shows that had anything remotely resembling it ever been built, engineering works through impassable mountains west of Macroom would have been necessary, doubtless resembling the huge viaducts you have!

Very impressive - was it originally American outline? (Would explain "wrong-lione" operation on double track section?) Love the scenery, and a good collection of models....

Requests have officially been made already, and paperwork submitted.

Note the lorry on the right still in green but with a "CIE" sticker over the "snail", a la container style. Hadn't seen that before.

560 kept its plates to the end. Very very few engines did in CIE days. You're right about detail differences. Within ANY class, by the 1950s barely any two engines on the whole system were EXACTLY the same! And if they were, maybe one was green and one was grey!

To be fair, enough of these things are preserved now. Putting diesel on plinths doersn't tend to have a good ending in Ireland - indeed, putting anything railwayish on a plinth....

Good to meet Mol__PMB, Signalpost and others from the forum on the Tailte Tours West Cork jaunt on Saturday. As always, the after-party was great too; some of us (you know who you are) even drank Beamish and Murphys. Not like those oul jhb Jackeens with their Guinness....... The good news is, Tailte Tours are already weighing up at least half a dozen different possibilities for day tours, or even 2-day ones.

If you'd shaved its back, you'd have seen its flying snail tattoo.... Great to see you on the tour, Mol, and those sublimely excellent vans in a natural setting. You've beaten me to it; I was about to post my own very similar pictuire here!

……. and your locos for free….

Yes, they were general goods trains. Some services were mixed, and railcar passenger services often had a couple of goods vans on the back which were picked up / dropped off at various stations en route.

A repaint would make it close enough to a CIE "D" class. Add some of CK print's "0" scale CIE wagons, and you've got a perfect small "0" gauge shunting layout!

On April 1st, IRM / Heljascale will be taking over Irish Rail, NIR, Greenland, Iran, the USA & Ukraine also, I have heard from a very reliable source.

Lazy journalism; a style which has become more common in the last 20 years, “sure, it’ll do” mentality. COMPLETELY unacceptable.

These were fully brake passenger coaches, rather than a goods brake with a few seats. Normally, a brake passenger vehicle had seats at one end, van at the other. But sometimes the van was in the middle, and the CDR standardised on this. The Bandon had a broad gauge one, and from memory the GSWR had a couple too, though I’d have to check.