jhb171achill

Thank you for your comments, Mike. The flyaway cabs must have been an absolute punishment for crews - absolutely, totally and utterly useless as crew protection - especially in horizontal Connemara winter wind and rain!

A superb collection - pity he didn’t do colour, though! I spent much of January going through the entire collection (again!), making copious notes…..

“Will yez get off your backsides! I’m not unloading this van on my own…..”

“I’m tellin’ ya - THIS size it was. But the poaching man was about so I had to throw it back into the river…..” ”OK, a minute to go, c’mon. Yer man will give out if we’re late at the junction….”

Many thanks, airfixfan!

Then it's maybe 2661. Hard to make out, and I think that the number has got worn off a bit anyway.......

The non-stop one goes to infinity and beyond......

Folks - I forgot to mention that in order to comply with covid regulations regarding numbers attending, can I ask anyone planning to go if they can just fire off a RSVP to info@railtoursireland.ie. Many thanks, and see you there.

Superb articles!

Correct. Ghastly looking things, rivalled only in their ugliness by NIR 450-class things! I think the railcar is 2641?

The railcar is one of Bullied’s monstrosities. But is the location not the Ardnacrusha siding?

Hattons have “new” Murphy stuff on pre-order!

VERY nice. Thats quite like one 1890s design. Was planning to do that myself eventually. Regarding six-wheelers getting the black’n’tan livery, no passenger-carrying ones ever did. Six full vans did, though, the last two withdrawn in 1968 & 1970. All six were 1880s design GSWR vans - nothing midland survived. The last passenger-carrying 6-wheelers, a mix of GSWR & Midland types, were withdrawn and scrapped in Cork in early 1963, all green, as the BnT livery was still only on a very small handful of main line carriages, plus one GSWR full van on the Ballaghaderreen branch. BnT had only first appeared less than a year before.

It's parked in my drive, at a secret address. I set a red signal against it. Once I've unloaded a few "A"s, and some GSWR bogies and six-wheelers, I'll let it go again. No need to thank me. The crew have been unharmed.

When built, the "Turf Burner" was initially in standard CIE locomotive grey. Latterly, it was repainted in the (then) standard CIE post-1955 green, complete with waistband line. Here it is about 1962, after withdrawal, at Inchicore.

Wow! He got about more than I thought. I did know that he’d been in Scotland, though.

From Senior's travels in the land of Narrow-gauge Brexit-locomotives..... I do not know locations, but I think they're all 1964-6. Not a blue 4.4.0 to be seen, but still nice stuff!

What's that 6-wheel first? Looks very nice - just needs footboards. Regarding carriage design and comparisons with the UK, it depends what you're comparing. Some GSWR designs were very "British" looking, as was MRNCC & LMSNCC stuff. But the BCDR, GNR(I), DSER and MGWR designs were quite unlike anything in Britain. The Hattons "Genesis" stuff bears a good resemblance to a generic GSWR type, though, of mid-1880s to 1910 or so. So does the Hornby stuff, though the latter needs a second footboard. Almost all Irish coaches had double footboards due to lower platforms on many lines, as built. A feature which is common on many Midland (of England) designs, and many of the Great Western Railway on the Big Island, is of bowed-in ends. These were commonplace on both those railways, even going back to the GWR's broad gauge era. However, in Ireland, this feature was virtually unknown, only the WLWR using it. This rules out the Ratio kits without major end surgery. LNER and LNWR designs, and BR Mk. 1s, are of designs completely alien to any Irish company, bar, in the case of LNWR-style upper body panelling, the DNGR. There's a design of South Eastern & Chatham body profile which bears something of a resemblance in side profile and roof profile to post-1905 MGWR Cusack-era designs. Window spacings aren't anything like the MGWR thing, though, but one of these SECR 50-footers in CIE green would certainly pass the two foot rule (well, maybe a three-foot rule); while IRM are finalising their range of MGWR six-wheelers (pray!) I might get one of these things. For modellers of the DSER, whose roof profile was quite unique, the BCDR, whose window dimensions were quite unique, or the MGWR - with both roof profiles, beading on the body, and window shapes and structures* ALL quite unique, the Hattons / Hornby stuff is not even remotely close. (* The classic "tell-tale" MGWR design had windows with curved corners at the top and square at the bottom. There is a kit somewhere of a coach from the North Eastern Railway in Brexitland which has windows like this, and while beading isn't quite right, would look good enough on a GSR / CIE layout. The NER is the only British company which seems to have made much use of this feature). Just looking again at your model - is that made from Hornby 4-wheel "Thomas" coaches? It's a superb job - and very DSER-esque!

One of Senior’s quirks was to keep a copy of all rubber stamps he came across. This was one…..

I had one eye on modellers when picking illustrations and drawings!

The one on the passenger platform is simply a random cardboard kit-built thing from years ago - it is temporary and will be replaced by a small stone building like the one at Westport Quay - or a corrugated one, a la West Cork, or Valentia or Kenmare branch. I haven’t quite decided yet. The corrugated one on the goods platform is a part-built goods store.

165 arrives with empty stock to take the Cork fans to the final. Two Cravens appear at Dugort Harbour for the first time, joining a laminate, two Park Royals, and a heating van. . Meanwhile, 141 awaits departure with the 11:40 goods…. Very foggy place, Dugort Harbour. That’s why there are few people getting on and off the trains….

An earlier era, I suppose! I wanted to show just how squeaky clean and modern these locos were when new, with a design so totally unlike anything ever seen in Ireland, as well as a bright livery which, even if it would get dirty quickly (and it did!) it would have made such a massive impact, especially when it made its first forays into places still with a lot of steam, like Cork and Waterford. I need to get backscenes up behind these pics, but the legs of the layout are the wrong length, so I need to await the replacement ones before thinking about affixing anything like that to the wall behind. And when these locos were new, ALL coaches were green! (Except the few dirty silver ones remaining). Black'n'tan was still almost two years away, and more than that before more than a handful of coaches got that new livery.

Barry C & I were going through his pics to select for the next book, and amongst what we were looking at were a selection taken in the 1980s and 90s in Thurles station. One of the days featured had a number of GAA specials; I know Cork was one of the sides playing, and I presume Laois was the other - however, the number of carriages stuffed into sidings in every corner of the station was incredible, despite the necessity to keep the up and down line open for passing traffic too. I don't have the picture in front of me now, and it'll be in the next book anyway, but there must be some five or six specials parked up which are VISIBLE, plus one or two others that were there that day. And we're not talking about a couple of 3-coach ICRs, or some other such creature, but 071s and GMs with ten- and twelve-coach trains of Mk 2s, Cravens, and probably laminates & Park Royals. I'll fish it out and post it at some stage. Just as well it wasn't during the beet season!