jhb171achill

A few views from 1963, as B141 makes its first appearance on the branch on the 10:35 Saturdays Only local train to Castletown West. The following day, the solitary Sunday service at 5.10 p.m. has the same set with a brand new Craven added, and making a rare appearance on the line.

Yes, it is indeed a boundary marker and it is Dundalk, as it's with his DNGR pictures. Just didn't know WHERE he had seen it! They were still keeping the letters on it painted when he saw it!

Another delve into the "catacombs", a.k.a. Senior's stuff, produces this: Question is, what is it and where? The picture will date from the 1930s. (c. H C A Beaumont)

I have one for my hair being the wrong grey livery........

Many thanks, Mike. I always think things like that are invaluable for modellers. Once the extension to my own layout is done, I’ll be drawing heavily on such detail, of things just lying around the place…. I doubt if, judging by a small number of pics I’ve seen, which appear to show a dark colour (black?) with letters not picked out at all. In the 1968 photo, that’s quite possibly the reason for the sign colour. The trains had cherry red and white (or cream) carriages WAAY back, but latterly they were the same ordinary wagon grey as the actual wagons. Locos and freight lorries had an extremely dark green.

Back to the LLSR; more from the "catacombs"; in this case, Senior's stuff. This was a visit to Burtonport in 1937, I think. He footplated No. 12 the whole way, and said the track was shockingly bad, especially beyond Letterkenny-hi. I posted his view from the cab earlier. The second image, 038, shows what must be a unique view back along the tender. The excellent live steam model of one of these seen elsewhere on this website earlier - 10 1.4 inch gauge, I think - I can't pass by without commenting that they were never that colour - for modellers; I'm not nit-picking. LLSR green was an extremely dark green.... Fry's model has it wrong too.....

Ghastly. I detest that sort of stuff!

It's a locomotive shed on the former Indonesian Staats Spoorwegen......."SS".....

I can get you some repro €3 notes. 70c each, or three for €2.90. Send me a postal order, or cash in the usual place behind the bike sheds.

Ghastly. Two truly awful fakes. I sincerely hope the auctioneer didn’t try to pass them off as real; that would actually be fraud.

True! The Covid is holding everything else up; speak to the Dept. of Domestic Matters and lectures on the subject regarding curtains, garden people and carpet people will abound....... I just pity anyone starting to build a house about now......

Woohoo! Yella machine alert! I think it’s a railcar ICR yellow 29000 thing De Dietrich dart….. Modern anyway.

Concept early ‘18, arrival the other day. A delay occurred with (a) Malahide casino issues, and (b) my house move, which took four months (long story)……!

Pretty much every detail, both on the layout and what will become its extension, is pulled from somewhere real!

Yes, very much so. There actually will be a station building - I've only just started it. It will be single-storey corrugated sheet building similar to several on the Valentia line. And yes, it could well be a Macroom extended west to a fictitious harbour and fishing village somewhere about Glengarriff or Sneem. The idea is that the nearby "big" station is the "real" terminus, and Macroom or somewhere like it about half way, with a short extension to "Dugort Harbour". It's far too hot to be sitting outside today, so I can in to the peace and cool of the study to peruse timetables of the 1955-65 era for inspiration..... Thanks for your comments!

That is one of the most outstanding pieces of modelling I've seen in a long time! Superb work indeed!

All I did was design it; the buildings, wiring and scenery was by others! More, of course, remains to be done, but Dave and Kevin, with their respective inputs, came out tops with what I had asked them to do.

On a Saturday night in 1965, extra stock for tomorrow’s trip to the GAA quarter finals is scattered about the place, having arrived tacked onto the daily goods. Shunting manoeuvres have left two vans in the cattle loop, and two Park Royals in the former loco shed road.

On Fridays only, the evening down train to Castletown West continues to the Harbour. Here it prepares to go back to Castletown to form the 0900 to Cork on the Saturday morning. IMG_9145.MOV

Plenty playing trains tonight, even though it’s yet to be connected to anything! Vans and a cattle truck await their next duty in the yard. Two are from the recently-absorbed GNR. A cattle truck remains, following the arrival of “beasts” for yer man with the field over beyond yer wan’s house. Tomorrow’s 08:30 (Wednesdays & Fridays only) all ready.

That's the whole idea, Edo - so it's worked! Phew! In my teens I got to all sorts of places like this which had seen better days, but were still operational - this seemed to add to their atmosphere. Westport Quay was one, and the trackplan here closely resembles that place. With no MGWR kits on the go when I started designing this, but nice SSM and Worsley etches of GSWR prototypes then available, I decided to move "down south"; thus, the place is somewhere in West Cork or West Kerry, which also gives the opportunity to make the sort of corrugated buildings that were popular in that area, and which (a) I like, and (b) are easy to make! The real Dugort, by the way, is a small village (or what's left of one) on the north coast of Achill Island. Many a time I will operate this section of the layout as if it's a three-times-a-week-if-required goods-only line, like Castleisland at the end. A place which hasn't seen a passenger service, GAA days apart, since 1937.....A J15, "C" or a 141 appears, shuffles a few vans about, and potters off again, observing the 20 mph speed limit as it rocks and rolls through the weeds up to the main "town", where the six coach twice a day to Cork is about to depart.

What appears to be a sort of "lay-by"(!) on the main platform is where the buildings will go. There will also be a small goods store and small yard crane, which I've weathered within an inch of its life.

After many twists and turns, and a house move, I am delighted to have had a visit from Baseboard Dave today with a vanload of great goodies. Dugort Harbour has arrived. Dave will post a pile of pics later on, but a few teasers here; it's 20th July 1964 and the 17:35 to Castletown West is about to depart - or it would, if the height of the layout matched the further extension that it is going to be connected to - but that's in hand. As originally conceived, it was to be a standalone shunting layout, based on a place like Baltimore, Valentia Harbour or Westport Quay. The idea was to have this plus a fiddle yard; trains leaving the place going along a fictitious four or five mile branch to the nearest big town. It has an air of desolation to it. This is intentional, though a West Cork / Kerry-like corrugated sheet station building will be added when I get around to it, plus a few people and cars. The prototypes mentioned above only seem to have survived as they were too insignificant to be worth listing for closure in themselves - though Westport Quay was retained in order to provide access for a fuel tanker to stabled buses - this is imitated here with an oil tanker grounded for the same purpose; a raison d'etre for such a lonely place to retain a train service at all. Like many lines that CIE want to close, the service is sparse. A daily goods will serve the place, with a morning and evening passenger train, mixed in steam days. It will only come to life when the local GAA crowd set off en masse for Croker, the beet season is in full swing, or the monthly cattle fair is due. In the fictitious setting, now that it is in a new house, there is scope for extension (hence the mismatching height of new boards installed and ready for track!). This extension will include a medium sized town station, from where the main line train from Cork or Dublin arrives twice daily, a la Lismore / Dungarvan, Clonmel or Bantry. A connection goes out to Dugort Harbour. Once the "main" station is complete, the main line trains will leave there to a fiddle yard, so the routine will be Fiddle Yard ----(main line)---- Castletown West ----(branch)---- Dugort Harbour. One thing that initial trials show up is the bad idea of various RTR and kit-built stock having slightly different couplings; derailments galore. I may well foist some 15 locos and 50 coaches and wagons some day on some poor soul with a request to put kadees on the lot. Just a few adjustments. Buildings have to be added (I have a goods shed started). Slight adjustment to a platform edge, as it and a JM Design "tin van" have fallen out over clearance issues, but that's easily fixed. Backscenes are desperately needed; that will be a priority. The "main" station will have a turntable, allowing locos to turn before going back to "Cork", a fictitious two or so hours away. But on the branch, the old turntable pit is filled in and the shed demolished; it IS the "swinging sixties" after all, so tender first running there. So, back to a summer evening back in 1964. Bet you didn't know they had drones back then.......... From the goods yard gate, stock lying about. And from a very youthful ”TTCs” or “Wanderer’s” drone….

Couldn’t agree more

Absolutely stunning!!!!