jhb171achill

Lovely loco - and it would do very well as a generic "Irish" loco, given a dip in a pot of dark grey paint. But that would spoil that lovely livery! Roderick Bruce of 00 Works did do a RTR GNR 0.6.0 plus a RTR GSWR / GSR / CIE 0.6.0 in the past, or course. Hopefully something else will come along soon!

My next project is "Saving the World from Trumpist rhetoric, Saving the Planet and Reopening the line to Tuam", portrayed via interpretative dance.........

It's an early MGWR Rubik's cube..........

Isn't DPD an Irish company? I was going to use them for a separate (non-railway) purpose, as I would rather give my money to a local company than Jeff Bezos. But I'm not sure now....?

MODS - can you delete this post. I made a mess of it.

LOCOS 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 Steam Mostly very dark grey / some black AFTER 1955, some lined green B113 Dark & lined loco / bus green D A Later “Mid” Green C “Black and Tan” or all-black derivatives “Supertrain” – Orange all over with black midway band B101 G601 E401 K801 GNR Dark Blue G611 E421 B121 Pale Grey & Yellow (Flying Snail logo) Some Black & tan from 1965 B141 B181 071 COACHES 6 wheel pass’ger carrying 6 wheel full brake Dark & lined loco / bus green Later “mid” green Wooden bogies Bredin & early CIE P Royal Unpainted inc. chassis, roof, bogies, ends & roof Laminate “Black and tan” “Tin Vans” Cravens AEC Railcars WAGONS All types Dark Wagon Grey. “Flying Snails” & numerals light green until c.1953, then white. Light wagon grey Dark Brown, getting slightly more reddish in the 2000s. Bullied Open Unpainted bodies until they were “doubled up” for beet in the 1990s. In the 1980s a very small number had brown chassis instead of grey, but unpainted “silver!” bodies. Brake Vans Cement “bubbles” Dark wagon grey Orange “bubble” with GREY chassis Some time ago I tried to post a table of what liveries ran with what, due to the growing interest in the 1950-70 period, and the release of the Murphy 121s, as well as the equally eagerly awaited IRM "A"s. For some reason related to my crass ignorance of computers, I could not post it, so I did a simplified version. If anyone wants the full thing, please ping me on this by private message and let me know your email address and I will forward the whole story, and nothing but the story, as my learned friend might say..........

Correct - while I've no specific note or memory, the CIE logo is certain to have been on a good few of them in the 1990s. I note that IRM have again added that little "weathering" detail in, with one of their models pictured above having a clean white number, but an older dulled brownish IR logo - i.e. badly "weathered" white.

They stopped applying new ones to everything in 1986/7. From the dawn of the IE / IR era, most wagons of most types had no logo at all, just the number - there were a few exceptions, though, which got the "set of points" logo. As for the roundel, wagons were never top of the list for repaints, so just as some pre-1963 "flying snails" were to be seen on goods vans into the mid-70s, so the roundels were to be seen, ever more grubby and faded (as reproduced on one variant of the IRM fert wagon) into the 1990s. As for the exact date of the exact last one, probably impossible to tell. I do recall seeing a fertiliser train just at the end of the period in which they ran. Only two wagons in the train had any logo at all, as per the norm by then, but two had very badly worn CIE "roundels", one barely visible at all.

Indeed; that's something! From when railways opened until the 1970s, the highly visible station signs with the name in large plain letters was deemed good enough - and it was. As others have mentioned, it's all about idiots with drawing pens and "creative" ideas now, screwing vast sums out of public companies for.....a change of font and colour. Must be high time that IE changed their logo again. The "chequered flag" one has now been in use for over a year! OK, that actually may make a bit of sense.......provided they keep it for a good while! That's why both the "flying snail" and CIE "roundel" became so instantly recognisable - each was in use for well over twenty years. Exactly!

These things, plus their Midland equivalents, are an absolutely vital part of the pre-1963 scene on CIE. As late as 1962, several branch lines still featured them regularly, and even then sometime almost exclusively. Several of the full brake version (not any passenger-carrying ones) survived until 1968/9 and were thus the only six-wheelers (bar the "tin vans") to find their way into the black'n'tan livery. Those last four seem to have mostly turned up by that stage on the up and down Galway passenger / mail trains. Downpatrick has one of them, now rebuilt into a brake first saloon, No. 69. It's great to see these coaches being put together - better still to see growing interest in the CIE "grey'n'green" era, with ready to run "A" class locos imminent, plus of course the grey 121s. Hopefully more to come from these very interesting times, when the old traditional steam railway, with mixed goods trains, six-wheeled carriages, wooden stock (passenger AND goods) the norm - gradually morphed into the then very modern world of laminates, Cravens and diesel locomotives.

They seem to change the whole lot every few months nowadays. Would investing in Limerick - Waterford services not be a better use of money, along with a Foynes - Limerick - Athenry - Claremorris - Westport passenger service? Bit of a difference in price, of course, but every step in the right direction is good..............

Very, true, very serious and very disgraceful!

I am not aware of any examples of this being carried on any lines here. Probably just dumped on domestic manure heaps.

Pic taken through a haze of it?

Drew was once described to me (weeks after he died) by a mutual friend as "the last of the northern Presbyterian nationalists"! As I learned in my time in the north, he was not, by any means, the only "northern protestant" who could absolutely put many a Galwayman or Kerryman to shame with his fluent Irish!

In the 1980s, when in my line of business I was sent on relief to various country towns, even as late as that nothing much had changed! I recall a man who swopped lambs in late winter for a "tab" in the local grocery shop in a small south Armagh town........... (dark side being that aged 90, he was almost beaten to death by scum-filth who decided to rob a defenceless old man of about £25 in a remote hillside farm..... poor oul John had no family...). But that's a separate story.

Yes, the Isle of Man Railway carried it in churns too. Like Ireland, never had any milk tankers. I think they used open wagons for them, stuck on the back of passenger trains, as dedicated goods trains in the IOM were almost unheard of.

The late Billy Lohan told me a story about a time he was sent up to Sligo with a light engine and guard's van to collect a rake of empty cattle trucks to take to Ennis for a cattle fair the following day. Since it was a special train, it would have been in the weekly circular but not the WTT. It's probably about 1940-42. They got to a level crossing near Gort, and he had a Midland 0.6.0, a J18. The brakes weren't the best. Health, safety, day-glo clothing and "safety cases" were a future fantasy. Billy's disdain for anything MGWR was matched by his admiration for all things Inchicore, as he was most definitely a "Southern man". He had been complaining all day about being given a J18 - he didn't like driving from the "wrong" side compared to a "proper southern" J15! The gates were across the line. Billy whistled furiously and cursed the gatekeeper....no sign of her. Gates across the track. He slowed the train to a crawl, still whistling like mad. The locomotive was now down to a walking pace, but still not stopped. The gatekeeper's hens were all over the place - as a completely separate issue, they had escaped from their pen. As the loco crawled uncontrollably towards the gates, at about the same time the elderly J18 hit the gate a hearty CRACK and smashed it in two, the gatekeeper came running round the side of the cottage in her apron and slippers, shouting "Ah, me hins! Me hins! Me HINS!!""............ Billy went ballistic and replied to her in terms that would have made the "hins" blush......he was an absolute stickler for doing things the correct way, absolutely by the book. To say that Billy had a dim view of a gatekeeper putting the welfare of her hens above that of having the gates set properly would be an understatement! A great guy, lived to be 103. I have recordings of him, having had the great privilege of interviewing him several times. Your tale of chicks reminded me of that - sorry to wander off-topic.........

I forgot about eggs! Yes, they were a big thing all over the place!

SUPERB stuff as always; we're seeing the brassmaster at work!

Hi Colin In the days when narrow gauge railways were operating, in all reality milke was taken about the place by donkey and cart (there's a pic of one alongside a CDR train, and another alongside a C & L train - or for the super-sophisticated, tractor and trailer. We didn't use milk tankers at all really - certainly not by rail at all, and by road not until the mid 1960s. Almost all Irish milk was used in local creameries. We didn't ever have bulk traffic - what did travel was in churns in ordinary wagons. For your friend's layout, especially if its based in the area you mention, the predominant goods traffic would be bags of grain, bags of cement, animal feed, SOME churns of milk in a van or open wagon, live cattle and general goods (.e. cardboard boxes of washing powder or liught machinery). Virtually all goods traffic was carried in covered vans, bar of course the cattle; but even some of these beasts were carried in ordinary goods vans with a removable centre section of roof for ventilation - the famous Irish "convertible van" or "soft-top", as the railwaymen called them due to the central opening being covered by a canvas covering when the wagon was being used for goods instead of cattle. Some "soft-tops" were still running in the very early 1960s, and the C & L had them to the end.

I've chartered a GNR 4.4.0 and some GNR wooden carriages to go north to rescue all this tax-free stuff. An AEC set will follow with the spares.

We may know people........................................................................................!

Irish railways did not carry milk in anything remotely like the quantities that British lines did, thus no milk tankers. What milk traffic WAS carried, travelled in churns in ordinary wagons or vans. As far as the narrow gauge was concerned, as mentioned, the CVR carried some, I believe in churns in standard open wagons (along with gawd knows what other stuff!). I have an idea that the Cavan & Leitrim might also have done so. However, it is probable that most of the lines carried small quantities from time to time also, again in ordinary wagons.

I've actually just written one - my annual sub renewal to "New Irish Lines"! I used a quill pen, of course..................................