jhb171achill

I've just phoned the DSPCA to investigate all such instances, and a report has been submitted to the DPP......

Superb stuff - yes, I've a copy of that somewhere! With the Covidpox, there's no way of knowing when the new one will open again. You're right, it wasn't remotely close to being the biggest in the world, even then. Nowhere close to it. There's a Russian businessman with a layout so vast that it takes 35 people to operate, and extensive training is necessary first. He has it in a vast warehouse he owns, and which he had to extend. There's the thing in Germany, plus numerous privately owned layouts - especially in America. I saw an article in an American model railway magazine many years ago showing a privately owned one with four-track main lines, and huge trains of maybe fifty bogie container double-deckers with all the locos of Tara Junction in front of each one.... To go back to Malahide, you're not the first to lament the lack of "0" gauge, nor the lack of size. The history of how the Malahide Casino came to be what it is today is a complex one, with enough intrigue to write a book. We have the donation by Mr Gaffney, we have varying opinions about what location was the best place for the Fry stuff to go, controversies about how it managed to migrate from Dublin Tourism to Fingal Council, plus the not inconsiderable matter of the current scheme suffering from the "Designed-by-a-committee" syndrome. By the time the Fry collection of models was to be got ready for display, and the layout built, various legal, financial, timescale and practical difficulties had resulted in the building in which both were to be housed - being already designed and built. At a very early stage, it was pointed out that the model display cabinets did not allow a complete train to be displayed anywhere - individual models in individual cases, to start with. Now, compared with the layout issue, that's a minor problem, and some say that the models are better the way they are; overall the feedback is good, so we'll park that. But the point is that they had already been installed! At the same meeting, it was pointed out that the whole building as rebuilt was simply not big enough for half of what had been in the castle, and that making a brand new 00 gauge layout was, in terms of time, money and space, the only option then available, short of demolishing the extension of the building and building a new one. Now, there's a LOT more than that to the whole thing; all of which may be summed up in two points: 1. If designing a visitor attraction, ensure that adequate planning and funding is complete and approved by all stakeholders before cutting a sod. (Not all of this was possible in Malahide, so I'm not blaming the planners at all - there were time and finance constraints which could not be got around; but in general.....) 2. What is there now, is there now. It is what it is! We must enhance it as best we can and encourage events and exposure. It's better than having Fry's models wrapped forever in newspaper in a store-room in Malahide Castle, and an 00 gauge layout remains a spectacle to be seen. And yes, both Murphy 121s and IRM "A"s have been ordered.......... In the future, a number of enhancements are planned. Fry took a fair number of photos, as very many of us will know. The vast majority are black and white, but he got a colour camera about 1961. I plan to get some of these enhanced properly and displayed there, and a number of his collection of railway artefacts (e.g. the anemometer from Quilty Station on the West Clare, and a Tralee & Dingle loco bell) have to be displayed. I am delving through what little is left of his books and papers which his family still have, especially photos. Most of these photos appear to be duplicates of what is in the "Cyril Fry Collection", which IRRS members here will be familiar with through Hassard Stacpooles' picture shows. There are a few new shots. The family also retain several of his models, as of course is their right; these are not, thus, part of what is legally the "Cyril Fry Collection". There's a half-built pair of Dublin trams, for example, and several locomotives in varying stages on uncompleteness.... Some of this stuff may also eventually be on display. There are some clauses in the agreement between Cyril Fry's widow and Dublin Tourism which are of relevance and interest going into the future: his models, for example, must never be displayed with any others! So, we cannot display the ones built for the large Castle layout alongside his. This is, however, "got around" by having a train of them going round on an upper track, but they can't go into the display cases! Also, Fry's OWN models may not run ever again, even if there WAS an "0" gauge layout, and the models (given their age) were fit for it................... And I owe the reception staff some choccy bikkies to replace the ones from the fridge...... Must not forget that.

Yes, I'd seen that before. The opening scene is indeed of an 800 arriving with what appears to be the up day mail from Cork, judging by the train makeup. The carriage our heroine is in contains the standard black and green floral upholstery used by the GSWR (rather than the GSR!), and obviously its a GSWR coach - or is it? The coach number seen on the inside of the door as they're getting out is not of a type that corresponds with that type of interior, so may be a set-up in a studio. The exterior of the REAL coach they get out of retains its GSR maroon livery, but without lining. Either this has worn off - the crest is tatty looking, so this is possible; or it didn't have lining and is thus secondary stock. Later in the film, an LMS carriage is seen in some random English location, and later again an Isle of Man Manx Electric "toastrack" tram. Fascination views of mid 1940s trams and buses in O'Connell Street near "The Pillar" too.

Towards the end of this livery period, before they were taken in and given a decent BODYWORK makeover as well as the grey paint, some were in an awful state - either like this or rusted and filthy.

Absolutely superb job - always UNCANNILY realistic!

To my late male parent, anything which wasn't steam was about as interesting as a wet February Tuesday morning in Tuam! Each to our own...........!!

Was it damaged inside or did the packing save it?

It would be VERY easy to "go into rant mode" over that! I will similarly restrain myself!

Hahahaha! Genuinely, to me, 071s are a bit "modern"; I have to confess to having little or no interest in much on the railways after 1970..... I spent the 1980s travelling to Southern Africa, the Indian subcontinent and the far east to take photos of working steam engines, while my good colleagues and friends back here were chasing bogie wagons and 071s! Mind you, for fans of goods trains with bogie wagons, and no guard's vans, there is what I hope to be a treat in store, planned to be on bookshelves next year......

Tis shteam stuff!

That's what I'm thinking......

I was proposing to sell a couple of surplus locomotives on fleabay shortly (still haven't decided whether I WANT to sell them or not). If I do decide to sell them, this presumably seriously dents my potential market? Say I gave them to a friend of mine in the north to sell them? Anyone know what the issues are?

Yup - I SAW that! I saw 'er going through Kilmakerril Halt at 80 mph at leasht.... sure I was on me way home from the pub.............

We may live in hope! I'm ordering a few bits from Marks Models and Hattons as we speak!

Wooden buffer beams were a feature of many classes of many locos, right up to the 1950s / 60s.... The Sligo Leitrim (with the exception of Railcar "B") tended not to move with the most modern aspects of life!

Let's HOPE it's a bluff - however - bluff or not, anyone opening or operating a business either IN Brexitland OR the rest of the world (well, the EU and China!), will be buried in new tariffs, by the look of things........thus, prices in such a new shop might have to be a lot higher than people might assume.

Personally, I think the silver, black and yellow was unattractive, but the grey isn’t the brightest either! I think for those locos - tippex livery is the nicest. But it’s your loco!

Indeed; genuinely, as one who has travelled on almost every "May Tour" since 1978, and worked on them all since 1984, I've overheard and been party to all the variations of knowledge and / or curiosity of our esteemed visitors from our neighbouring island..... (Many, of course, are SO much regulars now, they're genuine, good and lasting friends, not just "passengers"!) But I still C R I N G E at the utterly ghastly label given to this annual tour as the "International" Railtour. C'mon, lads, get a grip. It hasn't scaled the Andes, had 171 speeding across the Nullarbor Plain, or had a side trip to Darjeeling or the Harz system yet, and No. 4 has yet to see a Norfolk Southern goods yard. Good old 186 has never ascended the Devils Nose, nor had a photo-op hooked up to the Blue Train in De Aar. No. 461 hasn't crossed Glenfinnan Viaduct or rolled into Zurich Hauptbanhhof yet, and with the covid an'all, that's not going to happen any time soon.

Double cringe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I recall, on an RPSI May Tour in the 1990s, I was doing the (crowded!) bar the whole weekend. At the counter, a crowd of the usual suspects were waxing lyrical with all the bar-room intellectualism that accompanies such scenes. One well-known bar-room bore, who will remain nameless, was regaling several of our English visitors with various "wisdom".... talk was of "LONDONderry", "Eire", and a long discussion took place among them about the exact spot at which we entered a "foreign country" at the border, and precisely where it was. Now, I'm the only sober one among them - I'm working! They're all poleaxed. I'm bored, but perversely curious as to what would come next. Our attention-seeking bar-room intellectual was eventually silenced, and politely advised that he was speaking from, let us say, an opening not normally used for speech - by one of the English guys on the tour! Hilarious stuff........and no, I don't remember what livery the dining car was at that time! But yes, I pored over that book in class in school, when I should have been listening to French verbs; stuff about the capitals of European countries; the history of...some boring old stuff about wars....; the economy of Canada and the USA; genitive, perfect, imperfect and pluperfect tenses; the scribblings of Wordsworth; the main points of a map of the route of the River Rhine; calculus, sines and cosines and algebra........... Not a word about railways, of course, in any of that oul guff, as I saw it back then! But Boocock's images of a filthy "C" class in Wisht Caaark, boy, with a couple of 1880s six-wheelers behind it, or some of his atmospheric Donegal and Sligo-Leitrim images....YES!

I think it was three, with the other seven remaining as they were.

Yes, it was. They re-did the livery to "tippex" style too.

Internally, different generators. Externally, apart from livery changes, the rebuilt ones had those ugly "appendages" stuck onto the ends. Gawd knows what was in them, but it doesn't matter - you can't see inside them!

Full, normal passenger and goods trains 1963. Goods and occasional passenger excursions / special trains into the mid 70s. Finished by early 80s.

Since the early 1950s, in other words for the larger part of a century, Limerick - Rosslare has been the most disgracefully blatant example of this. Today, it would take about two weeks to get from Limerick - Rosslare. Any time a cobweb appears on the points at Clonmel, there's a full H & S alert, and they close the line for six months, and dress everyone within 6km either side of the line in dayglow. Everything that moves, including push-bikes, have to be painted yellow and certified. Then there's the consultant's survey (€560,000) and then they remove the cobweb (€48,000 per web plus mileage and overnight allowances for, well, just about anyone on the local census returns going back to the Famine). God forbid that it be run like a viable railway.

“A round trip into Eire”....... cringe!!!!!