jhb171achill

I'm sure if there was ever a suggestion that 5T were to leave Tralee there'd be a host of objections from people who cared about it all of a sudden. Exactly!

Phew!! Yes, it’s on the site of the GNR goods and loco yards - a wide site rather than a single long track, so loads of room for twists and turns...

Yes, and the cab front and back, and tank ends and tops could also look solid black! In the early days of the RPSI, despite being only a few years since blue engines were all over the place (ex-GNR area), there was even a debate over what parts of the frame were, or were not black. Today, people forget how dirty an environment railways were in steam days. I can even remember layers of dirt on all surfaces in UTA stations in the sixties. Sheer dirt is another reason why many thought that all CIE engines were black. And it’s not just the grey locos - I’ve seen pics of green ones which, if you didn’t KNOW were green, you’d swear were black all over. Look at pics of CIE steam engines in their last years. See any red buffer beams? Very often, absolutely not a trace of red - but they were red! So, steam-era people - get absolutely STUCK into those weathering powders!

Domes and boilers on CDR locos were actually always painted red, rather than black - but often so filthy they LOOKED almost as dark as black (same with some GNR blue, and GSR / CIE grey locos...)

Am I seeing, in that pic, the loco frame cut open lengthways???? Buffer beam half cut across??? What ON EARTH have they done to it!

You must know the IRM guys...........!

NOW ye're talking!

I never saw them myself, but it has to be also said that my sightings of them in use were very few!

Correct, sadly.

Most who saw B101s in use will remember them in black, as this was the livery most carried, most of the time in the 1960s.

In all reality there’s only one solution - give the thing to a bona fide heritage railway.

No. It had the trademark triangular worksplate on it, and the clear family resemblance, like a somewhat narrower Donegal engine. When i find details I will post; I sold the Indian locomotive book which would have given me the answer years ago! I can't recall, but my guess is that it was built about 1900-10? The one in the pic above LOOKS very like it, but I don't think IS it.

This unique version of the black’n’tan livery was applied for a very short time to just a few B101s, never anything else. Full height tan, but no CIE logo, and only a white flash on the ends, as if it was all black. General rule: if no tan, white on ends only. If any tan (low or high band), white line continued round the side.

Yes!!

No, that's where Ed lived. the loco was to go in a public park which contained a heritage railway, with which he was heavily involved. He made the decision to buy it while travelling through the Barnesmore Gap in the sole surviving six-wheeler, No. 1 - now in Cultra - when he was here with several friends. They had come here to get the last of the narrow gauge, covering the C & L one day and Strabane - Killybegs and back a few days later. I can't remember if he told me that he did the West Clare - unlikely as it was all diesel. He and his friends had come here specifically to get as much steam as they could. He was disappointed at the politically-motivated decimation of the GNR, as he had seen it all in action some years earlier on a previous visit. Someone asked me once if Edgar knew the famous Dr. Cox, who assembled the Donegal stuff at Strabane for people to, eh, travel to, in order to retrieve anything of scrap value; as far as I recall, he didn't. Interesting side anecdote: travelling with us was James I C Boyd, author of much superb material on Irish, Manx and Welsh narrow gauge. It was a highly interesting trip.....

Yes - but WHERE! I will try to find it. It's in a box somewhere here in an old album.......... It was on the Dhaulpur system which I travelled on. There were Baldwins and all sorts of 2ft gauge beauties - but we're talking Lough Swilly proportions, not Bala Lake! Huge beasts. Had a footplate run on a 4.8.2 tender loco..... The Gwalior system was a treat as well, but that's another story. All was 100% steam, among less than a dozen lines I ever did where not even a trial run of anything non-steam had ever taken place!

Edgar Mead was an absolute gentleman. I travelled round india with him in 1979 and we found a Nasmyth Wilson 2.6.4T in service - a 2ft gauge version of a Donegal Class 5 tank engine - blue instead of red...... Very knowledgeble man. I kept in touch with him for years..... he often invited me to The U S and A to see that loco, but I never got around to it.............

The only ones above not likely ever to have been hauled by an "A" class would be a SLNCR vehicle of any sort or NCC "Brown Van", though a very slim possibility might exist of the latter. These vans were not much used in goods trains. A UTA "Spoil Wagon", or the "2459" van - no. In all of the remaining cases, all liveries would have hauled them, as follows: Silver, green or black, early black'n'tan, or black with yellow ends - all of the wagons bar the exceptions above, the skeletal flat and double beet, and all wagons grey at the time. Supertrain - in either grey OR brown, CIE Bulleid Open CIE Bulleid Covered H Van CIE Sundries Double Height Beet CIE Gunpowder Van CIE 20ft Skeleton Flat Guinness Beer Tanks GNR 15T Coal Wagon CIE Cattle Wagon GSWR 10T Brake Van - PLUS the palvan, if a model appears. After the "tippex" stripes appear, it's all bogies and modern stuff (shale, fert, bubbles, etc) in brown.

True, but a “what-if”.

First, a risk assessment would be carried out on the matter of holding an enquiry. Protective hats, dayglo, PTS, PPE & steel-capped boots would be needed for the people who wrote the report, with a three month line closure if the report exceeded the normal seventeen 2000-page volumes. Secondly, (do you have an hour?)........

The green started being replaced when the grey and yellow 121s appeared, and the following year the first Black and Tan appeared. For several years, through the 1960s, the norm was a mixture as the next few pics will show. This was in 1963. The first vehicle is one of quite a few wooden-bodied brakes or mail vans still in use. This one is of obvious GSWR parentage. It’s in faded green - non-passenger-carrying vehicles never got the cosmetic attention that locos and coaches did - it’s as if they were treated like wagons. Then comes the obligatory tin van. Also seen are laminates and (I think) a Bredin, in both the new and old liveries.

Very true - I had the misfortune to board a Portadown train in (the old) Gt Vic St one time, in which there was a swarm of them. Politics aside, and I won’t go into the details, they were the vilest excuses for human beings I ever saw in any train anywhere. They trashed the train. I got off at Lisburn.

Seems to have been random, Popeye. Some always seemed to have them, others seemingly never did and others again were seen in both forms - but it’s worth remembering that both the lines, and numerals (and “snails” on the “A” class were light green, rather than white)....

More tomorrow.... From P Dillon / C Fry collection

Since the next lot of pics I'm posting are not "A" class, I will post them instead on my thread "From the Catacombs".