jhb171achill

Can't make it out exactly, but is that R N Clements below the "G" of "Sligo"? Counting the photographer, just 19 people - bound to have been more. I suspect Cyril Fry was also among them, and the Murrays of the IRRS, perhaps! Jimmy, you'll have to get the hang of posting them the right way up - took me a while, but if I can, anyone can! :-) Interesting wagon on the left - is it an NCC one? I suspect its one of the LMS vans brought over by the NCC when a good lot of their stock was converted into splinters by German bombs in Belfast. One of our weathering experts here would have a field day modelling the GN van on the right; it hasn't had a proper coat of paint since it was built, by the look of it - and indeed, this was not at all uncommon then.

A well-brought-up child! Here's hoping that he will get many, many decades of pleasure out of the hobby. When he's the age of some of us, he'll be modelling a preservation society with an "old ICR" in it, and telling his grandchildren that yes, he remembers actual diesel trains, and locomotives, just as an ever-decreasing number of US recall STEAM in use! Well done, Jack_Dunboyne!

That's correct. Surveys were done by the NCC. Re the map above, now we see it - as Galteemore says, it was PART downloaded; they've still left out Castlederg, but we'll let them away with that just this once! My comment about government policy is therefore not applicable to this map - though it was, sadly, in general!

I think I saw Sam Carse, James Boyd and Cyril Fry taking pics too - the latter two being kept well away from each other by the former! If jhb171Senior was watching, he'd watch the train go past, have a flask of tea in his car, and go home.... without bringing his camera! SUPERB scenes, John.

Amazingly realistic weathering on the loco....

TOP class as always!

Superb! Pure 1974!

This map is plain and simply preposterous. South of Omagh, it does not show the line down to Enniskillen, or from there either to Sligo or Clones. It does not show the Ulster Railway west of Armagh. It does not show Bundoran Junction nor the line branching off towards Bundoran; NO railways in Fermanagh are shown at all!These lines all closed in 1957. I haven't even included mentioning the short bit of the LLSR from Pennyburn. The fact that it was finally closed in 1953 doesn't seem relevant, if the Cushendall narrow gauge is still shown! What it DOES show, is sections of the NCC narrow gauge which closed in the 1930s, plus a NON-EXISTENT line from somewhere about Richill, by the look of it, to somewhere about Goraghwood; if this is intended to show the erstwhile Goraghwood to Armagh line, (a) it's WAY off the mark, and (b) it, too, closed in part in the 1930s, and the remaining bit had no passenger service from the 1930s. Now, if we look at the source of this map, and the times within which it was produced, old Stormont government propaganda is all over it. See the missing bits? They omit five lines which crossed the border, and both the Derry - Strabane routes are shown as being within the north; only one was - the main GNR line having another two border crossings between Strabane and Derry. In short, it is so ridden with inaccuracies as to be completely misleading in one sense, and useless in another. Thus, while it may surprise some to know how comprehensive the rail network once was within the area shown, there was in fact MORE mileage than the map shows above. To be fair, there's no way under the sun that the majority of it would have survived, even in an environment where, say, you had a rigidly pro-rail pattern of government from 1940 to 2021; nor in a situation with no border - be it a "united Ireland" under Dublin, London or Brussels rule. The fact remains, that lines line the CVR, the C&VBT, the Derry Central, and many others would not have survived today. But it is probable that SOME would; notably the "Derry Road", some more of the BCDR, Portadown to Armagh, and possibly Dundalk - Enniskillen. We will recall the late Glover's excellent layout based on the western part of the GNR had it survived the massive closures in 1957. Take that to today; an ICR meeting a CAF4K in Enniskillen, anyone? (though the goods yard would be the graffiti-covered back wall of a Tesco car park...........!) I saw that programme on TV some time back - some great views of trains!

All of that stuff above, and all those layouts, are just staggeringly brilliant; masterpiece from the Master! Keep it coming! Superb stuff.

At Slaght, the young lady driving stalled on the crossing just as a down Derry train was approaching. As she tried to re-start her car, tragically the railcar hit it full force, actually breaking it in two. The driver was tragically killed, but toddler(s) in the back seat had a miraculous escape due to the front of the car taking the main impact, and the fact that the children were securely strapped into child seats. I can't remember whether it was one child or two, but I seem to recall a report of a baby being unscathed. Horrible, truly ghastly tragedy; a friend of mine knew the train driver who was understandably traumatised.

"Supertrain" with the AECs, yes, but not the Mk 3.

That I didn't know; I was thinking more of "Howth - Bray"..... Interesting! Thanks!

"Rule No. 1" always applies! Rule No. 1.: It's YOUR layout! A narrow gauge line I had put together in the 1980s broke "accuracy" rules on a whole range of levels, from realistic track layouts to liveries to gauges........but I liked it! And those of us who had layouts in the early '70s will remember painting a Hornby Mk. 1 in orange and black, and having it hauled by a BR-liveried Class 31......... so in "Irishthumpland", the "supertrain" livery lasted until 1999!

I think the grey roofs are worse! I recall when those O'Hymeks came out I considered buying a couple, but I was moving towards Austrian 009 at the time.........now that's all gone!

No, the "supertrain" livery was gone by then. AEC cars - I'm pretty certain they were only hauled by C's in push-pull mode. However, while I never saw it, I think the AECs may have been HAULED rather than "push-pulled" the odd time by a 141.

An absolutely superb thread! Watching this develop with great interest - for very obvious reasons, the "Achill Bogies" are among my favourite all-time engines! I had a couple of pics in the book attributed to John Sweeney, a local who is a friend of mine. They were taken by his father, P J Sweeney, and show the grandfather of one of our esteemed members here, who was a driver on the GSR, on the footplate of a D16 at Achill. Some of the detail showing on or around the loco cab, might be of use, although at that stage, of course, they are in GSR condition and details may differ from the days when they were in the MGWR livery which I think you said you'd reproduce them in. Sadly, I narrowly missed getting a bit of stick with actual MGWR loco green on it. Bob Clements told me he would give it to me during a conversation weeks before he died, and I didn't have the chance to visit him again - so presumably it went in the bin when the place was being cleared. An old piece of wood which had been dipped in a pot of paint and wrapped in paper wouldn't have meant anything to anyone clearing out. However, if you go for the very short-lived blue, an original example may be discerned on the end of the of the MGWR coaches at Downpatrick. Someone mentioned also the "Dargan Saloon" in Cultra. This is very probably as close as makes no odds also, although it is not original paint and therefore cannot be confirmed. Off-topic I know, but the Dargan Saloon carries a special livery. No coaches ever ran in ALL-blue on the Midland; locos were blue for a short time, but the few coaches repainted were blue and white with gold lining, rather than plain blue. Their twelve-wheeled director's saloon survived in the MGWR's last livery (1918-25) of dark maroon right through to the late 1950s, but that's yet another story.

Yes, I found pieces of a shoe in on I ate, and an old Claddagh ring in another......while the teabag was a sock.

I'd be terrified to go into their toilets in case I couldn't ever find my way out again!

In some countries, the railway authority there will sell off the building to a café franchise or something, so the station still has a "buzz" about it (meaning less graffiti scumbags, drug dealers and other antisocial morons) - and the buildings of heritage value are owned and maintained by someone other than the railway. Kilkenny has this large covered space. Make it into a restaurant, like Buncrana, or even a night-club - ANYTHING to preserve the roof and building in good condition. It might do also for a covered "farmer's market"-type location.

Indeed. Exact dates are hard to come by, as a loco set aside might still be technically in use, and might even make a reappearance the following year. A good general rule of thumb is gone by the mid 1980s.

Can't see it being the location - if we log onto, say, 00 Works or The Festiniog Railway (an interest of mine), their servers are presumably acros the sea..... I have to say, though, now that I think of it, Hatton's is impossibly slow at times too.

Maybe the IRM lads need to put a 50p in the meter.....

Not QUITE as heavy as the "Green Bible", but it won't go in your jacket pocket!

Any time I log in here, the website will open up OK - but when I click on a link, or a reply to a post, it takes forever to open it up, sometimes timing out. Other websites work OK speed-wise. Does anyone else have this problem with the IRM website, and what can be done about it?

OK, now I've read it. Took a few days! LOCOMOTIVES OF THE GREAT SOUTHERN & WESTERN RAILWAY by Jeremy Clements, Michael McMahon and Alan O'Rourke (Collon Publishing, Collon, Co. Louth) As would be expected, given the previous works of all three authors, this work promised to leave absolutely no stone unturned in terms of research, attention to detail, and the covering of all aspects of any issues which might have had several different research sources. At the start, in keeping with this thoroughness, the authors point out that not all records have survived, and thus given the passage of time, some small gaps are inevitable in the information covered. Nevertheless, the content is very detailed, as one would expect for a work which draws heavily on the copious notes of the late R N Clements, arguably Ireland's greatest ever expert on Irish steam traction. Many of us will be familiar with the "Big Green Book", or "GSR Bible", and this book is set out in much the same way. The authors refer in the introduction to the necessity to have a standard way of notation for all locomotive classes, given the bewildering array of styles used by the GSR, the GSWR of the immediately preceding era, and earlier GSWR notations. R N Clements' own system based on Roman numerals is included - once one takes the time to get one's head round Bob Clements' logic, it all falls into place. Many of the locomotive classes covered are obscure one-offs, but the efforts made to standardise some practices and components is well covered, as is the relationship between the early component companies of the GSWR, with their differing localised traction requirements. Naturally, the acquisition of the Waterford, Limerick & Western Railway by the GSWR in 1901, and the attendant absorbtion of its own locomotive fleet is well covered. Illustrations are many and varied, all in black and white bar one on the title page, which is worthy of note in itself; it shows a large scale model locomotive (now in the headquarters of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in London), which is the only known example of exact GSWR green paint, and the lining style used from about 1870 or so to the mid or late 1870s. This was used as a model to glean details for the accurate livery now portrayed on GSWR No. 90 at Downpatrick. Of interest to many is the complex story of the evolution, development, and later improvements, alterations and rebuilds of many classes of locomotive, as these were many and varied. I was personally very interested in the information relating in this regard to the J15s, probably the most versatile Irish locomotive ever - it's no coincidence that many of these which dated back to the 1870s managed to survive until the end of steam traction in 1963. This is, overall, a reference work of the very highest quality, like its predecessor. It will be the standard academic work on the complex, and fascinating, locomotive history of this, Ireland's biggest pre-1925 railway company. If I was to have any criticism, and it's a tiny one, it might be that a slightly more complex index be included - but in the grand scheme of things, this is a small detail. This book is an absolute must to any student of Irish railways, and is released at a time when interest in the pre-diesel era in Ireland is, thankfully, rapidly growing. If you haven't bought it, buy it! It isn't the cheapest book you'll ever buy, but the quality and depth of the information between its covers makes it absolutely worth every red cent. Congratulations to all three authors!