jhb171achill

Wot's this? A "hard border"? That oul Brexit lark.............!

Nothing like a good rant! Serious point, though - it does concern me when people take any form of factual clarification personally, be they people just interested in something, or especially preservationists. It is never, ever, ever meant that way; it is meant in a spirit of helpfulness for anyone who's interested. Right now, I am actually writing a description of a preserved item, as the details on the website describing it are very incorrect, and perpetuate an "urban myth" about the item, the origin of which I am unsure of. Let's just say that I clarified the details with the leading experts on this particular item! I'll dig out some more GNR photos tomorrow and then we can go NCC, or GSR...... Onwards and upwards...........

Exactly. There is a general lack of interest or awareness of railways in Ireland - north or south - compared with Britain. To be fair, the English specifically probably lead the world by far in terms of railway interest, so it's more a case of them being light years ahead, than us being "behind". Many countries have even lower levels of interest than we do. Anyone who reads this website will be aware of my own interest in the historical side of things, which is why if I have any relevant info about any such things, I try to get the message out. The NLI stuff really does need to be properly edited - especially the O'Dea collection. In a different life, writing 2 books about non-railway related stuff, I went through the entire Lawrence collection back in the day when you had to go in and see it all on badly-lit microfilm. It took me several days to get through every single image, and gave me headaches and actually I felt sick after peering at this stuff for days! I found more than a few errors in the labelling there too, though some was certainly errors of Lawrence's, not the NLI. Larrence has one view of Clifden station labelled as "Achill", and photos taken on Achill Island labelled as a different island..... They had a series taken during a (disgraceful) eviction in north Donegal listed as being in Mayo, and so on. There will always be the odd thing that slips through the net, but to such extent as anyone can correct these things, I feel it is for the benefit of someone else well into the future that we do this, if we can verify the corrections.

It most certainly would, if there were enough enthusiasts in the area to operate it. the two J15s would be ideal (even though none ever ran on it), as would (probably) the Sligo engine. Half a dozen of the RPSI's high-seating heritage set, and away ye go.

Amazing photos on that website, but unfortunately the captions are absolutely riddled with errors. The O'Dea stuff with the NLI - the captions are even more full of errors. When I went through the collection in total some years ago, they took me up on an offer to voluntarily go through the lot and correct things like "B141 train at Limerick" for "B141 class locomotive at Limerick JUNCTION"! Unfortunately I haven't had time, and it ain't gonna happen any time soon, with 4 railway books and one non-railway under construction......

A J26 would have been of use at Downpatrick. Perfect if the line were ever to be extended, too. The GNR 2.4.2T in Cultra would fit the bill there too....

Trouble is, in preservational terms, they’re useless! So the other one wouldn’t have added anything. If there IS an obvious “one that got away”, it’s a Midland 4.4.0 or a “Woolwich”!

You’ve better eyesight than me, Paddy - I was trying to make that out!

A final visit to Enniskillen just days before it all closed. The first picture was on the very last day, with one of the newer SLNCR engines over near the SLNCR shed. The other shows either Lough Erne or Lough Melvin during shunting in the SLNCR bay platform.

I'm not sure when they were withdrawn. I have seen a pic of one with "G S" on it, but they were only new when the GS came into existence. I would guess 1955-60-ish but as I say i don't know for sure. I never saw a pic with a "flying snail", though.

The MGWR always had an eye for a bargain. They bought a set of these ballast wagons as a job lot, but only two had this compartment, thus - while such things were common in mainland Europe - they were unique in Ireland. One went at each end of the set of wagons. In Ireland a separate guard's van was used. I wouldn't fancy being a ballast guard travelling in a thing like that through a winter rainstorm on a hard frost morning in rural Co. Sligo! I'm sure the men would have refused to work them. They were built in Belgium originally for a Spanish line, hence the broad gauge dimensions, which would have taken little tweaking here.

Just more recently replaced. This picture was taken nine years into GSR days (1934) by Henry Casserley, so the paintwork will be very tatty indeed - which, of course, was typical; pristine wagons never look right on any layout, though I'll happily concede that not everyone likes weathering things! The wagon number is shown as 523. In reality, by this stage, it was 523D. Sometimes on wagons you'd see the originating company letter added, without a full repaint, but this one doesn't even have that. Railway staff would have reported any defects on it as 523D, as the GSWR doubtless would have also had a 523, and a Midland one would now be 523M.

I love that shed with the NIR logo. Is that a raised logo or painted on? Where did you get it or is it scratch-built?

Yes, a few observations about the above photos, which i forgot to add. They DID use a shorter wheelbase then - not just vans, but cattle trucks and open wagons too. Also, a more pronounced curve to roofs, which were a lot lower. Look in the pics above, many of which date from the 1920s and later. NEWER wagons were higher, with roofs flatter. Photos 1 & 5 show "soft-tops" as the railwaymen called them, or officially convertible wagons. I am unaware of these being used in any country outside Ireland; hopefully someone might educate me here on external examples? The top photo of the DSER one (a long way from home at Achill) shows where the open centre part has been subsequently covered over. Like conventional vans, roofs were timber, covered in heavy canvas, sandwiched in between layers of pitch. This was then painted - I did this myself on early carriage repairs at Whitehead in the '70s. But economy often resulted in corrugated iron replacements - these were especially prevalent on the County Donegal Railways but can also be seen here. In photo 5, you see the three stages. In the middle and older "soft top". To the right, a van of the same or slightly later period. to the left, a later one still, more in keeping with dimensions used from about 1915/8 onwards. The purpose of a "soft-top" was that with a tarpaulin across the middle bit, it could be used for general goods, as a goods van, but with the tarp removed it could be used for cattle. Being a primarily agricultural country, with no huge coal or iron ore mines, no massive steelworks, oil refineries or the like (we did not HAVE the minerals and raw materials in the ground!), cattle was the mainstay of most rural Irish railway lines for many decades, so these wagons made sense to build economically. Also, the third last pic shows the difference between "ancient" and "modern" dimensions very well.

Indeed - it's FAR from cheap - but as we all know in the model world, it's well worth paying for quality.

The IRRS has indeed published a lot of drawings - I don't know the full extent as I only have the GSWR book myself. Richard McLachlann is your man on that one - he spent ages scanning the originals over some years. He was, as I understand, the driving force behind pubishhing them (along, sadly, with the late Anthony McDonald). I was just looking to see if i had a spare copy of the IRRS "pic album" which I could have sent you - but I've just realised on searching for it that I donated it to the RPSI last year on the May Tour!

That's the beauty of N gauge, Tony. As Airfixfan mentions above, many items can be bought which "look the part". A Fairburn tank, "off-the-shelf" and LNER coaches (ideally if you can get ones of (British) Great Northern origin) in teak, would do a nice job - as I'm sure you're aware, many ex-GNR carriages still carried their old brown livery for a good few years into UTA days. Maybe there's a little 0.6.0 which could function as a UG?

Hi Mark For the period you are modelling, almost all wagons and rolling stock, unfortunately, would have to be scratch-built, if accuracy is required. If you have got Ernie Shepherd's book, you will see the typical "soft-top" convertible van which abounds. Some open-top cattle trucks might still be seen, though they were meant to be covering them up. Only open wagons were broadly similar. Horse boxes - you are aware of the kit. Locomotives - again, scratch-building, I'm afraid. If you ever heard of the late Richard Chown's "Castle Rackrent", a famous "0" gauge layout, he did all that, and some sixty years or so ago to boot. His layout was primarily WLWR-orientated, though of course this line met the MGWR at Athenry, Claremorris and Collooney. But it gives a nice flavour of the period. I'll post some photos in a moment - all taken from Ernie Shepherd's book, the IRRS "picture album", and "Rails to Achill".

At this stage the GNR was installing concrete on the main line (Amiens St. to Gt. Victoria St.). Senior tried out a short stretch somewhere between Dundalk and Ballybay - just a quarter mile or so. He was planning a submit for extending this along a lot of the INW when the lines were closed. He also got hold of the GNRs brand-new tamping machine and this was trialled on the INW too.

In the heartland if the GNR’s Western District, Enniskillen Station is viewed a few days before closure, at the end of September 1957. The top picture is from the Sligo Leitrim yard, and shows that state of their track compared with the immaculately-maintained GNR track in the lower picture. jhb171-Senior said that had the SLNCR stayed open, its entire track, end to end, would need to be relayed as a matter of priority in a very few years, and many bridges renewed. Like the Co Donegal, both would have required root-and-branch modernisation as a matter of urgency. In a more normal world, like the GNR they would have been divided between the UTA and CIE. Black’n’tan Donegal railcars, anyone? Within a very short space of time, laminate coaches and 141s would have been seen in Enniskillen.....

Presumably if coal and 08s are the thing to use, you're going for a British rather than Irish prototype. Many of the coalfields in South Wales had quite cramped sites in the valleys, compared with, say, Yorkshire. Nice scenery in the Welsh valleys isn't in short supply either. Perhaps some sort of coal yard, rather than a large and bleak-looking mine? A coal merchant's private siding complex? A privately owned steam engine would be possible, with BR's 08s coming along with laden trucks to be sent in there to be unloaded.... Larger BR locos (not sure what class in that area) could come in and out too with trains, and a 2-car railcar set could serve a nearby small halt..... If Irish, we didn't have coal mines like that at all, in that timescale, other than the narrow gauge Cavan & Leitrim, which wouldn't be suitable for 08s.... A British 08 in N scale isn't hugely unlike a CIE "D" class shunter. Instead of coal, why not something very concise with a North City Mills-type industrial siding? Using goods vans obviates the need for the messy and fiddly transferring of loose loads in such a small scale.

Yes, indeed it is, or brown paint. I only ever saw two with a brown chassis, though in both cases you'd have been forgiven for thinking it was just muck! When new, they had galvanised bodies, which would never be painted ANY colour until they were "double-decked" in their final years for beet, when they got standard wain brown. The chassis were originally the same normal grey as all wagons, and virtually all remained this way until the "doubling". The above brown was probably done in the early 70s, by which time actual painting of these was in truth, an exceptionally rare event; and clearly a handful got a touch of brown on the chassis - but again, nothing on the body.

Sadly, Senior's notes are as brief as his photographic list! I have made notes over the years before I forget of everything I know - those who knew him would have known that if you asked him something, he would answer - but he would rarely initiate a conversation, as in "I remember the day I went to Dungiven....." If you didn't know he had been there, any story about it went to the Great Locomotive Shed in the Sky! One trip he did was this: Kingsbridge - Mallow - Tralee. Overnight. Next day, out to Castlegregory, back to the junction, on to Dingle (or maybe the other way round) and back; night mail back to Dublin. This is the full text of the entry in his diary (let's say it was a Saturday 22nd, I can't remember): "Sat. 22nd. Tralee T&D" And that was it! Entries in his diary in the late 1950s and early 60s read like this: 2nd Duncrue St 3rd Hillsboro 4th A St* 5th H'boro 6th Strabane 7th K'begs ..............you get the idea! (* "A St" = "Amiens St Station") So, I am afraid a note is unlikely, but I agree with Lambeg Man that the comments this has thrown up are indeed fascinating - many thanks to all involved. What next for discussion? Next few days is GNR, but there's more to come......!

Nooooo, no photos from this day either! To Strabane by the CDR line..... Larne Harbour to Strabane AND BACK..... I wish I had more information about this outing. The ticket is undated but given what I know of his travels probably mid 1940s. "First Class", my eye! If possible, he'll have been in the cab.....