jhb171achill

Contact Mayner, of this website; he is J M Design, who do the very kit you're looking at.

Exactly the same issues or related ones in South America. Some of their lines had mostly British locos, some all-American, and some manufacturers from mainland Europe (Germany in particular) had a presence there too. I saw some British and American beauties last year in Brazil....

Now that I'm looking again at this (the original print is small) on a large screen, I notice a few more details. Look at some of the doors of the DNGR carriages - they have been more recently painted, thus the main paintwork is faded. Look at the roof lines of the carriages - all higgledy-piggeldy, yet they are parked on some of the best track in the country. Thus, their suspension is far from good in condition! This must be a spare rake of secondary stock. The signal indicates the road is clear looking south. Thus, the loco is running away from the photographer to the far end; he will hitch up and go. Nobody is about. Are they awaiting the return of their passengers? There's no sign of anyone in the train - you'd expect some of them, anyway, to be leaning out of open windows. The bush in the distance has foliage on it - it's summer, thus again possibly July. I cannot for the life of me imagine what Senior was doing there that day. He never had any business, nor knew anyone, in that area at that time. The orangemen - if that's what it is -would not be running any events that, let us say, might interest him! However, if the grapevine had told him that a rake of old DNGR stock would be allowed out of the Cooley Peninsula that day, THAT would have piqued his interest!

GNR / DNGR time! An excursion in 1944. GNR brake nearest camera on the right, and a rake of Greenore carriages. I think this may be Scarva, looking south but I am not sure. Other opinions, anyone? I suspect that’s the platform on the left for Lenaderg, Lawrencetown and Banbridge, where it connected with the Lisburn - Banbridge - Newcastle line.

That’s absolutely correct. I worked with Ken in the late ‘70s on 861 and the NCC trio - 68, 241 & 23X (or something!)

My understanding is that when the RPSI got hold of it there was a serving / bar area where the very last 2nd class seating area is shown. The dividing partition between 1st and 2nd class areas was gone. One, at least, of the toilets had become a store. I remember getting cleaning stuff in there. In the kitchen area the serving hatch, at an angle, had gone, and a right angled corner was there instead. The server / bar was facing the seats. Now, I say that it is my "understanding" that this was so. The reason I say that is that I do not remember the RPSI re-designing the interior, but this COULD have happened; John Richardson would be about the only person who could answer that, as he looked after the car and catering before I took over in 1988. By that stage this vehicle was out of use, replaced by UTA 87, the interior of which WAS completely rebuilt by the RPSI - I should know, I designed it! If in earlier days the RPSI DID alter the interior, then I cannot comment on what it had been like. I do recall vaguely that its entire interior panelling was very garish 1960s red and grey formica plastic!

It would have been interesting to see this beast in traffic! Presumably they'd have had to fit one or more of the GMs with all the relevant gubbins and techyology to be worked from the far end. Would have been great on Derry services or rugby specials to Lansdowne Road.....

One would have expected it to be eventually filled up on a regular rather than occasional basis - as I mentioned elsewhere, I reckon that after a while it would have been a three or maybe four-car AEC set. Being a new idea, it never got fully into its stride unfortunately.

Today’s GNR view was taken at Enniskillen in mid-September 1957, about ten days before the entire railway system in Fermanagh closed, thanks to Stormont. Railcars remained a rarity in this part of the world. Only three months earlier, this working had started - to be cut short before many were even aware of it. This railcar, often with a single brake third in tow, operated non-stop (other than reversal at Omagh) to Belfast. I am unaware of any other passenger train which did not stop at Portadown. Thus, views of it are rare. Rarer still was the prospect of Senior considering anything diesel to be worth photographing!

I’m thinking that’s a good idea, yes. Dugort Harbour is a terminus, so I would want the next thing to be a through station probably - small one with a short siding or two and a cattle bank.... something vaguely along those lines. Tonragee, for example, was a remote location on the Achill branch where there was a short-lived fish siding. There was once a plan to build a halt including red-brick station building there, but it wasn’t built - and the fish siding was reported as derelict within ten years of the branch opening... something like that might suit.

Senior had this rubber stamp. I had it eventually and I used it to date my schoolbooks.... the year date went up to 1972..... You can see where GNR “Ireland” was - the GNR wording was now off centre because the word “Ireland” had been picked off when it became the GNR(B).

Not at all discourteous, David! Yes, my grandfather designed these things to carry cattle after the Killala, Achill and Clifden lines closed. I put a drawing of it in the Achill book and the same one is going in the Clifden book, as it's relevant there too. I had never seen a photo of one before. It is, as far as I know, the only road vehicle he did any design work for - such matters were around that time all transferred to the "road people" in Broadstone. All I know is that they initially built four, with presumably more to follow later. I think, but am not sure, that it had a Leyland engine.

Putting decals on first, then very heavy weathering, is probably the easiest option for now....

Very much so. On the Achill branch at first, normal trains were "E" class tanks, but Newport and Mulrany fairs and seasonal harvester's emigration trains brought in the 2.4.0 tender engines.

I fished out the magazine, Old Blarney. The journey was from Dublin Airport to the RDS, so it might be at the start, rather than the end of the journey. The "headline" issue was the idea of taking livestock by PLANE! I suspect it may have been conducted as an experiment of some sort.

It does look grey indeed - but it could be a combination of coal dust, wear and tear, and length of time since it last saw a paint brush - the lettering suggests that wasn't yesterday! The GSWR had black wagons entirely, as far as can be ascertained, until the late 1890s or early 1900s, and by degrees they were painted what might have been the same very dark grey as locomotives, though by 1925 the more "normal wagon grey" seems to prevail. From what I have seen the Midland was something similar. If you look at Ernie's book on page 98, the picture of the "soft-top" No. 937 shows what is closer to the truth for pretty much all railway wagons. These things were pushed and battered about - they were basically boxes on wheels, never taken care of like locomotives and carriages. Look at this wagon and you'll see that the freshest paintwork, such as it is, just under roof level, seems way darker. On the framing, it is battered and faded to show bare wood in many places, and clearly very faded. When you get down to chassis level, it's just a jumble of dirt and brake dust. In all reality, to make a goods train look realistic, very heavy weathering to the point of almost obliterating the actual painted livery is the most realistic finish. This, of course, means that crisp white numbers, logos and lettering looks garish; I wonder if the likes of Railtec would do sheets of "barely visible" letters and numbers....

Could have done, Flange; it’s going into a book, so I do want to find out exactly what it’s doing, for the caption!

Yes, I believe so.

Hi Mark To answer the above, my thoughts for what they're worth... 1. Blue livery - very few. The origin of the blue livery was the idea of having a special livery for the "Tourist Express". It was never meant to an actual change of livery as such, for the whole railway. But when you dedicate a livery to one service, you need a few spares, so perhaps 15 or 20 carriages received it - though there appears to be no record. The vast majority of coaches remained brown, and the majority of locos remained green, though, and it would go without saying that this included the tank engines. I suspect that no locos were blue other than a few "A" class for the main line. There is a lovely painting showing a 2.4.0 at Ballynahinch in blue - it will actually be the cover pic on my forthcoming book on the Clifden line - but I strongly suspect that even that is artistic licence. 2. If you want to go for a branch which would have been primarily operated by the 0.6.0 "E"s, you're looking at Achill 1895-1905, and Athboy and Kingscourt mostly; probably Crossdoney - Killeshandra also. Other lines, such as Ballinrobe, Killala and Loughrea, and the Cavan branch, tended to live on a diet of tender engines due to occasionally heavier goods traffic. You have good "excuse" to have an imaginary branch run with "E"s only. 3. If you manage to get anyone to do a few credible six-wheeled carriages (a minimum would be a first or compo, a third and a brake or 3rd brake) I would definitely be in for a few. 4. If having a blue engine is a deal-breaker (and why not!), you might model a junction station with a tank engine on the branch and a blue 4.4.0 passing through on the main line. That's my tuppence-worth...

The platforms signs are GSWR - many such survived until quite recent times in obscure places. I think there's still one at Clonmel inside the building.

Hi BTB - the first is one of Cyril Fry's of A19 and a van in the old Limerick / Waterford bay at Limerick Junction. It will appear in a forthcoming book (if we ever get out of the virus "internment"!). The older lower height of GSWR platforms is evident (Mallow was still like this well into the 1980s). The second pic is from a 1947 CIE magazine showing a GSR truck recently repainted into CIE green. It is taken at the RDS where it is delivering cattle for the Spring Show.

Years ago, I saw a picture of a model someone had made (or repainted!) of a (British) LNER J72 which he had tweaked a bit - I can't remember how, but it involved filing a few bits and gluing on some small bits - not a huge conversion job. Now, it was most certainly not an exact model of a Midland "E" class, but painted grey and with a big number "555" on the side, it looked convincing enough to pass at least the "three foot" rule... The British equivalent of the K class (the Southern Railway's N class) 2.6.0s can be adapted as Irish, if you can't get an actual Bachmann K class. Mind you, all of these entered traffic just after the MGWR had become but one part of the GSR, so reference to them as "Midland" engines is stretching things a bit, as in addition to this many spent most of their working lives nowhere near the Midland - used on Waterford - Limerick, Waterford - Cork and Dublin - Cork. Naturally they were also regulars on the Galway and Sligo lines too. So a GSR-era layout will have those. While I have not researched it, there may be some Bachmann or Hornby 4.4.0 which might warrant conversion to half-reasonable approximation to an "A" class 4.4.0, and a J18 goods / mixed traffic 0.6.0 could be made up by altering some "bought" 0.6.0. JM Design (John Mayne, here) is offering an extremely nice brass kit of the G2 2.4.0. A model of a D16 4.4.0 would have me running to sell the car! There's a model available of several South Eastern & Chatham bogies which if you shorten them a bit bear a vague resemblance to some MGWR bogies of 1900-05 type of design. The six-wheel carriages, though, are the killer. A MGWR layout based on anything pre-1960 will need them in some shape or form. I asked questions here the other night about the Shapeways 3D prints, and replies from those who know about such thing were far from complimentary about them. Plasticard, in reality, seems the best option here. Drawings are readily available.

A road bridge over a cutting was my (unoriginal) way of dealing it with it in the past, and also in the forthcoming "Dugort Harbour" a similar theme, a tunnel mouth in a cutting.... I had been thinking about a small diorama-type thing in the future, too, based on a small wayside station alongside a road, a la Courtmacsherry, Castlegregory or Arigna branch. At one end the road would rise up and turn over the railway on a bridge, but I thought at the other end if the line disappeared among trees - any thoughts on that, anyone? At each end, of course, a small fiddle yard. I'll be discussing this with Baseboard Dave at some stage soon.....

Worth every cent. I've two ordered.....

That engine is an absolute beauty - as are the carriages....