jhb171achill

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!! These fellas are buying up the whole country for overpriced apartments............!

Terrible shame the company couldn’t have survived at least in part, maybe just the busier routes from Derry to Buncrana and Letterkenny.....

Indeed - too true!

Yes - and there were several variations of these, but all BR Mk 1 outline, hence narrower and noticeably lower than Irish-built stock attached to them!

Yes, indeed - SO many rural trains in the 60s were 2 or 3 coaches and a van - sometimes just one. Trawling two photo collections last week (for a reason!), I found a Limerick - Ballina train with a 121 hauling nothing more than a single laminate and a tin van! Usually, though, that service was 2 or 3 + van. I was on that service with 2 + van, Loughrea with a solitary coach - the unique one on that line which had no need for a van as they plugged it into the mains at night in Loughrea, having fitted it with storage heaters, and 3 laminates with tin van Rosslare - Limerick. Just before the railcars arrived in Limerick, I went down to poke about in Ireland’s last city terminus with proper trains. I watched as the Nenagh train was backed into the platform, then the Rosslare one, awaiting their couple of passengers each....both sets were a BR van and just one Craven.

Recent discussions have focussed on what new (grey) 121s would have hauled. Above, from loco working backwards: - 4-wheeled luggage / guards “tin” van (silver) - Park Royal (green) - Four wooden bogies of at least two, possibly three types, all GSWR-origin, dating from 1902-15 builds (green) - Park Royal (green) - Another two wooden coaches, probably GSWR, inevitably green - Tin van, probably a GSV (heating van). Could be green or silver.

Baltimore, Co. Cork, Valentia Harbour, Co. Kerry and Westport Quay, Co Mayo are all perfect for a small terminus. There's even scope for a passenger train in all three - albeit a prototypically small one. And if the line leaves the station and disappears into an Albert Quay-like cutting........perfect. Two engines, half a dozen goods vans, an open wagon or two, a bogie coach and a tin van, and you're good to go!

Wow! Is it still in existence?

1361 and 1367 - Bredins? So, no catering on that Westport section? 2422 - one of the RPSI preserved ones!

There was always this dilemma with working steam: do you stay at the back to get decent photos on curves, or up front to hear the music!

I recall a story told to me by the late, great, road steam man Rory Wolff from north Antrim. Rory was coming back home from a steam rally at Shane's Castle one time in the mid or late '70s. He was driving his famous preserved steam lorry (I think Lord O'Neill might have it now?). It was the height of the troubles and in those times the police (then the RUC) often had more important things to do than worry about people speeding or driving with drink taken. Now Rory was stone cold sober, but in his steam lorry he was exceeding the speed limit - on a MOTORWAY! (The M2). There had been 12th July related trouble in the area, so one might expect the RUC to be even LESS interested in road traffic offences. Yet one of those armoured landrovers they had then pulled him over. Here we go, he thought, I'll get a ticket. Policeman, on getting out of landrover and approaching Rory: "What sort of thing is this?" Rory" "It's a steam lorry" - "A what?" "A steam lorry". - (Policeman summons colleague from van) "I never knew there was things like that. How old is it?" (Rory gives date). - "Where'd ye get it?" "I bought it from XCVCCFFG" - "Oh - and it's steam powered?" "Yep." - "Like an old train?" "Yep." - "Ye were doing a right speed in it. We clocked you at over 70!" Rory is thinking, OK, gimme the ticket, I need to to tend the fire...... - "Never seen a thing like that. I just pulled you over 'cause I saw the smoke. I thought yer truck was on fire!" "Ah, emm, no. It's just the coal smoke." - "Ah, OK, give'us a minute, I'd love a photograph of it, is that OK?" "Sure!" Policemen get Rory to take their picture beside it, on the hard shoulder. - "OK, thanks! Away ye go, then!" No ticket.

Yes, looks like it to me!

The second van is a standard CIE one - so Leslie does the exact one there!

The GNR wagon behind it is a long way from home!

First time I ever went to the Adjacent Island of Narra-gauge things, there were still quite a few green diesels and maroon coaches to be seen among the sea of "Rail Blue" - interesting times. Where I was, long trains all of Mk 1 coaches, and even longer loose-coupled goods trains.... very interesting times. And now they have gaudily-coloured plastic tubes, in which you pay the price of a detached house in Ballsbridge to travel in a seat designed for a nine-year-old of unusually small build, with no window to look through at overgrown bushes, graffiti, security fencing, concrete walls, crumpled supermarket trollies and burst black bin-liners and old mattresses. Just like the approach to Islandbridge Junction, in fact, or bits of the Belfast Central line.... Gimme the Ffestiniog, North York Moors, Swanage or Worth Valley lines any day!

Perfect, then - colour light shniggles!

The "Woolwich" 2.6.0 in the set you mentioned is a nice little thing, and there were a small few of them which managed to make it just into the '60s. To run behind it, the only thing ready to run right now is the silverfox coaches in green. Cravens didn't appear in traffic until literally about a month or two after the last steam engine pulled its last passenger train. There are some nice steam-era kits for carriages from Studio Scale Models, and if you've the time to put in, Worsley Works. For the late steam era, as well as laminates and Park Royals, the "tin vans" are again necessary. But also six-wheelers. To complete the scene, the BIG "missing thing" is AEC railcars, which monopolised many longer distance passenger trains from the early 50s to the mid 60s. In the long term, if we get a tin van, 6-wheeler, and AEC cars, we've got the "grey'n'green" era as well wrapped up as the "black'n'tan" and "Supertrain" and later eras are now.

If it is intended to be in works grey, it's spot on - I had forgotten, but I did read that somewhere too.

I had thought..... some sort of shunting model of either Penrose Quay or Victoria Quay sidings in Cork - where it DID work - would be an amazing model!

Not really! You've GNR designs, which are - GNR.... and the NCC's "somersaults". Neither are like the standard British upper quads at all.... Remember, the railways here were all built before the border was, so there's no "British / Irish" divide. Having said that, the whole Ballyercall looks mighty with either set of rolling stock.........

I absolutely second, third and fourth that. Paddy, you've been an inspiration to a whole new generation of Irish modellers. You've enabled exhibition-standard modelling of the period from 1961 to the present with consistent high quality. Very many thanks from an owner of a 121, soon to be two, a good few black'n'tan 141s, and several "Craven" coaches!

I think the last was about 1943.... They never left Wesht Caaark, of course, but would possibly be a very good thing for a shunting layout; in theory, one outlier might have ended up pushing things about Cork yards, or North Wall to Inchicore, until 1960! Maybe a model of the "Young Offenders" driving and firing it? I'm tempted myself.

I very much like that idea. I have a fondness for Black 5s, and the standard British designs. I'm following the progress of the 3MT project over there in the Republic of Cummins with great interest - a perfect "new-build" branch engine. I am also interested in the "rail blue" era, which I recall from a few holidays in the Federation of Boris in 1970-4.... might gather a few blue things at some stage! Great Pictures, from Ballyercall-in-the-Wolds, County Somerset........!

By the time cattle traffic finished at the end of 1975, most of the stock of cattle wagons had been gathered in Cork for scrapping. I cannot say for certain what proportion was fitted, but certainly there were many still unfitted. Some had been repainted brown after 1970 when the brown wagon livery appeared, but probably two-thirds were still grey. This may or may not suggest they weren't "modernised". The wagon is a GNR van used for cement, I believe. Here, it has newly been repainted in CIE grey with appropriate logo, approximately 1963. Its GNR origin is evident from the tell-tale corrugated ends (also seen on the adjacent vehicle) and the "N" added to its GNR number. On the original of this pic you can also just about make out "G N" on one of the axlebox covers.

Hi Buz OK, the first thing to remember is that these are (British) LMS coaches, using moulds presumably used for such things in the British market. they are unfortunately not even remotely close in appearance to ANYTHING which ever ran on the CIE system. To an Irish modeller, they ARE however of use to a UTA modeller - as they are very close indeed to several designs used by the NCC lines north of Belfast, right to the end of steam and into the early 70s. But not CIE. However, needs must. As many comment here, over and over again, and very rightly so, we are spoiled with the great and increasing amount of ready to run Irish stuff now. But with a small market, and pre-1972, a BEWILDERING array of all sorts of non-standard designs of locomotives, carriages and wagons, even if the market was huge, IRM, Murphy, Provincial Wagons, 00 Works, SSM and all the rest would need to live to be 400 years old before they'd get through half of them. The correct coaches to operate in the Bachmann set would be of an absolute multitude of types, for which it would even be difficult to get drawings to scratch-build, let alone buy off the shelf. So, British repaints are the best realistic compromise. Livery wise, the shades of green are correct, though the line below window level is far too thick and the "flying snails" are a bit too big, and the wrong shape. But I'm nit-picking here, although a rivet-counter will appreciate what I'm saying. For the "two-foot rule", they are absolutely fine. The cravens went into traffic in 1963 and were used mostly on main lines. Some old wooden carriages, like the model, DID still exist in traffic, and as other posts I have made will illustrate, green coaches were in use for a few years more. However, here we run into two problems. 1. Those carriages still operating in green were NOT in THIS livery; this is the pre-1955 darker green livery, same as used on green steam engines, station paintwork, CIE buses, CIE lorries and CIE-just-about-everything. Except, that is, passenger railway carriages and diesel locomotives! A handful of older coaches still retained a much-scruffyish older lined green until the closures around 1961, especially in West Cork - but anything green beyond that was the lighter colour. 2. Some old wooden coaches did work well into the 1960s, and few were still used on Dublin and Cork locals until as late as 1974. But these were repainted black'n'tan. So, in answer to your question, the answer is "not really". Yes, some green ran with cravens when new. But this is the wrong green. Some timber coaches ran with Cravens - but they didn't look like these! Hope that helps, and nobody died of boredom going through it all!