jhb171achill

I could well believe it! Having been brought up on the originals, which I still have somewhere covered in my childish scribblings, I concur with His Reverence!

And you’d get some side panels still grey, and others newly painted brown on the same wagon...... I remember the B2B’s passing along the GNR to Belfast around 1969 / 70.

“Thomas” has been mentioned above. The late Rev. Awdry must be owed great gratitude for getting a lot of “young’uns” interested. I know at least one indispensable volunteer on the 12 inches to 1 ft scale who cut his railway teeth (probably literally!) on “Thomas” toys.

Larnecabin, that's one of the most inspiring projects I've seen in a long time - a prototype I haven't seen before, nor anything like it. It promises to be a great project! Superb finish on the brickwork.

G S. Both the Great Northern Railway and the Great Southern, as well as the GSWR before it, tended to make the letter "G" look like a "C". This even gave rise to an error in CIE's designation in the early 1960s or ex-GNR railcars, where the GN number was prefixed with a "C" instead of a "G"! Thus, railcar 609 (imaginary number) would become C609N instead of G609N! If that happened today, we would be screaming about the illiteracy of the "youth of today".......... And yes, the wagon is new in the picture.

Then I’ll go with my initial instinct: it’s a VERY RARE Cork & Macroom Railway coach.

That’s perfect for any Irish layout, BTB. The GNR, GSWR, NCC, UTA, DSER, W & L, MGWR and CIE used these, or ones extremely close to them. Slightly darker grey all over (use British LMS shade, with marginally lighter for CIE) for both body & chassis, and “flying snail”. By the 1950s CIE are churning out the corrugated opens at a great rate of knots, so by the 1960s the wooden ones, while still about, are gradually becoming a minority. Despite that, a few survive to get the “roundel” logo, and a smaller number still even manage to get the brown livery after 1970, by which time they are a rarity. I am unaware of any in traffic after 1973. The UTA painted some in a reddish-bauxite colour in 1965/6 or thereabouts for the Courtaulds traffic. A couple survived as ballast wagons with NIR got a few years into the 1970s.

Indeed; a totally new one to me too........... wonder were there any others?

Those are the original grey, with (unusually) black chassis. The orange came in the late sixties, with the final ones delivered in it. The ivory came much later, in the 1980s - long after the last ones in grey were repainted orange. Grey and ivory never ran together, and thus "black'n'tan" locomotives never hauled anything ivory. Also, loose-coupled goods brake vans were history before bubbles appeared in ivory. That is one FASCINATING bit of film..... Those "bubbles" appear to be in undercoat - maybe a test run. They entered traffic in standard wagon grey, albeit uniquely with black chassis.

I remember reading in a model railway magazine in the 1970s a comment, possibly about the late Mike Sharman’s early GWR broad gauge modelling, which suggested that many enthusiasts seem drawn to a period around or just before or after when they were born. Evidently there’s some psychological reason for that! Whether true or not, it applies to me; my main area of interest is 1950-65. By the time I’m in my teens, my interest in anything new wanes, thus while 181s were items of interest, there’s something in my head which says 071s are just “too new”. Similarly, I’d love to see the SLNCR Railcar “B” or an AEC or BUT set back in use, but a 70 or 80 class, or one of the ghastly 450s or Drogheda green things, zero interest. And yet, I’d be the first to say that the 80 class, especially, had one of the most important roles of ANY passenger tolling stock in Irish railway history, including bringing a drunk me home on Friday nights in the late 70s..... Senior was the same. His main interest was 1920s, and he was born in 1918. Now, Noel will kill me for saying so, but I appreciate the gaudily-coloured plastic tubes that populate today’s railways for three reasons (only?!); - They get you from A to B, like a bus. - They will, whether we like it or not, attract people who are learning to talk and walk right now, to model railways, and railway interest in general; new volunteers in 20 years’ time for the RPSI, ITG, DCDR, the 3ft gauge lines, and the IRRS. - Better a railcar railway, complete with weeds, overgrown hedgerows with no view, graffiti, security fences, graffiti, yellow lines, litter and graffiti-strewn concrete.....than NO railway.

The locomotive is a Great Northern loco of a type used (latterly, at any rate) on the Dublin - Howth, Belfast docks area, and the Belturbet - Ballyhaise branch. The Ford railbus was one of a pair that the Dublin & Blessington Tramway had built in 1928 to carry mails and off-peak services. They were underpowered and lightly built, and soon were worn out. One ended up only fit to take mailbags and was scrapped, with the other soldiering on to the end. Its body was bought by the County Donegal Railways and made into a narrow-gauge railcar trailer, in which guise it lasted into the 1950s. This 2nd pic is particularly interesting in that it may be in the rarely-photographed walled Terenure terminus, and shows the peculiar terminus building and ticket office on the left. It’s been mentioned in another answer as Templeogue; the buildings were similar and this is possible too. Tis indeed what it is.

Were they the same wagons that carried the “back-to-backs”?

Very probably - I know for a fact that this was EXACTLY what was behind the NIR genny van coach with its NIR logo well into “Translink” days - plus, of course, the better-known last loco turned out in full GNR blue livery in Dundalk, just after CIE took it over.... Sadly - yes, exactly!

There's a very strange one livery-wise. The "NIR" logo was officially discontinued when the oval "crooked grape" Translink device came into being - as long ago as 1996! Yet, it is still applied to the trio of NIR "111s". Is there a reason? I know NIR is technically still a separate company and "Translink" is effectively just a trading name, but it's applied to ALL trains and buses and related signage and publicity......

The norm was facing points to a junction both here and Britain. Naturally there were exceptions, but usually for a practical reason. Ballybrophy was exceptional as it faced Cork rather than Dublin. Take Mallow as a better example. You could come up from Cork and go direct onto the Waterford line. That was the norm. An example like the plan above gives more shunting possibilities on a small layout, of course!

There’s another forum on which one of our regulars is Natalie Gardner, who will be known to many of us; the slightest mention of a “G” class, which our Nat has very considerable experience with in 12ins = 1ft scale, will always elicit this as an answer: ”” !

Yes, but if a train is coming from the right, and going up the branch, he needs to be able to get across without reversing.......

In operation, a crossover is more likely the other way round and to the right of the junction points, thus enabling a train from the right to go directly onto the branch....

Nobody seems to have noticed much that 2020 is the 75th year since CIE was formed......might it be too late to think of an ICR set in fully lined, snail-adorned, dark green with light green lining? ttc - have a word!

Ah, us oul wans are working on you, Noel. Soon, it’ll be an 00 Works J15 with forty of Leslie’s cattle trucks and a van going through en route from Ballyculchie Fair to Cabra!

I travelled to Lakeview and Tara Junction in 1966, and there were black "A"s (and still one green one), with a grey 121, two green "C"s, a black "E", a black'n'tan "G", and six new 141s....... Lakeview was full of grey 30 ton vans and an old GSR one too................ ....and me oul fella had a pic of an ex-GNR "UG" there, beside a "Woolwich" and three "J15s", a "J18" and a 400 class in 1959....... (And then I woke up!) (Can we tempt you, Noel?)

Very much so!

Best I could find - certainly none are great photos, but it gives an idea. I have ciné of them departing Heuston which shows the brownish shade up WAY more starkly. Some models seem to have the orange / tan / golden brown* going part way down on the central driver's steps. This is wrong - they were black to the top. (* ...or whatever ye're havin' yerself.....)

Interesting - that might solve a mystery, which I will put out here. People bored by livery discussions, please change channel now! All photos I have seen, plus what's planned, I believe, for the model, appears to indicate a very fine black line around the numbers on the ends and sides, and the "flying snail" on the ends. However, I am almost certain that somewhere, some time, I either saw a real one or a good quality picture, which shows this lining as white, contrasting well against the grey and yellow. Now I know that this livery was used on tour buses, and maybe it was on those.... evidence eludes me, however. Maybe I was on the Kool-Aid that day. The other mystery, of course, is why repaint even one in grey at all, given its poor wearing quality, it's non-standard nature, and the fact that by as early as 1964 they had started painting them black'n'tan, and given that they were delivered in grey and yellow, these colours would not routinely have been stocked by CIE!

Correct. Senior mentioned seeing one passing along the Royal Canal with an up Sligo nose first at one stage - one wonders why it hadn't been turned in Sligo..... Some years ago, when I was on Downpatrick's management committee, and discussion over whether or not to ask IE for a 121, 141, or anything at all, was on the table. There was a slight majority in favour of asking for 124 or 134 (both of which were in traffic), but the loco dept. made that very point - that two of a crew were needed. On grounds of practicality, they were of course right. A 121 at Downpatrick could turn at the triangle, but in actual traffic, could run only in one direction - nose first out, and cab first return. As a result, 146 was acquired instead, and it's going strong! Yes, very much so. Again, for our younger readers, ALL goods trains had to have a van at the end, no matter what wagons they were made up of.