jhb171achill

Will be fantastic to see her back in traffic again!

“Remember that goose in the brake van - you’ve to leave it with Kitty Mahony at Tully gatehouse. That’s the one before the river with the hens on the left…… and throw her down a few buckets of coal….” ”…..what’s the pressure showing?……”

Perfectly "shabby" looking! Mrs.jhbSenior travelled on one of those things from Enniskillen to Sligo a couple of times. She was aware also of Railcar "B", which for fairly obvious reasons she much preferred! Her thoughts on rails travel were not particularly complimentary, but she did wax lyrical about what is still a much under-rated scenic setting....

While too late for my interest period, a 2-car unit like this is absolutely ideal for a small layout / starter layout. I saw a mini-layout at an exhibition somewhere once which had just one (British) "bubble car" railcar - cab at each end - and it just shuttled back and forth to a small terminus in modern era style, with no run round, just a buffer stop and away back too where ye came from. It was surprisingly good to watch - largely because of extremely top-notch scenery realism. A two-car 2600 would be perfect for that. Had the Wisht Cark lines survived, or some of them, they might have a thing like that on a Cork - Bandon local.....

CIE 1950s lined green!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or black'n'tan.

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He sure did! Plus a lot of my other stuff, and more to come. I’ve about a dozen Provincial Wagons still to make up and I’m hovering back in the “provincial” direction right now, and I’ve IRM Bullied opens ordered…. 1st January 1944, eighty years ago. The three times a week goods, temporarily the only departure due to the fuel crisis, prepares to sidle out of Dugort Harbour at mid-day…

No. His northern models were as follows: 1. Narrow gauge - CDR, LLSR, Ballycastle, Cushendall and Clogher Valley stuff. Strangely, he ignored the Ballymena & Larne which had some very nice stock. 2. NCC: He did a "Jeep" (No. 5), a U2 (Dunluce Castle), a full rake of NCC "North Atlantic" carriages, and a few wagons. 3. Two BCDR locos and several BCDR carriages - again interestingly, he ignored their 6-wheel stock which right until closure constituted by a very large margin, the vast majority of BCDR stock (I think they only had about 6 bogies). 4. DNGR loco and coaches. 5. GNR(I) stuff. Yes, he would indeed have been aware of these developments, as his last models WERE 1960s in origin - Cravens and 141s. By this stage the MPD and MED sets had been in traffic for quite a few years. He travelled on a number of IRRS excursions as well, so he may have been on one of those which visited York Road in the early 60s - if so, he'd have seen the UTA railcars all round him. Strangely he made no AEC or BUT railcars; an omission like that would be the same as someone who set out in this day and age to make a model of all CURRENT Irish trains, omitting an ICR or a 201. I guess he didn't like railcars; at this stage (1960s / 70s) there were quite a lot of enthusiasts (jhbSenior included) who looked on these with disdain, as they (a) remembered steam and (b) saw railcars as being somewhat analagous with the 1950s / 60s overall decline of the railways. Certainly, sifting through all the major photographic collections, it is clear that railcars north and south are not to the forefront of 1950-70 photography!

Raise the bridges or drop the trackbed. IE will be unlikely to even consider either; I doubt even mcManus could fund that.....! As an aside, whether the chimney was a separate casting or bolted on wouldn't actually be an issue either way - it would be thye bridges, now known to be insufficient in height.

Indeed; thirty years ago such questions were asked (and answered!) regarding No. 74 "Dunluce Castle" in UFTM. Despite incredible hurdles, the overall answer, after all things had been considered very carefully, was "yes". That remains the case. The same answer would apply, in theory, to BCDR 30 there, the GNR 2.4.2T and the derry shunter; as well as "Lough Erne" at Whitehead. This is what I was afraid of in my initial answer; that I might be seen as one of the majority of "naysayers" as opposed to the few with the miagination to make things happen. In the case of Maedb, the clearance was some three inches when the track was about 2ft lower; this in itself answers that question. As it was, the safety valves had to be removed en route. A cursory look at the thing shows that shortening of the chimney is not viable. In the most purist form of theoretical possibility, it's quite possible to run it again - provided Irish Rail either raise the heights of all bridges necessary on the Cork line, or rebuild all the track at a lower level; also, that they build and install sheds and turntables at Dublin and Cork. Other than that, for once the naysayers have their moment!

Couldn't agree more!

It barely fitted under bridges before, and being so tall there's no scope to lower the chimney - and the track level is well above what it used to be, so that one's known already. Based on current and recent RPSI jobs, it could be anything from half a million upwards. Yes, as you say, many things could be done to assess and even restore: but nowhere to eventually run it, nowhere to look after it, and unlikely to be an ongoing market of sufgficient level to fund its future needs.

This is it, yes! It's a different culture here, I suppose; we do ourselves a disservice comparing ourselves to the railway enthusiast / preservationist / even modelling, scenes in Britain, particularly England. England alone probably has more railway modellers, preservationists, railway museums and preserved railways than most of the rest of the world put together.

They've heard he's up'n'about............

Plus - many forget that the vast majority of GNR locos were black, rather than blue! Black locos and grey wagons outnumbered the shiny blue machines buy a lot.......... (but an ever-smaller few of us know that!)....

Very true - the signals were installed by a colleague who built this bit of the layout. It's the wrong colour, ladder was the wrong way round, etc etc... I may remove it, actually, as Dugort Harbour is based on somewhere like Valentia Harbour or Westport Quay, neither of which had signals, latterly anyway; they tended to be worked "one engine in steam" from "town"! Locally, there was just a ground frame. I'd have to say it's low down the priority list, but it's ON that list anyway!

Hi TimO The coaches you mention haven't appeared lately as they are in a storage box which is currently hidden on a lower shelf in behind an avalanche of my daughter's stuff, currently in storage here since she moved home for a while. What they are - one is a kit - SSM I think, but it's a long time ago. This is a brake standard of the type used on the Loughrea branch (and later Ballina) with a storage heater so it didn't need a genny van. There were two such; 1910 and 1904. The latter replaced the former after a rough shunt at Loughrea damaged 1910 about 1973. On the layout, it can form the branch train, but as with prototypes and lines of the type that Dugort would be if it were real, now and again it has to go away to "town" for maintenance, so the branch will have a coach of some other type along with a genny van while it's away - and it will disappear, no doubt, tagged onto the back of a main line train at the junction. A vehicle like this is a perfect fit for a CIE branch line 1960-ish to late 70s. (Pre 1963 in green, of course, as 1910 was). The next one ytou mention is a Silverfox laminate. Very adequate in black'n'tan, and weathered (like most of my stuff) by Dempsey of our community here. I've several Park Royals in green and black'n'tan, and plan to get more when the IRM mainline ones are out. While rare on branch lines, they did appear, and as Dugort Harbour meets the main line terminus of Castletown West end-on, PRs will appear in Castletown on main line trains, and also summer excursions will bring these into Dugort. I await any type of RTR Bredins or GSWR wooden-bodues, plus, of course, the Hattons Genesis CIE six-wheelers, with interest. The other stock I currently have are four old Triang / Bachmann British wooden-bodied stock, two of which bear a reasonable ("two foot rule") resemblance to two ex-WLWR brake thirds which survived to the mid-1950s. These will operate alongside several SSM GSWR six-wheelers, which are currently under construction chez a friend of mine, and the Hattons stuff, when operating with some six or seven steam locos I have (mostly J15s, as would befit West Kerry, boy). Tin vans - about 4 in all three liveries - complete this picture. This covers the 1950s. Moving into the 1960s, I have but two Cravens. I could have bought more, but in the type of scenario I'm trying to replicate, they would have been rare visitors. A main line train into C astletown West might have had one, but would mostly be a mixture of various types of laminates, Bredins and Park Royals. Appearances on the branch would have happened, but been rarer still - probably only on a summer Saturday excursion from Tralee or Cork, or maybe fair day (or an IRRS special!).

He sure did! Plus a lot of my other stuff, and more to come. I’ve about a dozen Provincial Wagons still to make up and I’m hovering back in the “provincial” direction right now, and I’ve IRM Bullied opens ordered….

This stuff is among the very top “star performers” on this entire forum. The DWWR / DSER has, despite very unique and interesting locos and rolling stock, and among the most spectacular scenery in Ireland, been inexplicably ignored by modellers over the years. Your efforts make this balance up - and with bells and whistles. Great to see so much more. The carriages, too, and wagons, are amazing!

Woohoo!! 800 in the S & C! Where can I sign up! What a thought! Yes, as you say, deep ballasting etc throws a spanner in the works. When I wrote my initial answer above, I was conscious that it could come across itself as pure doom-mongering. But this particular one is, in reality, a non-starter for the reasons shown. Some could be got around, but even after delivery of a fully restored loco, unlike the S & C, and indeed Britain in general, there simply is nowhere on our rail network it could operate, and beyond Inchicore nowhere it could be stabled and maintained…. I forgot to mention turntables. One would have to be installed in Dublin and Cork (where in Cork…?) big enough for it. That’s doable, but the rest sadly isn’t….

This, unfortunately, is and has been the reality. For some twenty years, before the Santas reached their maximum effectiveness (or even existed) the May Tour was the raft the RPSI floated on. My annual RPSI budget calculations, and those of my predecessor, were largely determined by what profit it made. At most, enthusiasts from all 32 counties would have filled one coach - ANY year - meaning that without the English market this annual outing would not have been able to run. Some years the entire Irish contingent might have only filled half a coach. ”It’s too expensive!”, we used to hear. Yup, it wasn’t cheap. But the English, whose basic level of disposable income wasn’t HUGELY above ours, came in their droves, not just paying the fares, but paying for hotels, flights and ferries, on top of that. We’d do a raffle. The English folks would buy ten tickets and throw a fiver on top as a donation. Not so our own good folks here - we would buy one, or none, or look out the window! Such, boys and girls, is life; we are grateful to our neighbours from GB - without you over the years, it’s very possible the RPSI might no longer exist, such was your level of support!

Yes, you're talking about impossible zillions. First things first; the locomotive is believed not to be in the best condition, but no restoration is impossible - look at some of the Barry wrecks, now running on preserved railways in Brexitland; in truth, having been rebuilt from a single bolt, a number plate and the smell of an oil rag, many are effectively new-builds. So, apart from perhaps a decade of time and a very big lot of money, restoration is theoretically possible. That was the easy bit. It is not certain that it would fit under ANY bridge anywhere now, as track levels have risen significantly since it operated, on the ONE line it was able to operate on. I would forget about Belfast too. At this point, it's almost certainly end of story, puff puff back to Cultra. But, let's say that it WOULD fit on the Cork line again (it wouldn't, but imagine).... 1. It will be so long away from the rails, that it will be treated for certification purposes as a new build (gawd help the RPSI when 105 rolls out). This means an absolutely colossal amount of paperwork, testing, and trial runs. The cost of this alone will run into five or six figures before papers are signed to say it can operate. And - who will operate it? 2. Crew training - once the engine is certified it would need a very intensive and sustained period of crew training with load, and driver familiarity. This simply is not practical on a Cork line with increasing local trains at eiother end and an hourly service. This, again, is a point in the process, where the big "N O" raises its head. But let's assume the tooth fairy is still on our side! 3. It can be looked after in Dublin now - but if a metro tunnel ever appears, or Inchicore is sold off or modernised too much, that won't be possible. As it is, there is no likely means of adequately servicing it in Cork, as far as I know. So, if Inchicore goes, that's the final nail in the coffin - nowhere to keep it! 4. The market? People forget this is not Britain. If this WAS Britain, the lineside would be crammed with people with cameras from Kingsbridge to Glanmire Road, and they'd need an army of security at Inchicore while steam was being raised. Once operating, you'd stick 15 carriages behind it and sell every seat for a £100+ fare. Not here ye won't! The cost of operating a Dublin-Cork return trip with this locomotive would be astronomical. What's left of my treasurer's thoughts as I age suggest a fare per adult of €150 - €200 a head. Given what I know of the Irish railway enthusiast psyche and commercial market, even the tooth fairy won't crack that one. And even if every enthusiast on this island was inspired with generosity towards steam travel, will Irish Rail permit a train long enough to hold the necessary number of people to make a trip behind it financially viable? 800 will remain in Cultra, as 36 will in Cork. The best hope - and this IS possible - is that as AI develops to ever more realistic levels, a "virtual" video can be made of it visiting the entire Irish railway network. Actual operation of 800, quite simply, isn't going to be an option, ever. Mind you; a separate issue, I know - a friend of mine is in the earkly stages of constructing a live steam 7 1/4 inch gauge version! Now THAT will be a sight to see, but that's entirely another story. And - come and see Fry's "0" gauge model of it in the Malahide Model Railway Museum!

Yes, it was 2ft gauge - but also, a small number of the mostly-now-defunct BnM lines were also 2ft, though the majority were 3ft; I travelled in the 1980s on the 2ft gauge one at Ardara, Co Donegal.

Wow! Looks impressive. Sadly I'm not anywhere near your area but I'll be interested in seeing it develop! Irish prototype or what would it be?

Not "Enterprise"; but the jhb171 family all decamped to rural Co Galway over Christmas for a family gathering chez one of us who lives down there among the green fields and stone walls. Upon planning today's return to the Smoke, one of our number looked up the Ironroad Erin website last night to book a tocket for today Athenry - Kingsbridge. The website said 9last night) that there were no trains at all on the Galway line today, but there was zero mention of any engineering works, or perhaps trees down on the line, ICR-killing leaves on the line, or other such disturbances. Had we wanted to book Dublin - Sligo, or Cork - Thurles, etc etc, no probs. Westport, no probs. But nothing to Galway. So this morning we looked it up again. In two minutes flat, Relative had booked and paid for the 13:05 ex-Galway (Athenry 13:20). No probs. And she travelled on it, and the wifi worked.... What was wrong with that website last night?