Mulling over the latest offerings from IRM, and such items as Provincial Wagons' UTA spoil wagons and other GNR-related stuff, it recalls to mind what potential there is for very individual layout ideas or lines in the North.
Small though the system would become after the catastrophic policies of the Stormont government 1950-65, it is a case of small but interesting. Railcar trains with no two vehicles alike, trailing so much goods that they were to all intents and purposes main line mixed trains operated by railcar, a la CDRJC, anyone? Last steam in Ireland, north or south? Modern (brand new 80 class) railcars mixing and mingling with one of the only three Hunslet types ever built, hauling an excursion of de-engined railcars and ancient steam stock, again no two alike..... the lack of goods and lack of mileage is more than made up for with the above matters alone. Go back a little to the 1960s, and we have steam and huge goods traffic on the Derry Road, CIE excursions to Omagh sitting side by side with ex-GNR AEC / BUT railcars.
And the wagons. Just like CIE in the fifties had an eclectic mix of brand new goods stock and antique stock from its constituent companies, so the UTA had ex-GNR stuff, ex-NCC and ex-BCDR also. It had the very different designs of NCC goods brake van, among those of GNR origin (like Whitehead's "Ivan", but without those black stripes!), though i don't recall ever seeing any ex-BCDR brake vans.
Also the classic GNR Mills architecture (GVS - Dundalk, Newry, & Derry Londonroad), and the very picturesque and unique architecture of the BNCR and later NCC, with the iconic wide-roofed signal cabins and somersault signals. And scenery: Portadown to Finaghy may not inspire - but Castlerock, Downhill, the Warrenpoint branch, much of the Derry Road, and the dramatic coastal scenery of parts of the Larne line? By proportion, even the modern NIR probably has more scenic bits than IE! (N I Tourist Board, please send my payment cheque to the usual offshore account. It would be unfair to burden our tax authorities with even more work).
I will be known here for long ago banging on about "when will a Jeep be offered". I sense this may become a more viable issue in times to come - I certainly hope so. Over on RM Web, in between the awful pop-up ads, we see the very excellent Northern Ireland based layouts, not to mention railcar building skills, of the likes of Kirley and others. The interest, like that of CIE, is growing.
So what have we - how do we put together a layout based on the UTA / NIR? Let's look at it in two bits. First, pre-65, when you've steam and double the mileage; latterly, the post-1965 times, when the 80 class ruled.
1. UTA
At the VERY start we still have the Ballycastle line open, so a layout based on a Ballymoney-style interchange would be interesting. But let's look at stock.
Carriages are EASY. Remember the Bachmann set of three "CIE" coaches with a Woolwich? These are standard early 1920s LMS stock in CIE livery In rality, while CIE never posessed a single coach even vaguely similar to these, they are perfect for UTA.The reason is this. We may thank a small Austrian gentleman with a Marx Brothers* moustache who was elected to high office in Germany in 1933, and went on to become famous in the early 1940s. He decided one day to drop bombs on Belfast. In doing so, he obliterated much of the carriages sidings at York Road, and a fair slice of the goods yard. This meant that the still LMS-owned NCC system there had a sudden stock shortage. Large numbers of old secondary, and in some cases withdrawn stock was hurriedly shipped in from England from the parent LMS. All of this was (English) MIdland Railway or LMS origin (no LNWR, funnily enough, as far as I'm aware), and hey presto! Actual LMS designs operating here, the very last of which lasted until the mid 1970s as excursion stock - hauled by none other than IRM's Hunslets. Since the NCC was owned outright by the LMS, their OWN designs built in York Road were built to standard LMS overall house design, albeit with very many local differences - a bit like some of the later Mk 2 BREL types that ran on NIR & CIE being of the same broad dimensions as British equivalents, but door spacings and other things specific to here.
Just as in CIE areas, ex-MGWR, ex-GSWR and other stock might be indiscrimately mixed in with their own modern builds, same with UTA. There are Worsley and SSM kits of GNR carriages available, ready to run LMS types, both wooden panelled and steel-sided, which are as near as dammit to what ran on the UTA and later NIR systems. In steam days, we'd still need to botch some sort of Fairburn 2.6.4T; hence my repeated plainmtive wailings for a RTR Jeep. For those lucky enough to have got one, the 00 Works GNR 4.4.0 and 0.6.0 RTR locos are necessary, especially if you're doing the GN section. I remember both types on local trains.
Wagons - Leslie's GNR vans - these will be essential. Leslie also does the GNR four wheel passenger van - wodely used for parcels traffic on the GN sections of the UTA. For the NCC the equivalent Brown Van. Model the GN section, and you've a possibility of a newspaper train hauled by steam or a CIE diesel, and with a truly eclectic parade of varied vans behind it: around 1963 it was possible to see, at least in theory, such a train consisting of a new black'n'tan "tin van", andother in green, another in filthy silver, a fitted ex-GN goods van, an ex-GN passenger van in brown and another in UTA green, and as many brown vans as you could shake broiwn van monster at - with perhaps a bogie brake third and a goods brake van. We won't go into fintona trams, but that yoke on the back of a consist like that would hardly raise an eyebrow.
While CIE goods stock was very distinct from British designs, and thus an irish layout with simply re-liveried British wagons and vans is really only suitable as a stop-gap measure until Leslie or IRM do a "proper" one, the convenient fact is that while the LMS shipped carriages into belfast in the 1940s rather than large amounts of wagons, the NCC themselves, being LMS-owned, built their own wagons to designs of the same type as the LMS! In several books, or online IRRS photos, the eagle-eyed will spot these "British"-looking designs a mile off. Therefore, certain types of ex-LMS off-the-shelf Hornby / Bachmann / Dapol etc designs will be fine. As with CIE of course, no black chassis; the NCC painted them body colour same as further south.
Just as with CIE, there are several MASSIVELY glaring omissions in the RTR - even kit - markets.
With CIE, the gaping voids are the lack of the absolutely essential 1950-70 AEC railcars, plus the equally necessary tin vans. I have several JM Design ones - wish i had got more. The Silverfox ones are very crude indeed, and like anything ordered from Silverfox in green, the colour is completely wrong, as is their obsession with light grey roofs.
With earlier UTA, it's hardly surprising that none of the railcars like MEDs and MPDs exist - scarcely two of the latter type were alike, and some were converted from 1920s carriages! But if we had the AEC sets, some could be in CIE liveries, of course, but others would be in GNR, UTA and later NIR liveries. But the gaping omissions are Jeeps and the AECs.
2. Late UTA and into NIR days
In the late 60s, you've no authentic goods wagons to worry about, as they are all gone. But ballast trains remain. Both in UTA and these later days, Leslie's GNR brake van is key to that. Any old British open wagons can be painted up to look like the old Courtaulds wagons in their unique reddish-brown livery, and the cut down versions hastily slopped over in thin pale grey paint by NIR. (Spare us the black "Ivan" metalwork, though; nothing was ever like this!). You can get away by now without a Jeep, but a couple of filthy ones hauling Leslie's spoil wagons is a great, and unique touch.
But as the UTA and CIE have their glaring omissions, the BIGGIE here is the 80 class railcar. Just as iconic as the AECs in the preceding 20 years, or the ICRs in the last 20, a 1980s / 1990s layout based anywhere in the North without 80 class sets simply isn't doable. We can improvise, though.
We now have the IRM Hunslet, plus IRM NIR Mk 2 coaches. Soon, it will be possible to have a 1970-early 80s Enterprise. Use a few ex-LMS coaches like the ones with the Woolwich, repainted in NIR's plain maroon, and you've Portrush summer excursions. A change for your maroon Hunslet to haul. We need the 80, but if you're post-1986, if you can get one there's the blue NIR 111, IRM Mk 2s in appropriate livery, and those yellow bopgie ballast wagons. But there are British railcars with sliding doors in 2 or 3 car sets - don't ask me what class - too modern to be of any interest to me - which look near enough like the "Castle" (or 450) class railcars of NIR.
Naturally, if modelling the GNR main line, we've the Dundalk goods. Enter, stage left, IRM's "H" vans, Leslies' also, and Leslie's GNR brake vans, JM Design's excellent-looking CIE brake vans - another essential on an all-Ireland basis, of course, the SSM kit of same; and for the later period IRM's bubbles, Guinness, ferts and container flats. And of course we have the 121s and 141s and A class of Messrs Murphy / IRM. None existed as the UTA was formed, so every livery that each of these appears in is appropriate to at least some period in the existence of UTA & NIR.
I am hearing noises about growing interest in pre-CIE in the south - will we see GSR carriages some day? It is not long ago that the idea of the grey'n'green era on CIE would have been considered a step too far for the commerical market, but IRM's silver and green "A"'s changed all that. Hatton's ex-GSWR six-wheelers helped, as did JM Design's and Provincial Wagons' earlier designs of brake vans. I am a great believer that if a small number of very high quality RTR models of something appear, there's a very good chance interest will follow.
IRM started by producing Mk 2 coaches. Murphy Models' 111 (which, according to Paddy Murphy at the show the other week, is due a re-run) and his 121s and 141s were a ground breaker too. Now we've Hunslets, and 1990s-type NIR ballast wagons can be had commercially and repainted, as they were BR imports of ex-Southern Railway origin, with a nickname of a shark, antelope, mollusc, or tree-eating skunk, as per BR nomenclature. We have Cravens, and a BR GSV van can be had or repainted from a BR Mk 1, so we've the Enterprise (bar its dining car). So we already have the beginnings of northern-based locos and rolling stock.
Hopefully a new extension of our interest range into earlier times (GSR) and northern climes (UTA / NIR) will develop. This will leave, as the only voids in the RTR world, the GNR and BCDR. But those are for another day.
I sense that such evolution is already beginning to take place. I hope so. Meantime, we may hope for 80 class and AEC railcars, tin vans and laminates.... and a Jeep and a RTR GNR loco.
(* Those youngsters born from 1970 onwards, look them up!)