jhb171achill

"The Farranfore to Valentia Harbour Railway" by Patrick O'Sullivan, volumes 1 and 2, were excellent publications by Oakwood Press about ten years ago. Within are several drawings of the corrugated iron sheeted station buildings along that line. Given the branch line nature of these buildings, they are a good size for any layout and could easily be scratch-built to have cement-rendered walls.

Most NIR opens were, as you say, cut down wooden opens. They were fairly standard across the board. Most were NCC with a few GNR - same design basically. Get one of Leslie's and give it a lick of paint (or, indeed, brake dust and filth!). If you want to scratch build, I don't know where you'd get a drawing - though many here might - but a few kits or bought standard wooden opens from one of the British lines would probably do too, unless you'd be a "rivet counter"!

Did a little research. Of the four CBPR 2.4.2Ts that went to Leitrim, two had specially cast numberplates and two had painted numbers. No. 12L had cream painted numbers - never cast plates, and was grey to the end. As mentioned towards the end it was, like other C & L locomotives, in very rough condition.

Happy January!

Happy New Year and best wishes to all here. Someone gimme a refill.

It was very dark grey, made darker very quickly by lack of care! As far as I can ascertain, one of the T & D locos on the C & L was the only narrow gauge engine to be painted black, and even that only in the last few years. Regarding 12L, I’ll delve. There was ONE of the Passage engines in the C & L which received a non-standard cast numberplate which it retained to the end, instead of a cream-painted number. It was very much smaller than the standard Inchicore plates as worn on West Clare or Dingle engines, and unusually the raised rim and number were picked out in red instead of cream.

Any of those things that I ever saw seemed very shabby, as mentioned above almost home-made bits added, and grubby.... I don’t think they lasted that long.

Heavily weathered grey will look amazing too - you could paint a locomotive as beautifully built as that, in purple with tartan spots and it would still look great!

Absolute beauty! Will it be in lined CBPR livery?

If it's been cashed, don't give up. if you want to privately PM me and give me your addesss, I know who (within the RPSI) deals with this. I will inform the relevant people.

I'd love to do Lisummon tunnel.....jhbSenior went part-way on the lifting train.... The line had been abandoned so long that saplings were growing between the rails, and many sleepers were rotten. As a result, a PW gang had to go out to repair the track so that the lifting train could get over it!

That is stunningly realistic and prototypically spot on. Absolutely superb work, and I agree with Mr Holman’s comments on small layout track detail - “Arigna Road” set a very high standard for this sort of thing a few years ago. On first seeing the pics above I was tempted to ask “where’s the photo of the model?”!

Interesting. I was unaware of them. Must have been extremely short lived.

In the photo with B131, what are the yokes in between the 4w container wagons, anyone know?

Great selection!

Great potential there!

Good thoughts, DJ!

I think the RPSI stock may be sold out now. I think but am not sure, I got the 2nd last one for a friend.

The Society still has one or two Mk 2 vehicles at Whitehead for future restoration. For those who don't know, the Society's stock of Mk 2s consists partly of vehicles from the original 1970 NIR "Enterprise" set, when the trio of ill-fated "Hunslets" were introduced. They looked very modern among NIR's increasingly dilapidated MED, MPD, AEC and BUT railcars, and elderly steam stock carriages. I remember seeing them for the first time when they were about a week in traffic. Other RPSI vehicles include ex-British Rail stock which actually never ran in Ireland at all, plus one or two that came from BR to NIR, to be used as 80-class centre cars or Enterprise stock. And one or two are ex-CIE / Irish Rail. I know that there are a couple of folks on here to state which is which. It's on the RPSI website anyway. The Society has four genny vans - two BR type and two "Dutch". Currently, the former are in Dublin and the latter at Whitehead. In each case, one in use, one not.

Many thanks, irishrailwayman. Just looked them up - very nice stuff, albeit perhaps a little pricey. Pity they're closing, all the same - might order one or two items.

What sort of a kit is that? I presume laser cut wood? Looks very well. Is the detail printed on or is it low-relief? Presumably door frames can be painted in a suitable colour?

Looks a BIT like that all right, but can't be certain. I won't be back in for a few days as the work I'm doing right now is all at home. I'll ping a pic when i can.

Update today. I have selected some of his continental stuff for one display case, and the railway signs and crests are now sorted out, positioned, and on the walls. There is a larger amount than I thought of Fry's LNWR stuff in the Reserve Collection. Most of the Reserve is the Castle layout models made by Harry Connaughton, Des McGlynn and above all Tommy Tighe. Being strictly not Fry's, this is technically outside the scope of the museum and collection, which is dedicated to Cyril Fry himself - in any event, there's no room for it. I am hoping to persuade them to include "just one more" display case so that some of Fry's LNWR coaches are included - they are truly tasty stuff, as are his two LNWR express passenger locos. The display cases now contain all of his Irish stuff, from the Schull & Skib to the Giant's Causeway; from Lough Swilly and Castlederg to the CBSCR and DSER. There's a narrow gauge navy blue turf railway loco lettered "No. 1" and "ESB" - does anyone know the details of it, as I need to finalise all the captions? So far, it's a gap both in my own knowledge (Sean Cain anywhere?) and in anything lurking here in the Catacombs at home. there's a bogie navy blue turf wagon with it. Naturally, jhb171 has some thoughts on the liveries of a small number of Fry's models - particularly a GNR "S) class 4.4.0 in railcar navy (-ish) blue! But don't worry, jhb171 will keep shtum on liveries for once. Yes, I know you'll need your smelling salts after reading that. Tonight, captions being written for the exhibits displayed on the walls - crests and loco number / name plates. There's a 3 1/2 inch gauge live steam loco. I don't know what to do with that. There's nowhere to display it - it's too big for all the cases, but it would make a fine exhibit. I am assuming Fry made it but I have no evidence to this effect. However, I made what for me was an astounding discovery today. Among Fry's crests are exact duplicates of some from my grandfather's very extensive collection, including a few from some quite obscure English companies. Both jhb--very-senior and Fry were in Inchicore at the same time, and must have known each other. One in the loco drawing office and one in the loco dept. Was there a collaboration? Both Fry and jhb-snr. were not exactly chatty when they roamed this earth..... and they're both less so these days. How, when, why? Now that the radar is up, the detective work must start. Both had "O" gauge layouts, too. I remember the jhb-snr one....huge, but not anywhere like as big as Fry's. The late Sam Carse knew Cyril Fry well - and possibly one or two of the readers here, perhaps those of us who suffer from a condition known as "too-many-birthdays syndrome". Incidentally, I was asked by a friend today what has become of the actual layout that was in Malahide Castle. Those who read here will presumably be aware that this was purpose-built for the castle and was nothing to do with Fry, and nor were any of the models that ran on it. It was dismantled in the castle in sections and these remain in store. In all reality, they're not of any value in themselves (in terms of Fry) and there's nowhere to put them anyway. Thus, they will remain in storage until or unless Fingal Council or Shannon Heritage decide what to do with them. I'll report back in due course. Back to these wretched captions. PS: The Drumm Train turned up, hidden in a box with non-layout railway artefacts! These had been missing since I saw them in the conservator's workshop months ago. The interesting thing about the Drumm train is that Fry built the models from the ORIGINAL drawings, which were done by my grandfather when in Inchicore. But when the Drumm trains were actually built, the front ends of them looked entirely different. So the two carriages you look at in the display are the way the later Drumm trains were ORIGINALLY meant to look like - not what they DID look like! These will need a separate case. I might display them along with one of the (non-Fry) DART cars that are in the Castle (Reserve) collection.

It was an excellent programme..... highlights for me were the Lugacurran Railway (Jim Deegan's; Jim had chauffeured Tarrant round the place) and the 80 class at Downpatrick, driven by Noel Playfair. I am sure that when Noel first joined the railway years ago that he never dreamt that he would one day drive on the BCDR main line! The "Peace Train" was of course an NIR GM and Mk 2s, rather than an 80 class - 113 was shown in the vid clip doing the honours. Several "Peace Trains" ran, and I suspect at least one, maybe more, were 80-powered. The late, great, Belfast writer Sam McAughtry (who I had met a couple of times) was the brains behind it - lovely man.

Conversions in this case, plus the SLNCR ones. Indeed, could this be the SLNCR one that was sent away to Dundalk, finally left behind there by 1960? That's a possibility for this photo.