jhb171achill

HNY to everyone here!

Absolutely no idea, minister! Good point....

I will look for a pic if my grandfather's model (from about 1915).... it has genuine paint in it. I posted it here somewhere years ago. The above isn't actually too bad, considering it's weathered; very very slightly lighter, maybe, but not much. Happy new year to all here!

Now I won't be able to sleep, and I might even spill me crisps!

What if it drifts to almost 4cm at the side of kerbs? We're all doomed, I tell ye!

That man had quite a few! It recalls many others I was told years ago by various old railwaymen, including jhbSenior and others...... priceless stuff..... Senior recalled a cattle special being shunted in Enniskillen about 1953. Several Sligo Leitrim wagons were at the very front of a heavy train (which would mostly have been GNR or CIE stock). The leading one was somewhat tatty looking - clearly, it had seen better days. They backed up the loco to take it to Belfast, and awaited the road. The signal dropped, the loco whistled, and started to move. The loco moved all right, but the train stayed where it was. The drawgear on the front wagon was pulled clean off!

A third tale from my late friend, Billy, who joined the GSWR about 1917 and retired in the mid 1960s. He lived to be 103, dying just a few years ago. This concerns overnight turns at Limerick Junction, where there was a locomen's dorm - the remains of which are bricked up and still visible as a lean-to at the back of the loco shed there. "I had empty wagons for a fair down towards Tipperary or Cahir, and I had to take them to the junction. We didn't get there till late, and I had a goods the following morning, so we (note: he plus driver; Billy was still a fireman then, so it's 1920s) stayed over in the dorm. Now it was haunted. There was a man in Cork, his name was Harry, like Harry Potter! He was a very nervous man. If he was running late he would never try to make up time - just plodded along and held up every other train on the railway. He was due in too. Well, myself and Ned (note; his driver) were in this room, and there were three beds. Ned knew the ropes, so he says to me "just do what I do and we'll have a bit of fun". He told me there was a ghost but not to worry. I wasn't worried because when I joined in Tuam in 1918 they tried to scare me with ghost stories, moving my bucket of oily rags about and all that, but I had found out! Well, we bedded down. There were hard wooden planks as a floor. We left the middle bed alone and took the ones next the walls. After a while yer man Harry comes tiptoeing in, thinking we're asleep. He had a candle. We heard him sit down on the bed as quietly as he could. He thought we were asleep. Ned starts snoring. I knew Ned was awake, so I made a snoring noise too. Next thing yer man blows out his candle and we hear the bed springs going as he gets into bed. Next thing I hear footsteps in the pitch black. I know it's Ned, leaning over his bed and moving his boots on the floor. Yer man Harry, well he sits up like a bolt and he says "Lads!! Did yez hear that!" "What?" says Ned, "hear what?" "NOISES!" sez yer man. "Noises, like feet marching!" "There's no noises, ye eejit" said Ned, "you woke me up! Go back to sleep!" Five minutes later I did the same thing. I reached under my bed. It's pitch dark, so nobody could see anything. I made my boot make noises like its walking. This time, Harry's up again "Lads! Lads! Ye must have heard that! There's FOOTSTEPS! I heard it! Ned says to him "Will you ever shut up and go to sleep! There's no noises! You're IMAGINING IT!! I didn't hear anything!" Harry gets up, drags the blanket with him, and goes off, running across the track, and there was a hard frost that night, and across the tracks to the Ladies Waiting Room, where there's still the embers of a fire. He slept on the floor. I heard that when he got back to Cork, he went to his foreman, pins him to the wall and says "if you EVER send me to the Junction overnight again, I'm resigning there and then!!!" In those days, there wasn't much work, so nobody said that lightly. But I don't remember meeting him again..........."

Another true story from the west. It's the mid 1940s, and Sligo has reported a loco with several faults. Authority deems it necessary to take it to Limerick for repairs. Our man Billy, the driver, a staunch Southern man (i.e. GSWR / Burma Road origin, not MGWR!) is tasked with taking the engine from either Tuam or Athenry - I don't remember exactly. It had travelled under its own steam light from Sligo, and the driver getting off warns Billy that the brakes aren't great - this, in fact is one of several faults reported. To his disdain, Billy finds that the loco is an ex-MGWR type. He has driven them before, but rarely, and isn't impressed. It was actually a J18, the Midland's answer to the GSWR's J15s, and by most accounts, just as good. Billy doesn't like driving from the other side, a feature of Midland engines. "Well, I got up onto it and we got the road. I had been told to take it handy because the brakes weren't the best order. I crawled past gate crossings because sometimes when it was a light engine the woman in the cottage mightn't be expecting you, and several gates were closed as I approached them, but I slowed right down and whistled like mad and they opened them. Near Gort, there was this crossing and the gates were across the track. I whistled like mad, long and hard, and no sign of yer woman. I knew her well. She kept pigs and a few hens in a patch on the lineside. I slowed, but now the brakes wouldn't hold the engine and we drifted up towards the gate. We were only walking pace. I sez to the fireman, "I can't hold her", and just then yer wan comes chargin' out of the house in her bare feet and apron, straight in front of the engine, shouting all over the place "Me pigs! Me pigs! Me pigs!". There were two of them on the track. She got the pigs shoved off to one side and I went through the gates. I tell ye, I'd give her pigs all right..... I gave her a right piece of my mind. Those oul Midland engines, they were no good. Broadstone hadn't a clue how to look after them. Limerick was ok - there were still a few old Waterford men about. But if you wanted a job done properly, you had to send it to Inchicore. I never liked Midland engines, yet when I drove the up day mail from Galway for years, it was always a Woolwich... they were good engines...... That engine, that day, I heard, was taken to Inchicore about six months later and scrapped." Will tales like that emerge in sixty years time about ICRs and CAFs? I doubt it...!

This was recounted to me by a now-deceased former driver, the only living flesh and blood I ever spoke with, who was able to tell me he started his railway career under the GSWR, not GSR or CIE! I met Billy at my first ever book launch in 2002, and at that time he was (I think) 98. He would live, in full command of his mental and most physical faculties, to see 103. Now, he resides in that Great Locomotive Shed in the sky, where all is, of course, GSWR - none of that NCC or GNR or MGWR nonsense. "I was in Tuam. The allocation was six 101 class*, and I was told to polish this one till it shone on my first night. I made sure you could see the lining everywhere it was**. Years later, I was driver and once a month, the time of Ennis fair, a light engine and van had to go to Sligo to collect empty cattle wagons. We'd bring about 40 of them down to Ennis and run on through to the Junction***. We stayed in the dorm and went back next day to collect the full ones from the fair. I didn't always get this job, but one time when I did, we arrived in Sligo and the cattle guard who came onto the van was a big, big tall fella, I forget his name. We picked up a few wagons there and a few more at places like Swinford and Tubbercurry, and we had to wait in Tubbercurry while the up and down trains crossed us. I think a goods crossed us too. So we were looped there for a good while. We got the fry going on the footplate. I had a loaf and the fireman had a pound of rashers. Anyway, we're getting the tea going and the guard comes along the track, and he sez to us "Lads, I'm starving, would you ever have a few rashers?" I invited him up - certainly, we have, I said, take a few. Well, he scoffed almost the lot. I thought he's a big lad, and must have been really hungry, so we let it go and arrived in Ennis later that day absolutely starved. A couple of months later, I was on that run again and didn't the same man do the same thing. Ate us out of house and home. I then discovered he had a reputation. He would take anything anyone gave him, and make himself scarce when it was his turn. He counted his money. He would borrow money and not pay it back. He would try to avoid paying for things he was supposed to pay for. I decided to teach him a lesson. Next month, I put myself forward for that run. The foreman was surprised, because nobody liked doing that cattle run. We pulled into Tubbercurry to cross the up and down, and we got the fry and the tea on as usual. Along came the guard. I sez to him, "sure, c'mon up, we've loads and I've eaten already". We had two packs of rashers. One was really nice stuff from the local butcher, but the other pack was old. There was a green sheen on the rashers - they were going off, maybe beginning to rot. Myself and the fireman, we had had the good ones. We did the whole pack of the others - a pound of them, I'm sure - and didn't yer man eat the whole lot. Well, he went back to his van. Later that day, we pulled into Athenry, and the wagons were hunting **** and the brake was slow coming on. I thought there's something up with the brake, so I went down to the van. Well, yer man was leaning over the balcony of the brake van, white as a sheet. There was vomit all over the floor of the van. He could hardly stand. He'd got severe food poisoning. He never came near us again". - A worthy cautionary tale for those who take a drink, but vanish when it's their round! * J15s. It seems that any ex-WLWR locos had been taken elsewhere by this time - about 1935 / 40. ** I thought initially "locos didn't have lining".... then I realised - he was talking about 1918/20; they were only starting to paint them all grey - he obviously had one still in pre-1915 GSWR lined black! *** Limerick Junction. **** "Hunting" meant jerking back and forth; these were loose-coupled wagons, of course. The guard's job was to manually manage the brake impeding wagons as they ran down hill with the brake wheel - skills entirely lost nowadays with boring air-braked unit trains!

I investigated N for a forthcoming project myself, having found out that 3D bodies are now available for a number of Irish diesels and Craven and Park Royal carriages. At that scale, while not technically correct, one or two varieties of British goods vans would have been (for me, anyway) a reasonable approximation to "H" vans and open wagons. As you say, Tony, much greater possibilities exist in this scale. The only downside was the amount or preparation and decoration of the somewhat crude 3D prints, as i was advised. I have little doubt that with more and more people living in ever-smaller accommodation, N will resurge in the years to come, and maybe then some Provincial Wagons / Murphy Models / IRM / SSM etc etc lookalikes (if not those entities themselves) will be able to see a potential market. With your big GNR / UTA interest, there are RTR mode;s of various 0.6.0s which might be altered to look vaguely GNR - stretching artistic licence a bit, had the "Derry Road" remained longer, it's probable that NCC "Jeeps" would have become a common sight. there are various 2.6.4T locos which, again, might be altered to look good. The UTA inherited a lot of NCC coaching stock, much of which was ordinary LMS designs. Thus, some LMS stock repainted dark green would be fine, even though it was mostly ex-GN stock on the Derry Road. As the saying goes, "there's a million ways to skin a cat"!

In the case of wagons, at that scale prototypical weathering will hide a lot of inconsistencies.

2018 is IRM Midland 6-wheelers year!!! Weeeheeeee!

Good to see the Guinness supplies are in!

Superb! Extremely realistic - yet another gem on this fantastic layout.

Many thanks, Noel and George. Happy Christmas!

It is, or at any rate was, possible to get working semaphore signals, albeit upper quadrant LMS ones, completely unsuitable for any Irish layout. Has anyone any idea about the whys, wherefores and practicalities of motorising, for example, the Studio Scale Models Irish prototypes?

Especially with a pic of a steam engine just above it, krose! Do the PC brigade allow us to call that locomotive Sambo nowadays? (I came across a note of a locomotive somewhere once called "Negro"; how times have changed!) The above engine was actually a bit of a mix of bits from other old locos, and might better have been called "Mongrel"! She's bearing gifts of IRM wagons..................?

I love that ICR!!!!

Ah! That would make perfect sense....

Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year to all here, and in the locations real and fictitious on our layouts!

Fantastic work! Incidentally, does anyone know why some Bell containers had white roofs, others navy and purple / pink like the sides, and others all-white? I think the all-white ones may have been refrigerated or insulated - but the other variants?

GNRi1959, that's exactly what I've always done, and in recent times did so again for my latest scheme which is a small country terminus. (Only, I used newspaper!). On the Peco website you can print out actual-size copies of points, which helps. Unless you're designing something vast and complicated, its WAY quicker, easier and (obviously!) cheaper than pocklin' about with track design programmes or apps. Tony - your layout construction so far, in the shed, looks superb and very well built.

Was it Garfield? ;-)

No, no, Garfield! It's for steam engines!