jhb171achill

It's All-Ireland day in 1965, and Kerry are all set (as usual!) for Croke Park. Two locomotives leave Dugort Harbour with five packed coaches. At Castletown West they will add on another six bogies and a dining car for the journey to Dublin. Unfortunately, today will see a three point win by Galway......

There were still a handful of coaches in blue and cream (and GNR brown!) as late as 1964...... so possible, if (as leslie suggests) unlikely. I remember seeing a coach in brown in Lisburn about 1964/5. Last one I ever saw, and by some margin. A couple of years later, I saw a 3-car GNR AEC set in the same place, with one car in UTA green, one in UTA blue and cream, and the other brand-newloy painted in the then-new NIR maroon and light grey!

Yes

Funds are tight at the moment but I’m getting tempted……

It not only got to Thomastown that day - it got to Waterford, and on out to Clonmel! Wonder what the locals made of it. There's a pic of it there in Barry's and my book "Rails Through Tipperary". We believe it was probably a one-off.

Basically, for a small layout / shunting layout / simple-to-build / starter - or large-scale outdoor - a station with a loop and one or two sidings, made up in just about any configuration imaginable, is perfect. Probably the single best actual prototypes for something like that are Westport Quay, Tramore or (loco operated) Fintona.

Thomastown! On 9th October 1988, NIR sets (power cars) 68 and (now DCDR preserved) 69 were on a Clonmel - Waterford - Dublin Sundays-only public passenger train. They were on loan to IE at the time. The normal 071 + Mk 2 set was unavailable that day due to being in use on a GAA special. The two NIR sets were at that time in use on Dublin suburban services. A third set was on hire from NIR too, and in use on the Cobh line. Always thought Glenfarne (or Belcoo) would be a good candidate for a large-scale outdoor line - say 15mm gauge.

Even NIR 80 class railcars passed by there!

Some Fry models which I took pics of today for their social media pages.... 1. Giant's Causeway stock 2. Oil burner no. 342 in GSWR / GSR grey 3. Donegal "Phoenix" No. 11 - strangest thing ever, when ye think about it 4. CDR No. 7, the pioneering diesel railcar in Ireland and further afield. Just think, this is the ancestor of all those gaudily-coloured HST Pendolino ICR 450 class "customer tubes" which dart about the place here and in Brexitstan.......... 5. The "miissing link" between No. 7 and an ICR, No. 19 (of 19 & 20 - the CDR's last two new railcars, now resident in the Isle of Man) 7. The early days - Waterford & Tramore No. 4. Pity one of these old "singles" didn't survive - but one nearly did, being earmarked for preservation while still in traffic, but scrapped after an accident in 1934, by which time it was by a very long way the last "Single" in traffic in Ireland, or the neighbouring island..... 8. Fry's excellent little model of one of the pair of Dublin & Blessington railcars, which operated over that line from 1928 to closure in 1932.

Talking of which, after the 1925 amalgamation, the MGWR men nicknamed "K" class 2.4.0 No. 27 "The Beast" after the GSR had renumbered it as No. 666! (Superstition led to some drivers being reluctant to drive this locomotive!)

A recurring theme of mine since teenage years is either a 3ft gauge Achill line, ending up post-West Clare with stuff from there, Leitrim, Dingle and the newest Donegal railcars! Or, an Achill line in the 1980s with 141s trundling single dingy Park Royals along behind a spluttering Dutch van..........

Rasp ripple on one DD today, plus the zebra again on another.

Yes, I do get that (though perhaps not all preservationists do), but as far as possible this stuff needs to be hidden. I remember being somewhat shocked - as were my fellow committee members - when a council-chartered marketing consultant whose remit was to advise DCDR & Down Council on how to develop the railway - pointed at the Sligo railcar, a NCC brown van, a past-its-best G class loco and some other stuff stationed opposite the main platform at Downpatrick. To us, it was valuable railway heritage. But this man introduced to us the hitherto “foreign” concept that (a) 99% of the public see it as unsightly junk which demeans the place, and (b) places like heritage railways make their living out of such people, and scarcely get a red cent from those who populate keyboards with opinions about “they really should restore No. 1234, it’s a crime to see it rotting away”! His point took many of us aback - me certainly, as the historical side of railways forms my primary interest and always did. But he made his point, and to such extent as was practicable we made an effort to tidy the place up and send scrap-like images on wheels to sidings as far out of sight as possible. Now, of course space often mitigates against anything like this happening - but in retrospect, I (and my fellow DCDR people of the day) realised that this person was right…..

Interesting to see the contrast between pictures 3 & 4. In one, a beautifully and meticulously restored station building - but the other showing what's opposite it. Throughout the preservation world, all across Europe and further afield, sidings choked with lines of barry-scrapyard-style junk, which will never see the light of day in preservation! Yes, bodies I've been involved with are just as guilty too............................................!! Looks like a fascinating little line.

In all likelihood, yes. I’ve a notion it’s 231.

That's the RPSI influence (Don't tell Nats.....)! Just now, a DD passed by Malahide with the 16:05 up, (10 mins late like yesterday) but with one of the zebras pushing it.

Worry not! Many place names have obscure or modified roots through oddball anglicisation. Who’s to say that Ballycombe didn’t have some old legend about some ancient figure combing their hair….. Anglicised “Ballycombe” = Baile na cíor = The “townland of the comb”….

Then it's sat down in Belfast, I suppose...........

2 x 2-CAF just passed Malahide 8 mins late on the 16:05 belfast - Dublin. De Deitrich ill again?

It hadn't seen a passenger train service since 1931! One of the first lines to lose its passenger trains in the entire country. Even the goods didn't last much longer. Latterly it slumbered in near dereliction for many years, the weeds only disturbed the odd time by a cattle train on market days.

So is it possible at this stage to state with any degree of certainty whether the last Tara train has operated?

The mines trains

I’m assuming this is finished now?

That loading bank could even be used to load beet. Several GNR locations such as Navan, Malahide and a couple of other places between Amiens St and Dundalk were loading beet in a few cases into the 1970s.

Kenmare too.... 4.4.0s were on that line regularly until the mid-1950s, though J15s were the norm, of course, as you suggest.