jhb171achill

I'll have a look, Harry. I think Senior had a couple of pics, though if I remember correctly they're blurred and over-exposed and may not show it anyway.

Could well be, Jawfin - I didn't know that (or it had never occurred to me), but given the dates these went into traffic, very possible indeed.

The GSWR repainted all J15s grey around 1915/18, and they stayed that way though GSR days and CIE until scrapped. None were ever black or green, unless you count pre-1915 black with red lining. 184 was given a strange browny green colour towards the end of its life for an Inchicore open day. I suspect it was not expected to run again, but it did a brief spell of duty like that until withdrawal. It was fully lined out in black and white like that. 90 was painted lined apple green for exhibition after it was withdrawn but never ran like that. It was grey from 1915 to about 1956/7, but was repainted for its last two years in traffic. Better colour photos show it looking black for its final spell in use, and it was probably repainted in Cork rather than Inchicore, so strict adherence to normal policy could be avoided - as it was with variations of livery details on some carriages painted there in green days. Neither of these schemes were ever used by the GSWR. They were "makey-uppy" but often assumed to be GSWR. And now to Dundara: an excellent layout full of character. I look forward to seeing more.

The NIR ones all had the headlights, I think.

It was. Then it was repainted black with a yellow snail and a yellow line along the running board. Then 461 was painted black with a yellow snail! All looked very well, it has to be said, but were historically inaccurate in all respects.

But will it be weathered and RTR?

I notice among it a pic of several coach ends at Whitehead..... in case anyone's indexing, the badly faded wooden coach between the CIE and RPSI Mk 2s is an NCC bogie full parcel brake, used as a stores van there.

Absolutely correct, Minister. To add, in fact, to the drabness was the fact that they actually changed little at first anyway, as the grey had already been used by the GSWR for some eight years, and the dark "lake" maroon - which weathered to almost black in some cases - added to dirty black wagons on the GSWR, and very dark grey on the DSER and MGWR - must have looked VERY gloomy. The attractive lined maroon of WLWR locos was long gone by 1925; such locos were either in faded GSWR black or more likely all grey already since the GSWR takeover of that concern two decades earlier. So the new GSR picked the company with the dullest livery of the lot - the GSWR - and slapped that all over everything else! The narrow gauge lines - most of whose locos were varying shades of lined green - the DSER with its handsome lined black, and the MGWR with its even more attractive lined emerald green.....

All very valid points indeed, Mayner. The GSR was indeed very adept at penny counting; jhb171's senior and senior/senior both would have told us that. Regarding the CDR, it went bust in the 1920s and it was the financial input of the GNR (locos / rolling stock) and NCC (track / infrastructure) which kept it afloat. The LLSR, by comparison, withered. In reality, it is an absolute miracle that much of the network in remote Donegal was ever built at all, and an even bigger one that the LLSR lasted until recently, even as a bus company operating ICRs - sorry, buses. (Or is it the other way round?). Connemara is similar to Donegal. Imagine if that region had had 200 miles of 3ft gauge lines serving places like Roundstone, Rossaveal or Cong, instead of a single Clifden branch which closed in 1935? The Congested Districts Board and Balfour Acts saw that all of the above were built. In reality, the chances of ANY of those lines being economically viable as standalone businesses (as railways were then) was nil. Thankfully, they WERE built, and we enthusiasts got to enjoy them - if old enough - or enjoy the pictures if not.

That's quite possible indeed, Dive - I hadn't thought of that. However, also, they did tend to get very dirty! The green livery - like all single-colour liveries - tended to look dull if worn or weathered. After almost twenty years of all-encompassing green or grey, the new black'n'tan livery looked very bright, modern and dynamic when new.

That's the one I was on back from Caaark tonight.....

Aaaarrrrrghhh! I'm on an ICR right now.....

WOW!!!!!! You've surpassed yourself (again), Leslie!

Yes, folks, it is indeed on the DCDR. The coach was just ex-service and had just arrived there.

Exactly, Dhu Varren, that's what I had in mind.

True!!

It was fine till you commented, Harry! ;-)

See if this works the right way up.... Ah well.

Gorey, 1989.

Yes. I threatened my iPad with a run in a 29000. It worked.

Note: original NIR logo as applied to some Jeeps (50, 4 and one or two others), all railcars and loco-hauled coaches, Hunslets plus these things - gold, lined in white. The double lining along the bodyside, however, is the same very pale grey as used on their railcar livery (not white). And this is what you'd see them pulling.

The very last few TPO vehicles in traffic - maybe only this one, in fact - got the one lower "tippex" line same as the BR vans did.

Just an update on the headlights thing. Here we can see two pictures of an "A" in green. If anyone ever makes these locos RTR (no rumours, please!), they'd need to include the headlights only with supertrain and later liveries. It was the same with the "C"s, and same in "black" and "black with yellow end" days; "C" class modellers alert.... And on the subject of.... these beasts never had the big double headlights at all, in any livery: 121s always had the large headlights - in fact they were the first locos to carry them, a standard American design. The success of these led to their introduction on all subsequent locos. Initially these matched the body colour - grey with grey livery, black with B'n'T livery, but once "supertrain" livery appeared, they were to be painted white and remain that way into IE livery times, until withdrawal. But BEWARE, O Pilgrim. This is where eyewitness accounts of liveries will always set aside completely discussions about how things look different in photos, therefore there must have been loads of different shades of this, that and the other, blah blah blah..... While everything in "supertrain" livery had WHITE headlights, sometimes dirt / weathering made them look different in photos. I've often quoted the common (and to an oul fogey like me, quite irritating) proliferation of black ironwork on wagons, when the reality was it was rust showing black in an old photo! Here, we see two "A"s, both with white lamps. But one is so dirtied that in a photo it almost looks the same black as the cab it's attached to. Related: "The GNR just went down to the local paint shop to get blue paint, so the were many shades of blue on GNR locos" "There were myriad shades of CIE green" "There were myriad shades of wagon grey" "There were myriad shades of CIE / IE orange/tan" All incorrect. All wrong. Some defined variations at certain times (with the exception of the always consistent GNR blue) but not myriads. Not a haphazard difference from one item thus painted to the next.

Well, both BnM and Luas did eventually! The MGWR bought the Royal Canal when building the line to Mullingar to save land acquisition costs, and wipe out competition at the same time. Clever move back in the 1840s....