jhb171achill

Little touches like this do big things to realism!

99% sure mid to dark brown and light cream.

Oh! Now I see...

The goods vans parked behind A20....(brown)

The first year I went on a runabout ticket was 1975 and I think it was just about still in use then - the mainline was certainly. I was into the siding with RPSI's 186 in 1972, so it was definitely in use then. Must look it up. Suffice to say, no supertrain ever went in there! Cravens would have been the most modern thing. At a pinch you might have got a loco in supertrain livery, but this siding belongs to the black'n'tan era - C's and A's probably were the main thing.

Just testing my eyesight - what are the greyish things on the ends of the goods vans? can't make it out......tis me age..... That goods brake van is a beauty.

My only jaunt on it was early 70s. I think it lasted until about 1977.

exactly!!

That's some telephoto! Must show about 20 miles of track compressed into a yard or two.....!

An interesting concept for a layout. Any variety of locomotives under the sun, whether in GSR, CIE steam or CIE diesel days. Myriad types of old six-wheelers and random selections of wooden and occasionally modern carriages; a carriage fan's paradise layout! And, of course, horseboxes galore, something rarely seen on layouts.

I simply could never get my head round wiring electrofrog points. The old way was simple. years ago, for the last layout I had which was in planning stage about 1983, I sent a diagram to Peco and they replied promptly. Maybe they're not the same nowadays.

That's good indeed.... and if they are refurbing 201s, it suggests that the 071s are safe for another good few years. They need both. Mind you, one might read that another way; unfortunately, it would make sense from an operator's point of view to have a single class of loco. Could it be that refurbs of 201s will eventually simply replace the 071s? There's one for another day........... On the subject of passenger fleet life spans, both Britain and mainland Europe have managed to keep electric stuff in traffic for decades longer than anything diseasel. How long will the original DART cars last? Nothing wrong with them except the dreadful seats.

Only ten or fifteen years ago, anyone who suggested a ready to run high quality original model of anything Irish, let alone an engine, would have been rapidly escorted to the Home for the Incurably Retarded, Demented and Hopelessly Delusional......... (Leinster House and Stormont were the relevant institutions, and still are)...

I can see the rationale, yes..... and while it's true that railway administrations have to work with what the accountant likes, not what us enthusiasts like, it does seem strange that other options weren't considered. One might accept the rationale behind eliminating shunting - but there can't be any accountant's argument in favour of setting aside some 20 201s instead of converting at least half of the Mk 3s into push-pull mode. That's what happened widely on the continent. Go to Switzerland or Austria and there are millions of loco hauled trains, and almost all are PP. Anyway.................................. Time I got on with finishing the captions for "Rails Through Connemara". I'm still hoping for a June launch but I'd need to get a move on seriously....over'n'out.

Hats off to those who produce Irish models, but have to deal with factories and work practices a long way from here. It must be frustrating for them when delays occur. The main thing is that a model of this stature, and anything else MM have done, is WELL worth the wait.

As a regular traveller on the Mk 4 sets, I have yet to be impressed by a single detail of them. I'll give them one credit though, and it's not much of one. The onboard temperature, while it can be stuffy, is nothing to the claustrophobic, severely uncomfortable extreme heat of the wretched ICRs, which only very rarely are a comfortable temperature. They are frequently - and I have this on good authority - over 22 degrees. Also the toilets are not ventilated. Try using one after someone has done their No. 2s in it..... I was on an ICR the other night and I know for a fact that it was actually measuring at over 22. That is bad enough, but compared with the adjacent coaches, the one I was in was WAY hotter. Why can't we have trains these days with opening windows? I'd rather do Belfast to Cork in a 2600, either in Roses or Quality Street livery, than one of these stuffy tin tubes. Rant over, for now.....

Senior went in there on the last weedspray (which he organised). There was an IRRS special along the rump Dundalk-Cavan section about 1959, just before it closed. It was an AEC railcar. I wonder if it went there.....I don't think do, but possibly..... It'll be sixty years this September since Stormont's greatest act of vandalism in forcing so much of the GNR to close.

It's funny how Inchicore has changed. In steam days, they thrived with a fleet three times the size they have now, where apart from the 101s barely two locos were alike. Despite the best efforts of the GSR and CIE, standardisation was a foreign word. Forty year old locos and carriages, and even older wagons, were not only the norm - there were many. many examples approaching twice that age. And yet they maintained them all and the trains ran. Cue the diesel era, and compared to British Rail and its toytown "train company" successors, they suddenly developed an absolute anathema of anything that is non standard, anything that requires any effort, imagination or thought processes; witness the 2 or 3 standard types of train on offer today. It started with the AEC railcars. Then the potentially useful SLNCR Railcar B, and then the G class. If it wasn't standard, they didn't like it and didn't look after it. The AECs lasted half the time their equivalents in Britain did - less in some cases. Now, we have the Mk 2 and Mk 3 carriages scrapped half way through their reasonable lifespan. Comments about needing more maintenance may be more about lack of proper care than age - though if so, that itself can probably be traced to lack of proper government funding. So we have scrapped perfectly good Mk 3s and the excellent Galway set, and laid aside 8700 DARTS and 2700 class railcars - all barely out of their Hornby boxes........ Mad....

Nice shot of G616 and G61x. Why two - was this at a sugar shunting session?

Without consulting old timetables, I think about 1970-ish..... anyone?

No, they were fully GNR owned, though yes, "de facto" used only for Guinness traffic as far as is known. When modelling the past, we see numerous British Hornby or Bachmann models of private owner wagons. If modelling Irish prototypes, it must be remembered if accuracy is wished for, that private owner wagons in Ireland were very rare indeed, and many extremely short lived; also, they tended to operate over one specific route, not in general goods trains all over the place. Example: Downshire wagons - Dundrum (Co Down) to Belfast only. You wouldn't get one of these, for example, in Enniskillen, Mullingar or West Cork, and there would be no Guinness grain vans on the NCC!

James P O'Dea and Fr. Frank Browne always took "human" photographs and were very much ahead of their time that way. I note that several modern photographers have taken their influence on board. It has to be said, though, that the vast majority of enthusiasts (though not all) prefer locos, coaches and wagons!

As good as.... the dismantled parts include much completely rotten material which can't be used again.

Correct, Nelson. The scrapped one was rotten throughout and if not scrapped was on the verge of disintegrating.

Dan (or Tony) Reneghan - retired CIE loco drivers - did an absolutely superb article on the "G" class locos in an IRRS journal in the last year or so. Worth reading - it details which ones worked where. Obviously, they only had a working life of just over ten years, and there were only seven of them, so it's easy to find out. G613 was a regular performer on the Loughrea line for a good few years, and G616 spent much time there too, I think. Not sure about Dundalk, but that article will tell you.