jhb171achill

That would have been one of them, josefstadt....though there were a couple of old bogie brake 3rds as well.

Yes, David, from eye witness stories, No. 4 did get that bad too. And indeed, that's how very badly worn once-maroon paint can get, when left outdoors for years and painted on wood. It is possible - indeed, probable - that it was the cheapest quality paint they could get in the first place! There are photos available of a Cavan & Leitrim coach still in service in GSR maroon well into the 1950s. The maroon on it is just as bad! A nondescript browny reddish colour. GSR maroon was initially like BR 1960s coach maroon, or LMS maroon - the same shade. Again, there's the proof of how scrappy it can look. Contemporary British fans will testify to how scruffy even a (steel sided!) BR Mk. 1 could look in worn maroon. I saw this myself in north Wales in 1970. I suppose the key is to have an uneven finish on your models, so it doesn't look as if the worn shade is the way it was initially painted; also maybe to make one look a bit tidier than the other, to emphasise the unkempt appearance of what you choose to be the worse of the two! Incidentally, remiss of me to omit to initially mention the sheer class of these models. Fantastic work, fantastically interesting prototypes. Arigna Road just keeps getting better!

It's a former GSWR six wheeled full parcel brake / passenger brake van of late 1880s vintage. At least two of these wooden six wheelers received black'n'tan, lasting thus (primarily, I think, on the Galway line) to the late 1960s. They were the only six wheelers ever to be repainted into Black and Tan. No passenger carrying six wheel coaching stock was ever thus repainted; the last survivors remaining green until their final withdrawal (in Cork) in early 1964.

Livery detail in those days; the darker CIE wagon grey, chassis included. Lettering in white stencil capitals mid-side: "BULK CEMENT". Below that, a "Roundel" logo, as the first of them were just too late for the "snail". The logo had white letters "CIE" surrounded by a tan "broken wheel". Later, grey chassis, orange body with same lettering and logo all in black.

They were on many routes.

That's my idea of a goods train. So I could buy one or two and sandwich them between other loose coupled wagons and the essential brake van behind a black and tan 141 or C class B&T livery. Absolutely. I used to see the Belfast goods a lot in the 1960-75 period. Mostly "H" vans, but you'd get the odd flat, then the "Lancashire flats" with Guinness kegs started appearing - again, mixed in with a train of other stuff; same with the bubbles. In those days, vans were a mixture. Most were "H", but many a GSR inside framed one, old wooden GSR or GNR types, palvans.... and even the odd cattle truck. Modelling before 1970 is inevitably grey for everything, with brown appearing about 1969/70 and by the time the loose coupled stuff had disappeared in the mid 70s, brown represents maybe 65% of the wagons.

Hmmm. Here's hoping.

Tony, have look at the track plans of Larne (Town) in narrow gauge days, Ballymena, Ballymoney, Dromod, Strabane and Ennis to get ideas on how broad and narrow interacted. Usually there was a shared goods facility to enable transshipment of goods, not so much a joint engine shed. This was because all the narrow gauge lines were initially built by totally separate companies to their broader neighbours, thus had their own loco facilities. Even joint passenger platforms were rare; Ennis and Belturbet being about the only examples I can think of.

Local Government / railways...... Tralee...... There's no money and there are no votes in full size heritage railways, let alone models. I would be very surprised, I am afraid to say, if anything good, sensible or long term sustainable appears out of the unfortunate ashes of this railway. I sincerely hope I end up being proved completely wrong.....

In that (excellent) pic above, a six car set to Bantry was probably unusual. Bank holiday or something, maybe, have we details?

Is that pic one of yours, Glenderg?

And standard CIE cattle trucks in the background; another essential for goods trains in the BnT era.

Yes, my earliest memories of them were of them sandwiched between H vans, cattle trucks, flat wagons and open wagons. Younger modellers might want to bear in mind that pre-mid-70s, "block" trains almost didn't exist; goods trains were almost all mixed, and with all being loose-coupled, a guards van always took up the rear.

From Senior's tales of his time in Enniskillen (1950-7), it's clear that few coaches saw a paintbrush at all during that time. No. 4, also a favourite of mine, did get a repaint and so did one, possibly two of the trio of bogies. However, they were kept outside. My own experience with repaint of wooden bodied coaches at Whitehead in the pre-carriage-shed days were that rapid deterioration took place in such circumstances, with paint beginning to peel after as little as two years. I could see the SLNCR being embarrassed, and blaming a wagon painter, but the real culprit was the company's dire financial straits. Senior recalls "ballast" trains consisting of a wagon of ashes and cinders from Enniskillen loco shed attached to the back of the goods, which stopped at the required spot to shovel it off.....

Now I can sleep in peacefulness tonight, Glenderg! :-)

Sigh.....

".......Add to that the fact that runs of BR four-wheel box vans wearing CIÉ flying snails or roundels are commissioned from time to time to fulfill the need for 'something older' that looks sort of like a H van, ....." ... despite looking nothing like them, having black chassis, white (!) or otherwise wrong colour roof, wrong size, colour and shape of logos and numerals, etc etc......

Just re-reading these posts again, David. I said the Alphagrafix thing looked red, but suggested they WERE red - I meant to say DARK red. Fading and weathering turned them a browny shade of red, but most of this was due to brake dust. The correct colour was always dark red (reddish maroon?) rather than actual red or actual brown. There's a photo - I think of No. 11 - kicking about which shows it looking almost dark brown, but this is due to either deterioration in the colour slide or poor light when the picture was taken. Jhb171 senior saw it just painted and likened the colour to "similar to newly painted GSR or NCC maroon - maybe marginally darker". Same with No. 4, or indeed all SLNCR coaches.

I still can't understand why the standard "H" van - the single most common CIE wagon of them all by far - has yet failed to appear even in kit form! A black'n'tan era layout without sidings full of them is simply non-authentic full stop!

In terms of fumes poisoning passengers, absolutely nothing could hold a candle to the ghastly, uncomfortable MED sets. Seats specially designed to wreck your back and crush your knees were perfectly counterbalanced by freezing draughts in winter, clammy stale lack of ventilation in summer (even worse than ICRs - well, close...) and diesel fumes 13 months of the year. Thank the Lord none were preserved! The only thing close in the discomfort stakes was a 450 class.

Interesting, Mayner - must look that up.

No clerestorey in those, Old Blarney.....? Centre cars appear all to be laminates, or possibly (in the West Cork one) Bredins? While I stand to be corrected, I did think that most of what few clerestorey roofed stuff there was on CIE would have gone by railcar days.....

That's not just modelling. That's superbly skilled artwork!

.....and.....five million bags of oul blind horses eyes, and six million barrels of porter!

Please, David, didn't see it.