jhb171achill

Very well done, gents. Truly excellent addition to the Irish railway scene. (It's in the wrong shade or purple, though...)

I dealt with them years ago also, for a "G" scale West Clare "F" class diesel. Excellent kit, very good company to deal with. They offer to consider anything you want, providing that they can sell enough to others to justify the cost. The only thing is you'd need reasonable soldering skills with metal kits. When I contacted them re the "F", it wasn't on their list at all. Now they offer it in several scales. Midland six wheelers? Being the most common six wheeler in the 1955 - 63 period, it would be good to see some available.

Should be.

Pity that doesn't happen to the "artists" who cover stations and trains with graffiti!

I have to say that any model I've personally ever seen looks fine colour wise, so hopefully it won't be an issue. The illustrations above of the pre-production model look quite amazing and like you I eagerly anticipate the real thing! On another note, my late family friend who was in Dundalk was also involved in quite a few other areas within the works, including the selection of a suitable design and manufacturer for the diesels which never came. He confirmed to me that had they arrived, they were all to be the same navy blue as the MAK loco 800. Lining would be red and white. I'm sure that would have gone down well in Portadown, Lisburn and Great Victoria Street..... Re the "apocryphal" stories, I once ran that past him. His response mightn't be suitable to print here in a family website! ;-)

That is an amazing layout! Excellent!

I knew a man who was a "paint chemist" or something like that in Dundalk. In fact, the blue used was very consistent - they took a pride in it, though wear and tear would have dulled it from time to time. The idea that few GNR locos were the same shade of blue is an "urban myth" originating in Whitehead in the early RPSI days to justify the fact that when first restored, the shade 171 received was way, way lighter than it should have been! Thankfully in more recent years, Whitehead has had the shade of blue exactly right on 171 and 85. Pity the green on 461 wasn't as accurate!

Is the one named "Donegal" 3ft gauge, I wonder? ......

Yes, the consists seem to have been somewhat random, but that's actually a very interesting feature of the early 1960s, appropriate given the planned launch of a model 121 in grey and yellow. Elderly six wheel coaches or brakes mingled with laminates of various types, wooden bogies of GSWR* origin, and new Park Royals and "tin vans". Green, black'n'tan and unpainted dirty aluminium mingled as well. Branch lines sometimes did have a tin van at either end of even a short conduct. I would guess that what my dad saw was the two coaches with a tin van at either end, though I recall a picture of a Ballina train with two tin vans at one end; another in the late sixties with a laminate or two followed by a then new BR van, and THAT followed by a tin van! Nowadays, the standard consists of identical stock are just plain boring! * By the 1960s, a "cull" had taken place of older wooden stock. Most surviving DSER stock had gone, and what was left of Midland stuff was mostly the hardy standard six wheelers. Curiously, most GSWR six wheelers had gone, and almost all DSER ones! West Cork retained just two or three ex Bandon coaches, mostly for Courtmacsherry excursions because they were of short length.

Exactly. Even then, they were almost always black.

That's exactly what it is, BSGSV. Regarding the silver tablet catchers, I wonder if several of those are silve at all. I certainly don't remember any being routinely silver - they weren't. It's possible there was the odd unpainted one, like oddball coloured wagon (or locomotive!) bogies you see nowadays. On that train with two silver ones newly painted, yes, both locos silver but most certainly this was not the norm at that time. The one on the B'n'T 121 is, I suspect, faded, unpainted or possibly worn.

They will remain there for examination and assessment for planning what needs to be done to them for long term preservation.

The new thing is a ghastly developer's monstrosity, just like Wood Quay years ago. Nothing's changed.

For authenticity, yes, three is good - you'd only occasionally get more!

Things like the odd-shaped MGWR, or stone pillar GSWR, mileposts might be good to have, though obviously a very limited market...

Interesting, folks, thanks.

A question regarding the longer coach at Stradbally. Apart from the bogies, is any of it actually ex-CVR? Possibly a much-cut-down chassis?

That's really taking shape well...

And Mrs Merkel has us all speaking German. Maybe they'll reopen the West Clare with Harz narrow gauge stuff!

I thought immediately of this layout when looking over some papers tonight and finding a small handwritten note of my father's from a long-ago-forgotten grice in the south east.... "Loco B135, 2 x 4W vans + 2 coaches 9.20 ex Rosslare Harbour, Macmine Junction." The vans were silver "tin vans". A clue to modellers, all that time ago, of what a typical passenger train was in those times - early 1960s. he mentions that one of the coaches was numbered 2101 - a laminate, I think? On the same bit of paper he has written details of train times between Newry and Dundalk. This puzzles me, as he doesn't mention Goraghwood - what we NOW know as "Newry" was then Bessbrook station - and it was closed.

I hope so. It's even possible that greater hassle will affect roads, not the railway. Possibly regulatory matters might diverge, with the north potentially following a British ruling or operating standard that wasn't applied in Europe, or vice versa.

On a single track......??? Wonder what happened. Being a commuter line it could have been worse!

News bulletin: Upon Brexiting, NIR have announced changes to their future operation. At the exact point of the border, and all areas north of this, all railway tracks including those of the DCDR and Giant's Causeway Railway will be relaid to 1435mm gauge. All rolling stock will be repainted in either BR blue or GNER whatever livery, and all trains will carry the double-arrow logo and stale BR sandwiches from henceforth. New signage will be applied to all stations with double-sausage totems. NIR will become the Northern Region of British Rail and will start operating merry-go-round coal trains from Poyntzpass to Cullybackey. Meanwhile, the DCDR will receive a major boost in becoming the permanent home for 60103 "Tornado" and the "Flying Scostman". Whitehead has begun drawing up plans to re-gauge locomotives No. 4, 85, 131, 171 and 461 to 4ft 8 1/2 inch gauge. No 4 will be turned out in GWR green, 85 and 461 in BR green and black respectively, 131 in LMS maroon and 171 will be turned out in LBSCR loco yellow. At the Giant's Causeway, elderly Tube stock will replace the current recent stock which was converted from biscuit tins and runs on organic soup. The whitehead carriage set will be all repainted in BR blue and grey, complete with stale sandwiches. The Portrush branch will be operated by single-unit railcars with those chimneys up the ends. On the "Enterprise", as it is cross border and now international, every coach will have one bogie of 1435mm gauge and one of 1600. This is believed to be a unique arrangement. Remember where yiz heard it first.

Let's hope so, Noel.

With a new British PM closer now, I noticed that she has said in the past that "Brexit" will "inevitably" lead to border tariffs or controls. Apart from the utterly retrograde aspect of this generally, how will this affect the "Enterprise"? In the past, the dining cars (pre-1957 or so) for some years had separate tills north and south because of varying taxes either side of the border - despite the currency all being the one until 1979. Will we have officials getting on and walking down the train at Dundalk and Newry? Or Connolly and Central?