jhb171achill

Join the 009 Society. While its scale 2ft gauge, they deal with British or Irish outline. Backwoods miniatures do kits of Tralee & dingle, Donegal and Manx stuff.

Going back to that picture of the railcar with what the book caption called a "vintage trailer". That is actually one of four 1898-built GSWR dining cars; either nos. 412 or 413, or 343 or 344. At the end of the train is a GSWR 6-wheeled passenger brake van of late 1870s to mid 1880s vintage.

Very interesting, Maitland - is it possible to work out if it actually looks 5ft 3 gauge?

In early days, junctionmad, you'd get them anywhere. I have a single reollection of seeing several somewhere in the middle of a train which, as I recall, had 34 four-wheeled was jobs and a brake van.... Hauled by "one o'them new B class"...... (141 - yes, single, not pair!)

Roof details varied. A couple of cars, maybe no more than 2 or 3, had "wasp" stripes above cantrail level just at the front. Most green. While in pre-1955 dark green, roofs were often grey - possibly all were when new. But by the time the lighter green came in, roofs were always black like on carriages roofs and ends.

I suppose when you think of it, grey is much more practical for cement wagons than the later orange or cream!

Could I ask, as someone who is not hugely knowledgeable about buses, is it possible to buy a model of the exact type of bus used on the No. 10 route in the 1960-1980 period?

Well, I'd be happy with blue 4.4.0s on the Enterprise...

Is this good news for enthusiasts? 80 and 450 sets on the Larne line! And I quote..... NI Railways has 17 staffed stations and 5 staffed halts throughout the network; all lines offer a combination of express services and trains that stop at each halt and station, with up to 6 and 7 trains operating per hour at peak times on key commuter lines. Class 3000 (C3K) CAF trains operate mainly on the Bangor, Portadown and Londonderry Lines. Class 80 and 450 trains are used on the Larne Line and Portrush branch line. 20 new state-of-the-art trains are due to arrive and go into service between 2011 and 2013, replacing 13 older models and operating alongside the existing fleet of 23 C3K trains. All our trains and facilities are accessible to wheelchair users. Services operate Monday to Saturday with a reduced frequency service on Sundays. Timetables are available free of charge from main NI Railways stations.

Some nicknames only appear in preservation or after closure, e.g. the "western rail corrior".... When in traffic I don't ever remember hearing 70 and 80 class railcars referred to as "thumpers"... To go back to topic, I must look up drawings of whatever clerestory stuff the GSWR had which might have worked in railcar sets.

Well done, iarnród! The colour one is interesting, though it shows them a bit darker than they were - original photo a little under exposed.

They were all grey until about 1969 / 1970-ish. There is a nice pic of them in grey in Jimmy O'Dea's stuff,reference ODEA 43/11. I'm not sure how to copy / paste that image here.... maybe someone else can? The picture is captioned "Cement hoppers passing kildare" and it's dated 14th January 1967.

That's quite a mixture, Tony!

And the RPSI has a laminate brake coach numbered 1916........!!

I remember those buckets going over the main road near Drogheda... in the 1960s there was no such thing as health and safety, and as far as I recall they didn't have any sort of safety net to catch potential falling material as it passed over the road. An interesting project for a layout! Quarry scene with moving buckets...

Their engines looked better in shiny black!

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.....