jhb171achill

Grand finale for the moment, though if anyone has any requests there's a great deal more where this came from. The truly golden, if impecunious age of Irish railways. This is the first of two GSR posts from 1926.

"......Really interesting collection of timetables. The Bundoran line is of particular interest to me as I used to be taken on it as a child to the seaside, including the 'tea and suger' Sunday evening trains! My recollection is that all the trains were steam hauled but is there any record of AEC/BUT railcars ever reaching Bundoran?....." I'm pretty certain they didn't, but the old 1934-era Gardner engined cars worked the line. Jhb171senior often used them to go there and back when he was District Engineer in Enniskillen. They had a special diesel fuel store there for them and the local GNR buses.

Great Northern, 1955. Blue locos, brown carriages, still a good few varnished. And brand new navy and cream railcars on Belfast - Dublin, Belfast - Banbridge - Newcastle, and Belfast - Enniskillen via Clones. The artic sets are on the Howth line, and the oddball collection of Gardner engined railcars of 1930s origin are to be found on the Bundoran line, Derry to Omagh locals, and Scarva - Banbridge. Elsewhere - steam, steam and steam.

A few more from the 1975 / 6 working timetable.

By November 1975, Loughrea was gone. But there was still lots of interest. See how much goods there is on the main line - I've enclosed a few page headings to show this.

Back to 1942. Grey steam engines and maroon coaching stock era.

More 1972, Loughrea included. G and C heaven!

Black'n'tan. 1972. Look at all the goods!

More from 1963..... including the B101 class, new grey 121s, and on beet a few old J15 steam engines on the Mallow - Waterford. What a mix, what a line. It's got to be a top seller - a 1963 based layout on that line. Scenery included.

24 to follow now, in two lots of 12; it's starting into the black'n'tan era. Much is green, some is BnT; steam clings on for a few months more, with a few dingy J15s, mostly in Waterford, the odd shunt in Dublin, and that's about it. Ballaghderreen, Ballinrobe and Waterford - Macmine will cling onto steam until closure. Grubby silver (actually dirty grey!) C class locos potter about, awaiting either green or black paint. At Amiens Street, the odd GNR 4.4.0 is still lurking. GAA, rugby or pilgrimage trains can still bring a surprising amount of steam out of the woodwork, but within a year it'll all be history. The swansong of steam on CIE. The Newmarket branch goods is designated for "D.E." haulage, i.e. a diesel electric, as is Fenit, but "G" class haulage was more usual, especially on the former.

It's 1969. Steam rules York Road, with quite a few Jeeps about still on the spoil trains. Elsewhere, the railcars are being repainted into maroon and grey, while elderly musty-smelling old steam-hauled stock, most still in old UTA green, choke the sidings in Antrim where they've been moved to facilitate the shrinkage of York Road in preparation for building the M2. Up the road, a group of youngsters have former a train society of some sort called the RPSI. I wonder how long that will last! They actually want to run real steam engines - that'll be all very well till they need a few new boiler tubes, I tell ye. Sure if they can keep steam alive 3 or 4 years into the 70s, well and good..... CIE bring the goods to Lisburn. NIR railcars take over to bring it up the otherwise disused Antrim branch to Derry.

It's 1938, passenger engines are almost all blue now, and the coaching stock remains varnished and wooden! The golden era of the GNR. Not a pesky diesel in sight.

The Irish North West. Imagine that a few years later if it had survived to see 141s and black'n'tan laminates! This is 1953.

This one's from a public timetable, to show a picture of a flagship 70 class railcar, and the sort of running they did. Compare with the pedestrian 2015 timetable!

I'm with ye there, Burnthebox!

Sorry to be a fly in the ointment but it looks a bit small to be a milepost. What size is it? Also, it doesn't look like cast iron, so it could well be a replica of whatever it is rather than an original.

Especially on locos, junctionmad! I recall the first 121s I saw in "supertrain" livery - a pair in what's now platform 5 at Heuston in 1972. Orange roofs! Odd looking, I thought. As we know, such things weather very quickly.....

I'm sure jhb171 senior-senior saw his day being spoiled, nonetheless! :-)

If anyone's ever interested, arrangements can be made via myself for you to get up close, measuring and and photographic, with this type of bogie on several Downpatrick coaches.

A Midland interlude.

GNR coaches now clad in dark UTA green (a lot still in brown, though, or navy and cream), while blue 4.4.0s are still going to be around, albeit increasingly uncared for, over the next few years. Talk of closures hangs in the air like cordite. Railways are inefficient, costly and old fashioned. Sure they'll all be closed in a few years. Buses and cars are the new way; the swinging sixties approach. You can buy a new Morris Minor or a Ford Zephyr. Much better than the smoky old trains. By the way, isn't it hard to believe it's over ten years since the war ended! Sure the men who came back from it are hitting 40 now.....

Into the Wesht

A trip into the past.

The heyday of the NCC. War clouds gather as maroon 2.6.0s speed back and forth between York Road and Derry, in half the time it takes nowadays.