jhb171achill

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.

Twilight of the BCDR, six-wheeled heaven. I think they only ever owned about half a dozen bogie coaches, and they spent most of their time on the Bangor line. To keep their own six-wheelers company, in the 1910s / 20s they even also hired in half a food six-wheeled thirds each from the GNR and the MGWR.... A year after this timetable, the UTA (the UnderTAker) had taken over. Track was about to become forgotten weeds.

We've neglected the South Eastern a little. Small wonder, at the time thus timetable was published, there were severe disruptions to the service due to the "Troubles"!

And one for David Holman. Oddly, the timetable I have is incomplete; it omits Arigna Road! But as we know, there were two mixed trains, an if-required goods, and a passenger train each day....

It's 1963. Green UTA railcars are now getting their "wasp" stripes, as ex-GNR AEC and BUT cars rule the roost on the ex-GNR sections, while noisy, badly ventilated, rattly MED cars convey the long-suffering to Bangor. A few ex GNR locos still grace Adelaide, a badly weathered faded blue 207 among them. Jeeps and Moguls are still to the fore on the old NCC, now Ireland's steamiest location. Old GNR and NCC coaching stock are to be seen on both sections, many distinctly past their best. Goods traffic is still busy, but lacks the modernisation showing in CIE goods trains. The UTA has, of course, an agenda; they'll eliminate it all in two years from now. MPD railcars have come of age, but in all their varied forms remain where they will spend their life - almost entirely on the NCC lines. Sleek new grey 121s appear the odd time with sleek new laminates intermingled with repainted ex-GNR coaches on the "Enterprise". The brighter CIE green is now giving way to a bold new livery; the black'n'tan era has arrived, even as the UTA still has 2 or 3 bogie coaches in traffic still in GNR brown.....

Not really getting at anything in particular, Leslie - just an over active mind wandering..... Youre right about the other bits...... If the border had never existed, all would have been CIE. In such a case, would all the AECs have fuel out and been replaced by an entire loco hauled railway with 141s towing laminates into Coleraine, Omagh and Larne? Belfast's suburbans would have been a loco spotter's paradise with C, 121 push pulls, 141s and 181s rattling about on the Bangor, Lisburn and Larne lines. Had the border existed, but for some reason had no impact at all on the railways, would we now have NIR operating the NCC, IE operating Connolly - Sligo and everything south of it, and a modern GNR operating the main line, INWR, Cavan and Portadown - Omagh? Just a thought. I'm sure freight would be there in some form in such a scenario - maybe still also on the NIR (NCC)!