jhb171achill

I'd love to see the underground - it's already necessary, never mind when the economy grows (and population with it). 1.25 million people, or about a fifth of the entire island population, already live in greater Dublin. In other words, Dublin now has as many people as almost three-quarters of Northern Ireland. So it arguably needs an internal rail network bigger than NIR!!

And then there were "S" and "SA" on 141 class locos...

Wasn't so sure about the "JL" - departmental stock was always numbered with an "A" suffix. The vehicles quoted by that photographer who Glenderg quoted were vehicles i saw myself, and they didn't have "JL" an two-digit numbers when I saw them - maybe the original photographer had it wrong? Incidentally, those carriages shown are an exceptionally interesting quarter and it's a real shame they didn't survive. The grey one pictured at North Wall was the very last surviving MGWR bogie coach - originally Dining Car No. 1 (later 1M), and which was converted to an ordinary coach some years later. It had consequently been in the famous MGWR "Tourist Train". It was built in 1901 or 1902, and survived until the 80s at N Wall, where it was broken up. The three pictured at Mullingar are from left to right, WLWR No. 935 (the last surviving W LWR bogie; the exceptionally interesting Director's Saloon of theirs, of 1897). Then 1110, a 1915 GSWR bogie corridor third, and in the distance, 13M, a late 1880s MGWR six wheeler, the chassis of which is now at Downpatrick underneath their GNR six wheel body.

Absolutely top class!

Prior to the seventies, much if not most of this work was done by gangs of men with shovels. Also, the technology of yellow machines has moved forward in leaps and bounds in only the last 10-15 years. Another point worth noting is that yellow, as an all-encompassing and seemingly universal colour for anything maintenance related is a comparatively new phenomenon. Actual tamping machines were yellow from the 1960s on, but related wagons, locomotives, crew carriages and road-based machinery wasn't; and staff wore dungarees and overalls, not day-glo pantomime costumes.

In reality, private enterprise does a better job at some things, while the state is better at others. Disciples of Marx and of Thatcher both fail to see this reality.

Meddling, as such, is OK in theory when the indigenous system is wrong - though who's the judge and jury? For example, the Greek taxation and pension system needs to be meddled with big time, if there's to be the remotest chance of them staying in the euro, or even remotely solvent. Irrespective of that, in this (Irish railway) case the indigenous system is right, and privatisation is wrong full stop. It is expensive and inefficient, and will represent woefully bad value for the taxpayer if it is foisted upon us.

Well, the amount of imports is due to the lack of anything here to create freight....! But, as far as the railway is concerned, it's purely academic. It's simple; railways in Ireland will cost money, and would have done even if the excellent motorway network wasn't ever built. So - we pay, we get railways. We don't - or - we divert the subsidy to private companies and their bonuses and salaries - and THEN the railways will wither and die.

I could add a few other things which need to be borne in mind. Ireland doesn't have large tonnages of anything, let alone over long distances. We don't have long distances full stop. No coal, no huge opencast mines. A dozen wagons out of Tara is irrelevant commercially. I lament the onset of all these railcars (as I strongly suspect Derailed probably does too!) but if we're to have any railways at all, they must be run as cheaply as possible. And that leaves no room at all for BR style additional layers of shareholders, regulatory bodies, and friends of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael being paid €678,000 a year to "oversee" it all, as a shiny private company with (here's another) a colossal campaign of advertising, paid for indirectly by the taxpayer. So there's €3m budget up for grabs. Option 1: spend it on track and station upgrades Option 2: spend €1.1m on consultants fees, dividends, directors salaries and bonuses - we mustn't forget the bonuses.... and €1.9m on track and station upgrades. Make no mistake about this, folks. Look at Irish Water. We all need to be prepared to campaign loudly and long. Mayner makes the point that we can't have it both ways. Absolutely correct. However, special examples can exist Europe-wide, and this may well be a very good example.

Where do we go from here? RPSI website for the next trip to Ballykay, that's where.....

If this is a "newbie", it's a seriously impressive one! Well done timmycork, great progress.

Black'n'tan TGV's? Harz mountain steam locos with flying snails.....! Seriously, all the above points are perfectly valid. Ireland has six million people. One third of them live in the greater Belfast, Dublin and Cork areas. Derry, Galway, Limerick and Waterford are the next biggest cities; but all four have populations between 85000 and 100000. If we count those plus their immediate hinterlands, it shows us that just seven centres on this island account for 40% of the island population. By international standards, only Dublin is a significantly sized city. Many countries - whether with privately or publicly run railways, would have abandoned the less used ones years ago. Just saying! It's no coincidence that the Cork-Dublin-Belfast lines carry the lion's share of traffic. The survival of so many other lines has, unfortunately, more to do with the poor road system in the recent past, than any notion that there's loads of commercially viable traffic out there if only the railway would look. There's loads of traffic all right, but it's not COMMERCIALLY viable. Hence the dilemma. Now - our government has a choice (and such privatisation directives will affect NIR too; it's just as much an EU railway as IE is) - allow all comers in and pay them whatever their bloated privatised bosses want, or say "sorry, lads; what IE got is all you're getting". Let's hope it's the latter. Another thing: in a country this size, there are no duplicated routes and no room for competition. As our transatlantic friends might say; "Go figure"!

That's just unbelievable. That's the very top end of modelling in all respects.

If the Government is worried - and rightly so - surely they can insist that the existing subsidy they give to IE will not be increased by one red cent. That way, no commercial operator - presumably - would want to touch it!

The SLNCR did indeed run an extremely tight ship, but it's gone; reason - it was an example of an industry which, given conditions in Ireland (low population density outside Dublin, and very little bulk goods e.g. coal), cannot stand on its own commercial feet without state funding. In other words, it was private as in privatised as such, a commercial business. The LLSR was the same and so was the CDRJC. If we look at the receipts of all Irish railway lines, or even just stick to the amount of commercially viable traffic likely to offer, even theoretically, we can see that had the state never become involved through the admittedly inefficient and anti-rail UTA and to a lesser extent CIE, there wouldn't be a yard of railway open for fifty years or more. I agree with Derailed that CIE has hardly had a good track record, though lack of government funding to CIE is the major problem. If some portion of whatever state money there is, becomes diverted towards company directors and their inevitably obscenely high salaries, and related regulatory quangos, then whatever chance the Nenagh and Waterford-Limerick lines have had will evaporate overnight.

The very occasional one could be seen in original BR livery in the 70s. They were on four wheeled flats at that time. Top picture, page 12, 4th wagon, "Rails Through the West". I recall seeing these on the Belfast goods train from Dundalk, and also around the North Wall yard.

Cue the taxpayer forking out to (a) run the service, through the inevitably necessary subsidies to private operators, and (b) line the pockets of obscenely overpaid company directors, regulatory bodies to watch over the private operators, and shareholders. Far fetched? Look across the water. The former BR costs WAAY more to run now, even in comparative terms, and is arguably less efficient. Privatisation of an industry which cannot in reality cover its own costs almost by definition - is mad. This is not "free market economics" - this is utter madness, born of idealistic, but totally unrealistic, political thought; like comparative examples elsewhere it will cost the taxpayer dearly.

That would be an unmitigated disaster.

I've a notion that there's some old BR class being rebuilt this way in the UK - possibly as an experiment, though? Not sure otherwise....

New maps needed! Derry - Belfast - Dublin - Cork - Bantry......

An excellent publication, indeed; have it myself. Norman was a true gentleman, and his sons who now run the business are absolutely chips off the old block.

I'll have a grey one and a black'n'tan one....

C'mon the kettles! Railcars out..... glorified trams! ;-)

You have to put two fewer rings on their tails to get them within scale......

Wow! Looks perfect, Leslie!