jhb171achill

Glenderg, you could charge admission for that!

Great stuff, MikeO - I'll be interested to see the result!

You have my vote too. I've just spent quite a while watching this layout on YouTube - it is absolutely mesmerising to watch! Must have taken years to put together? Excellent stuff - a work of art.

I may have a few old rule books somewhere which I may be able to sell - if anyone's interested PM me and I'll have a delve.

Dunluce, you're a dab hand at converting things.... maybe worth starting a thread on what contemporary stuff out there is suitable gift conversion to Irish models..... there must be loads of British 0.6.0s which could be adapted to GNR, BCDR, NCC or GSR / CIE locos. Sometimes bargains can be had on ebay - I recently saw an old 0.4.0 of some sort which would have been an ideal donor for an inside cylinder CIE 4.4.0 - wheels were about right for several GSR prototypes. It was about £15 sterling.

The tramcars had conventional railway wheels but the goods vehicles had a unique type which could run on rail or road. There was a third line for electricity.

Certainly do-able, Minister.....

If only there was somewhere, anywhere, in Ireland with even a tenth of the interest of Tara Junction!

The "desert sand" colour was like CIE buses were in the 80s. It was basically a light buff / brown - exactly a sandy colour. Beige, you might call it. Unusually or Irish freight stock, vehicles painted in this livery had a black, rather than body-colour chassis. Roofs were light grey or possibly white, but darkened with steam loco coal smoke to a dirty colour very quickly in traffic. The orangey colour on the others was in all probability the passenger livery, which when newly painted in later days tended to look a bit orangey when in sunlight. In fact, it was more brown than that picture implies. Look at colour photos of any GNR coach in the fifties and you'll see - GNR livery tended, like most brown or blue paints, to fade and deaden down quite significantly when in traffic. If you visit Whitehead you can see former Directors Saloon No. 50 in authentic GNR livery.

I have photos somewhere which I will post, which were taken by jhb171senior in the 30s.

010 ("A" class) was involved in the Lisburn accident in 1978 when the Enterprise walloped an 80 class set, sadly resulting in the drivers death. Several other A and C class locos were blown up between Newry and Dundalk during the "Troubles".

Indeed, josefstadt: quite a mixture, and including the RPSI's unique 1508!

It's for catching leprechauns. ;-)

Yes, the vans were another issue indeed - even a few old GSWR six wheeled full brakes survived in traffic until the late 60s. I see your point about livery descriptions. The "golden brown" as CIE rather curiously described it officially, was of a more "tan" shade than later orangey shades, especially post-1990; these themselves having been the subject of considerable debate on these boards with relation to Mk 3 coaches. The earlier livery was indeed mostly black, and on many locos in the sixties it was literally all black bar white flashes on the ends - in other words, no tan at all. Equally, a few A's and C's had this with yellow ends. If "Black'n'tan" is taken as the 1960s livery, this distinguishes it from the "Supertrain" livery of post 1972. From 1987, apart from the addition of the white lines, we have "tippex" or "IR" livery - this is generally taken to mean the 1987- early 90s period, during which the "tippex" white lines were added - the nickname coming from Inchicore painters, and the IR "Set of Points" logo as now applied to 146 at Downpatrick. By the 90s, the "three pin plug" logo appears and we have "IE" livery! So - 1962-72 "Black'n'tan" 1972-87 "Supertrain" 1987-90s "IR / Tippex"

I misread the title "early Cravens".... but a thought occurred to me. If we run Cravens with black'n'tan locos, remember they can only be in the original livery - ie no orange above window level or white below, as the first instances of the newer version were over ten years after the very last loco was repainted in supertrain, let alone IE livery. Also, a sleek uniform rake of Cravens was almost never seen - if at all. Pre supertrain era, whether main line or branch, all trains were composed if a multiplicity of different types of carriages; a random glance at a photo of one six-coach set shows just one Craven. Its companions are a Park Royal, 32xx series brake genny, and three laminates of two different types.... That was absolutely typical.

To add.... Had oil traffic materialised at Bantry, like at Foynes, and this did seem possible at one stage, then two scenarios might have arisen. First, retention of the line purely for that traffic (ie goods only with all intermediate stations closed) or, Ballina style, retention of the line with the same minimal passenger service as well and even sugar beet too for a while. Passenger trains would have been AEC sets for a while, then probably the familiar sight if a 141, bogie and van, up to modern times. Without doubt it would today be a two car 2600.

What would have happened if the Derry Road remained open - 3000 / 4000 class railcars and fewer open stations. Mullingar to Athlone probably just a short cut - Moate would have closed. West Cork - possibly a 2-car 2600 rattling up and fine to Bandon? And Harcourt St could have ended up as a DART terminus..... Maybe one for the "might have been" thread! Such is the imaginative root of some very impressive layouts....

Richrua, I defer to your genius! (And that of your architect)

Absolutely right, Broithe!

It was kicking about a while longer, Jawfin, though saw little use. 100 seems to have been withdrawn about 1958/9. Lucky it survived. First it became a static exhibit in the old Mitchelstown branch bay platform at Fermoy. When the Mallow - Waterford line, on which Fermoy lay, was closed in 1967 it was moved to Mallow, where it took up a position ON the former Waterford / Fermoy platform until preservation.

Fahrenheit had got to be the most utterly stupid of all the imperial measurements!

Indeed. I saw the final operations in '76 or so, when I think it was fertiliser only. Wish I'd taken more pics....

The main terminus building remains, but every single thing except one beyond they is long obliterated. The one thing remaining is the wall behind the coal staithes at what was the curiously-named "Rocksavage" depot - the only open air loco "shed" in Ireland: locos were stored under the bridge! Nothing remains of the tramway at all. I actually walked the route of it about three weeks ago to check. There's more left of the narrow gauge Albert Street terminus (CB&PR) than the CBSCR. You can see a curved pedestrianised path just off McCurtain St, which shows where the tramway ran. A few bits of rail survive on Penrose Quay, showing where Dock sidings would have come out of the main goods yard.

On my first ever layout, when I was 12, I had a brand new BR Class 31. My school friend did my an older one in BR green, which I preferred, but it had a broken bogie. I painstakingly put the bits together with glue and after many crude attempts it ran perfectly; I was delighted. What a sense of achievement! Got me hooked...

Just seen a bit about him on Six One. RIP