jhb171achill

Minister, that is indeed the Dromod one.

I've done a lot of delving through GSR boardroom minute books over the years and while I most certainly have by no means come across all material on all incidents, this one remains elusive to me! Given the cash strapped nature of the GSR, I think it's highly unlikely a whole loco was left there. Maybe bits of it? In any event, I'd be interested to know if there actually is any mileage in this...

The sugar co. did indeed hire them.

I'm pretty certain, from what I heard around Inchicore in the late 70s / early 80s, that it was scrapped on site there. Bogies, chassis, the lot. Shame, though...

Neil's stuff is top notch!

Indeed, Wrenn..... Now where are my pills and false teeth...... I know I left them here somewhere......

Am I the only one that finds that it takes ages to download flickr photos / albums?

Wrenn - I had completely forgotten it was 0 gauge!!!!!!!

Downpatrick's 1944 is one of the last set - in fact one of the last two.

Memory jogged. Saw blue Lino some thirty and more years ago when it was at Limerick junction. It was a dull pale blue from what I remember. Don't worry about the asbestos - I ate it all that day......

West Cork?

Surely, with such emphasis on producing the superb Irish r-t-r and kit models, there might be a case to be made for at least the production of a limited amount of scale 5ft 3 track and points?

Jawfin, Garfield & Co.; glad you enjoyed it.

Let's hope they get a few Murphy's Models 141 & 071 class locos and appropriate stock. Their home made "Supertrain" isn't the same level of accuracy as Cyril Fry's models.

Entirely grey until early fifties when a very small number of the overall total got lined green. From mid fifties some were repainted grey, others black.

The very steepest gradients in Ireland were the quarter mile just short of Hillsborough station in the Knockmore Junction side and the cutting just south of Downpatrick station, through which it will one day become possible to travel again by train. These were 1 in sixty-ish - I'd have to look it up. One in sixty - for example - would be one inch rise per sixty inches (or five feet / about 1.5m) length. A model railway will comfortably cope with gradients three times this steep.

You're quite right, minister - I had forgotten that. 00n3 or TT is indeed what's needed. There was a lot of dual gauge track in Larne Harbour station at one time. After the last remaining bit of the Ballymena & Larne closed in 1950, fragments remained about the yard almost until its removal in the early 1960s. At Strabane, one might have expected the same, but it was nit so, other than a wagon turntable. The Derry docks had a lot, and the RPSI's 0.6.0T "R H Smyth" had a narrow gauge chopper coupling set off centre on each buffer beam so that it could haul CDR or LLSR stick as well as NCC or GNR stock around the quays.

Stevie, what is known is that the tender it arrived at Whitehead with is not what it ran with. Rumours abounded for years at Whitehead that it came from a 400, but this is nonsense! In GSR, let alone CIE days, tenders were swopped. This was common in other countries too. I remember seeing steam locos in Indonesia in the 80s at the end of steam. The particular livery they had involved having the loco number on the loco itself and the tender. So you got B5002 paired with the tender from B5008, B5004 with B5010 and so on. CIE and GSR were no exception to this. The GNR numbered tenders in a separate series because they knew they'd be swopped. However, swops were generally within a class (but not always). CIE inherited a wide range of non standard locos, so swopping between classes was quite common as well as between locos within a class. It's probably impossible to say at this stage where 186s tender originated, but we can be sure that it would have travelled around behind many locos of several classes! Photographic evidence shows that this type of tender was often found with the J15 class. It may well have designed with them in mind, or not!

009 is the same 9mm gauge but with narrow gauge sleeper spacing might look a lot better?

The grey used by the GSR was as close to LMS grey as anything, though prior to that the GSWR used an extremely dark grey, almost black. CIE continued this shade to the late 50s / early 60s, then used a much lighter shade as shown on that open wagon above and on numerous "H" vans in the 60s and still like that in the 70s. The brown used from the late 60s onwards always had a slight reddish tint, though this has been much more marked since the 1990s, as witnessed on Taras, timber wagons and container flats nowadays. In the 70s it was close enough to British Railways wagon brown. Again, bear in mind that unlike BR wagons, Irish ones never had black chassis, always body colour; grey for grey wagons, brown for brown ones. Exceptions to that rule were Asahi wagons, ammonia tanks, flat sided cement wagons of both types (blue chassis like bodies), bubbles (originally all over grey, then orange with black chassis, finally Irish Cement cream with - eh - cement coloured chassis!, and modern products of Limerick - brown bodies / chassis with black bogies, springs in all sorts of multi colours. But for good old 4 wheel stock, see above.

I should add, the buffer beam numerals really look well too.

Absolute gem, stunning! I showed the pics to Senior, who knew it well. He says it was grey initially and would have spent most of its life like this. I think CIE did indeed paint it green latterly, but it doesn't appear to have been doing much by then. If I may be permitted one slight detail comment, the number plates should be either all grey, or grey with yellow cream raised edges and numerals. But overall, what a stunner! How to follow that one.... Maybe an 820, the 4.6.2T based on the 800s, which never saw the light of day!

Ah! Indeed; memory suitably jogged! The price and quality would indeed have been why I never bought any....

At the risk of misguiding this thread away from the original point, I once saw the Gardai having to shovel up the remains of a very large dog which had come to grief at the Mad Cow roundabout..... stomach churning.

That is indeed a masterpiece of one with exceptional eyesight - and skills. Dare I live in hope of seeing a few blue 4.4.0s about the place! On a serious note, this idea of 3D prints seems to be generating a lot of valuable new opportunities. Presumably it would be a relatively simple matter to churn out DD stock, various modern railcars and 141s. For a 141, though, what chassis would be short enough?