jhb171achill

You could make a passable loco of GNR, NCC or GS (group) origin, even by sticking an appropriate cab on it.... yes, the MGWR example would be good... Inchicore cab and chimney would go a long way towards recreating a decent replica.

BRILLIANT!!!!!! Love it! Next - Connolly Station, the Enterprise, loco'n'all, a DD set, an ICR and a DART all present.....!!

Another aspect of the sectarian tension between the staff and management involved a recently appointed station master being ordered out of his bed in the night by masked gunmen and frog marched 12 miles to Killeshandra, and told never to appear in the area again! Next question: Name a few places which had one station built when the line opened, only to be replaced by a second station nearby on a subsequent date? To start: Tullymurry, Co Down; Mulrany, Co Mayo, LLSR Terminus in Derry................

Clucko's not the most forthcoming, all right, but: as Wrenn says, the Jacks are Back! So: a challenge. Who's the first to photo-shop a pic of an 071 and a set of Cravens; or an ICR - in two tone blue?

At one stage the GSR gave serious consideration to altering the gauge to 5ft 3. Had this occurred, it would have made an interesting parallel to the Timoleague line; another broad gauge roadside tramway but with heavy coal trains instead of No. 90 trailing two covered vans along about twice a week! There's a near-equivalent: sand trains on the Blessington tramway by night....!

Re the date CIE moved from grey to brown.... having studied many hundreds, even thousands, of photos from the 1970s, and with my own observations in mind, I would say that in the 1970 - 78 period, approximately 65% of wagons were brown, the rest still grey. Obviously, more grey about 1972, say; and more brown a few years later.

My grandmother, who hailed from Ballina, lived as a child in Ballinamore between about 1910 and 1920. She made friends with the daughter of the Traffic Manager, one William Henry McAdoo. The children - minus dayglo jackets or PTS, let alone trespass permission - played daily among the locomotives at Ballinamore shed, sharing their playground with 4.4.0Ts, enginemen and hens. Lots of hens. As a teenager, Flanagan's history of the C & L was the second or third railway book I ever got; precursor to a room full of them.My grandmothere was still alive then and lived with us, and I lent her the book which she read from cover to cover. She said she remembered the nameplates business, and sectarian wrangling between the railway management and the rank and file railwaymen; the first being staunchly unionist, the latter equally staunchly republican. She heard that the nameplates were initially hidden by the loco crew, but they turned up in the station yard after being revealed by scratching hens. After restoration to the dismay of the locomen, No. 8 had a spell as a regular on the Arigna branch. The loco had remained in the "flag" shade of green, with orange and white lining, but the plates had been put back. One day, the train reappeared in Ballinamore off the branch without the plates again, and they were never found again. The word at the time, which she heard, was that they had been hidden in a bog. Apparently the crew had stopped the train at some remote spot, having hacked the plates off again while it was in Arigna, and buried them in bogland they knew. So those plates may well still be there; if the story is true, and I have no reason to doubt it - someone with knowledge of the Ballinamore - Arigna road may well get their shovel out! Those plates would fetch about €5000 each at auction.... Where's me wellies?

Those beasts were blue all over when new. Other chassis colours which may be of interest to modellers, and this includes bogies, buffers, and drawgear: Asahi bogie wagons - dark UTA-style green UTA Spoil wagons - light "duck-egg" blue (which changed to all over East Antrim Muck after a single outing!) Castlemungret bogies - very light greyish blue. Taras - blue. Pretty much everything else - sheep-dipped in brown! Though I notice now that newly serviced container flats and other wagons at Limerick have black bogies and brown bodies / drawgear. Hope this helps.

With regard to C & L No. 8, it was due a repaint. The livery was a quite dark green with red and white lining. Locos 1 - 7 were named after the daughters of the directors of the original line, but since there were seven daughters, but eight locos, and the C & L management were of unashamedly unionist affiliation, No. 8 was called "Queen Victoria". So when the repain became due, about 1916 or so, Ballinamore removed the nameplates and painted it a shade of green more akin to that in the tricolour - lighter than the C & L green - and put orange and white lining on it. The nameplates were hidden, but turned up later!

Correct on (2); and partly correct on (1) - the C & L staff certainly didn't like "King Edward" - though the PW folk liked her less. The "Beast" was the Ballymena & Larne's Beyer Peacock 2.6.0ST which worked mainly on the Ballyboley - Doagh line until the withdrawal of passenger services and closure of the ballyclare - Doagh section. Having said that, I expect that both locos were called many things............

Yip! And - which narrow gauge loco, despite being the most powerful on its system, was so unpopular with enginemen it was nicknamed "The Beast And - what led to the Cavan & Leitrim's No. 8 being nicknamed the "Sinn Fein Engine"?

Indeed, Garfield; not bad for a gentleman of a rural disposition! ;-) The D & B brought cattle trucks down from de hills late in the evening. The D & B locomotive would leave the wagons on a siding outside their terminus in Terenure, where at night a DUTC steeple-cab electric loco (they had two) would collect them and bring them over the DUTC system to the docks, or to Smithfield. Sand traffic traversed the streets at night in wagons. The D & B had a sand pit up in the hills from which sand was taken into Dublin. This traffic was prevalent about a century ago, but had dwindled to a trickle before the line shut in the early 1930s. The D & B terminus yard at Terenure was "under the wires" to enable the DUTC electric locos to bumble about within the environs... but they could not venture any further. The D & B had covered vans, cattle trucks, and opens. The open wagons couls also be fitted with temporary wooden lath sides to convert them for cattle traffic as well. The main source of such traffic was Blessington Fair.

No.... a clue: it was in a built up area!

Top class work as always! Great to see it step by step.

As a result of someone asking me "what is grey", I would clarify a point. The grey most commonly seen in colour photos is the light grey used by CIE from the late 1960s until the brown became all-encompassing. NIR used an even lighter grey (as on Downpatrick's NCC Goods Brake Van) on PW vehicles only (as NIR never ran goods trains of their own) for a very short time in the 1970s. But - and this one's important for modellers - the correct shade of grey to use in all other applications is much darker. The GSR, and later CIE, a well as the NCC and UTA, used a colour identical or as good as, to LMS wagon grey in England - this shade is readily available from model suppliers in that neck of the woods. The BCDR used an even darker shade which can be seen on a rescued BCDR van body at Downpatrick. It would best be described as dark slate grey. I recall seeing a wagon in the 1960s like this, still marked "B C D R" and noticing how much darker it was. The GNR used a similar shade to CIE / GSR / CIE. The SLNCR used a somewhat lighter shade of grey. The lighter grey used by CIE on covered vans was not often replicated on opens, as the Bullied steel ones were very much to the fore from the late 1960s. Few wooden bodied opens obtained light grey, and fewer still brown, though there some examples. Narrow gauge stuff was a mixed bag, as they so rarely saw a paint brush! The CDRJC had a lighter shade latterly at any rate, though in the 1920s some stock was painted black. The Cavan & Leitrim had just a small number of PW open wagons, which a century ahead of the modern Health & Safety Regime, were all yellow! The GSWR used a dark grey which was almost black for much of its goods stock. When hauled (post 1915) by a plain slate-grey locomotive, this can't have looked very colourful!

I remember them well..... I recall travelling in one somewhere near Swinford in Co Mayo. On a narrow stone-walled road (as usual back then, mid 70s) it clipped wing mirrors with a van coming the other way, despite both trying to get as far into the ditch as they could. I sat in the second seat from the front. In front of me, the two front seats either side of the aisle had boxes of day-old chicks on one, and bundles of newspapers for shops on the other! The heady days of "bus parcels traffic"....

Wonder if her pyjama bottoms were among the items.....

As an aside, I often wonder what would have happened had that line remained, and not become subsumed into CIE... David Holman has referred to this; the idea of making up a history for a layout. I often think that the rationales that people have behind the existence of a layout are in themselves fascinating... I would imagine a modern day SLNCR would have used (Lough Swilly style) cast-offs from NIR & IR until maybe the mid 90s, when they would have taken advantage of the money awash then, and bought a couple of 2 car 2600s...... Timber from Manorhamilton, anyone?

What Irish tramway operated goods trains at night?

Bessbrook & Newry Tramway. Not only were they able to run on the road, one pair of wheels would articulate when on road, like a road trailer. These were fixed rigidly when on raila.

Yes, Crew on C & VBT.

Looking very promising!

The Ballymena & Larne (as opposed to Ballymoney - that was where the Ballycastle Rly started) had two of these IOM-esque locos. One was sold eventually to the Castlederg & Victoria Bridge Tramway in Co Tyrone, and eked out its last days there, still in faded NCC maroon but with a Castlederg coat of arms on it! It had tramway "skirts" fitted on one side, but these impeded lubrication of the motion and were usually not attached, leading to the somewhat ugly sight of the loco with the framework for them only, appearing on most trains it pulled.

People must have been built differently in those days............

They would indeed have been.... just as now, some 66 years later!