jhb171achill

To be fair to all: 1. CIE. As said elsewhere, their remit is to get people from A to B; their holding of the post of heritage officer, for example, has more to do with the practicalities of how to compromise listed building status with the need to alter a heritage building for modern use. They are not a museum, and consequently have no related responsibilities. In addition, they have always been approachable by reputable heritage groups for acquisition of "threatened" historic vehicles. By their offices, A39, 141, 142, 800 and 90 were preserved, along with the SLNCR railcar and at least two MGWR 6 wheelers, which are variously in the care of ITG, RPSI, DCDR & UFTM. Add to that the numerous other diesels they hav e made available to the ITG, and carriages for the RPSI. 2. Preservation Groups. The UFTM, RPSI and DCDR have all had discussions at some stage in the past with Inchicore with regard to 6111. Thus far, nothing has arisen from these discussions - but never say never, I suppose. Each of the above (with UFTM's exception) is a voluntary group with limited space, money and manpower, and with the best will in the world cannot acquire something simply because it's important - as 6111 doubtless is. There has to be somewhere to put it, several thousand euros to transport it, and so on, even without a long term plan to fix it up. In terms of setting up a transport museum, it isn't CIE's responsibility. In addition, they are constrained by railway disposal laws in terms of how, when and to whom they can offer disused routes; apparently they can only offer to a local authority, who will then have a choice of spending ratepayer's money on acquiring land to be given for nothing to a heritage group, or sold to them for market price. Few heritage groups will have this, and access to grant aid is limited for a "start-up" group, as they will be applying for money to develop something they don't yet own. (This has been a stumblin block to a number of heritage set-ups over the years). So who, and where, can we lay blame at for the lack of a museum in the 26 counties? The Government. If there is to be a NATIONAL transport museum, one would expect it to be like York. Who funds that? The British Government, not Network Rail or any voluntary preservation society. Until and unless those in charge of the country (God help us!!) take such an initiative, nothing will be done. And by now it's purely academic - there's nothing left to put in it bar 6111. No MGWR locos, no West Cork locos, no this, no that.... A forward looking administration in 1960 would have had the pick of what was still there. The most luxurious passenger carriage ever to run on this island - the MGWR 12 wheel saloon... numerous narrow gauge things... and so on.

Absolutely superb!

Interesting to see the teams! Still in grey and yellow, pre-green.....

A 141 or 121 at speed would shake the teeth out of your head - I remember from numerous cab runs both on the main line and secondary routes.

I'd go for that myself!

We have Cultra, soon-to-be revamped whitehead, existing Downpatrick and also Sean browne's stuff in Castlerea....

Good thinking, Warbonnet. You'll be made welcome at the Downs of Patrick.........

Excellent, Broithe!!!

Saw the programme - very good in fact; those guys have put in a major amount of effort and they are well worth supporting...

Another summer, another CIE rambler ticket. I was exploring the Tralee & Dingle, much of which then remained, including the lengthy roadside sections out to Camp / Castlegregory Junction, and most of the route to Castlegregory. My father, now 95, must be one of very few who travelled to Castlegregory by rail; but leaving that aside, here I was. The day was nice and I went into a bar in Castlegregory to get a sandwich - or crisps; just about the only foodstuffs you could get in a country bar in those days. I sat at the bar with a pint of G; the youth behind the bar disappeared to get a bucket of turf to stoke up the open fire with. He wandered over, threw one or two lumps on, and went back behind the bar. The only other people in were a very old man, cloth cap pulled down over his forehead, with his nose stuck in the "Indo" and a glass and an old fashioned bottle of Guinness beside him, and some tourists. The local man stared at his paper, motionless, without sign or speech. The tourists looked like two couples aged forty-something, English, and in contrast to the old gent sitting beside me, very animated; talking excitedly about where they'd been and where they were going. Bicycle clips, notebooks, maps and guide books were scattered all round them as they sat at a large table away from the bar and close to the fire. One of them spotted the bar-youth throwing the turf on the fire. "I say, old chap!" (or words, very much along those lines!). "Would you mind telling us what this stuff is that you are putting on the fire?" Youth looked blankly at them. "Turf" (in a very strong Kerrrrrry accent) "Oh! Tuhhf! What exactly is it made of? Do you you mind if I take a look?" Youth nodded awkwardly, wondering what on earth to make of these people; he put down the bucket and went back behind the bar. One of our visitors lifted a piece out and passed it around his friends, who held it, sniffed it, and one took a photograph of another holding it. "I say!" called another of the visitors to the bar-gossoon, "Is it hard?" For the first and only time, the elderly local beside me lifted his head from his paper, and adjusted the old cap on the back of his head. "Shtick it on de floor and shtamp on it, and ye'll see if it's hard" he advised. I can't remember whether he ended his afternoon's statement with "boyo"......

Indeed.... first time I was in that neck of the woods by road, we also did the Ring of K; and in the same fashion it was dusted with snow - and it was October! Talking of Annascaul, I was on a runabout ticket (as usual) some years earlier. The bus stopped in Annascaul, and it was raining hard. The driver went into the pub which was also the local agent for CIE, to collect whatever parcels there were. No sign of him after a while, and I was bursting for the loo. I decided to risk getting off the bus (which had only one or two other people in it), and as I passed the bar, there was the driver sitting up on a bar stool with a mug of tea! On my return, as I passed the bar, a large American had just approached the bar and was telling the bus driver and the girl behind the bar that he was American (surprise!) and his ancestors came from Kerry, so he had come home to check out his roots! The girl asked him if his people were from the immediate area. "I'm not sure", he said, "but they must be, it's so beautiful and they always said how beautiful it was". Quite. The girl asked him what name his relatives had. "Murphy"................

I'll have a look for it, Hunslet. The BCDR van was parked for years in the old siding beside Murray's tobacco factory, and around it MEDs, 80s, 70s and Hunslet push-pull Enterprises buzzed...

There was at least one ex GN 0.6.0 seen around Portarlington / Port Laoise at one stage. I think it was on a ballast train or something like that, but I'm not sure where I got the info from. GNR rolling stock travelled far and wide. An AEC set was pictured in Wexford with one car still in navy and cream. One coach ended up in West Cork for a very short time, thus travelling as far as was physically possible from home. Wagons went everywhere. I saw GNR wagons in Templemore and Tralee in 1976, eighteen years after the GN had ceased to be.

I have to say Belfast Central wouldn't strike me either - but if NIR consisted of more lines and had freight, you could have all sorts of stuff going through it. But if modelling a station to show through traffic, Drogheda would suit better - it's even got curved platforms too! And NIR as well as IE stuff.... Or Dundalk.... if gthe DNGR and INW lines were still open, 2600s to Greenore, and timber empties heading out towards Clones....

Ahh, Mayner, a missed opportunity in Annascaul! You could have developed a Kerry accent............

Boy, I thought the "Flying Frogs" on the Cork line were ugly!!! Those bottle-nose dolphins on wheels make even NIR's 450s look beautiful....

Excellent thinking, Broithe! You must have regularly changed there.....

IE are obliged to seek suitable prices for all they dispose of now. As far as 6111 is concerned, I would estimate thatb a low loader taking it to Whitehead, Downpatrick, Moyasta, or anywhere else, would cost some €5000; this does not include costs involved in making it secure. Should its size make it necessary to bring over al Allelly's or Moveright lorry from the UK, you could be looking at up to €10,000. Usually, when one of those lorries comes over, it's £5000 stg to get it here and back on the boat, plus so much per lift while here. Thus, DCDR, RPSI, ITG, NIR & IE tend to liase when any one of them is bringing them over so that all that moves can be done together, thus cutting costs. Some items of railwa rolling stock can be dealt with by firms based here, but the larger ones usually need one of these juggernauts. On one occasion, the DCDR was receiving things on wheels from both Whitehead and Inchicore, and also sending away a loco to go to Whitehead for repair. All those moves - five items in and one out, were tagged onto a move of a 201 to Glasgow and certain RPSI movements as well. As a result, the Downpatrick share of that particular bill was £5200, whereas I had reckoned that had DCDR got them over on their own, the bill would have been £11 - £12,000. Back to 6111: as I say, don't get excited, folks; on a previous occasion it was investigated also (and possibly on another occasion) by two different bodies. Both organisations, and all concerned, and all here, will agree it is very worthy of preservation, but transferring such a wish into cold hard fact, after taking all relevant circumstances into account, is sometimes not as simple as it looks. If it were, the thing would have been preserved long ago..... Let's live in hope!

So there was to be a new station at Portadown, replacing the old GNR one, which was still in use but just about. It was about 1969 / 1970. NIR were building a brand new concrete box; any contemporary communist state leader would have been proud of its clean straight lines and right angles, its plain grey exterior concrete brick walls, and its plain grey interior concrete brick walls. Minimalistic 1970's concrete-box architecture; glad that its latest incarnation sweeps much of that away. Between 1970 and the present, Portadown must have been the ugliest station in Ireland. The new station was to be called "Craigavon West" after a ficitious "city" planned by politicians, civil servants and 1970 town planners; as dubiously qualified a bunch of people to arrange where people lived as there could be. I am not sure what they had planned as Cragavon East; maybe Lurgan? It never came to be, but they did obliterate without trace (bar part of one platform) the old GNR station. Off to see my school friend who lived in Waringstown, not far away from Lurgan. The train was a dilapidated graffiti-strewn AEC railcar set. The graffiti was internal, rather than the external work of retarded "artists" which adorns just about everything in certain areas of certain cities today. The subject matter related (delicately put!) to expressions of intent to obliterate certain sections of the community; there were some invoking victories in battles some three hundred years earlier, and others inviting the listener to indulge in various activities aimed at subverting normal society. Nice stuff; now they have tours of this "graffiti" in Belfast for tourists! Plus ca change.... The AEC set was overheating and a smell of diesel filled the cab. I was in what had been the old first class, but the driver had the blinds pulled down so that I couldn't get a decent view ahead, which was a beneficial feature of a schoolboy sneaking into the first class in recent times. For some reason, right towards the end of AEC operation I used to find these blinds down more often than not. Maybe the driver just saw me coming. A good afternoon was spent with my school friend, and I was put back on the train by his grandfather about 8pm that night. I sat on my own in a carriage with nobody in it but me. It was approaching the end of the school year; summer was upon us. It was a lovely warm evening. Just before the train departed, four young men (as it seemed; they might have been 16 - 20) appeared in the seating bay opposite. They had a staggering amount of "carry out" beer cans, and were already enthusiastically guzzling them. They were in high spirits. The conductor appeared, clipped their Edmondson card tickets, looked at my school travel pass, and disappeared - not to appear again. My travelling companions started singing. Their initial song was one I knew; it is well known in the north. It commemorates certain events in history. Even at the age of 11 / 12 / 13 or whatever I was, this seemed intimidating. One of my companions stood up on the seat, roaring it out. The concert proceeded, with the listener regaled with expressions of support for past events liberally interspersed with exhortatations of battle cries against, let us say, those born into different communities, or in Portadown-speak, themmuns that kick with th'other fut! Whew. Lisburn. Off the train. I often wondered where they had been, or where they were going; and why the train guard left them alone.... In Lisburn a rake of loaded wooden ballast wagons sat in the back road. Tommorrow, presumably, a "Jeep" would pick them up for ballasting. Not long later, I was on one of my early CIE Rambler tickets. I decided to take a spin to Tralee. Senior had provided me with a note of the numbers of carriages designed by a past relative at Inchicore. Such vehicles were now rare, but a few were still in traffic. Sure enough, I spotted two at Heuston Station right at one end of a train which I soon discovered was the Tralee train. They were numbered in the 13XX series; "Bredins". That'll do me, thought I; and boarded one. It looked a bit tatty - in fact I found out later that it did not remain in traffic much after this, but what had happened was that the train had been strengthened for reasons which will become apparent. Up front was an "A"; ten or eleven bogies and a couple of tin vans were no big deal for GM's finest. The "Bredins" were right behind the locomotive, thus most passengers boarded at the far end. So we left Heuston with few passengers in my carriage. Maybe the others were afraid I'd start singing the songs I had learned on the AEC. As we swept up past Inchicore, a derelict "D" and two "G"'s were visible. I took a picture out of the window quickly as I hadn't seen a "D" before, and I still have it, though it is dark and poorly exposed. As I sat there, a very elderly man appeared and asked me was there anyone sitting opposite me, and would I mind if he sat there. No problem. Down he sat, and proceeded to slurp his false teeth about in his mouth, and settled himself. He said nothing until we were going through the Curragh. I noticed his trousers were held up with a "belt" made of baler twine. He appeared to be of a distinctly rural disposition. Eventually, as we sped through the Curragh, the noise of an "A" at speed as background music through the open window, he finally spoke. His accent was as rural as, well, something that ye do be seeing in de fields, d'ye know, down the shtix. "Ye see them sheep?" sez he. "Yes" "D'ye know dem sheep are special sheep?" "Eh, no" "Yeah, dem's special sheep, a special breed. They're smaller than normal sheep." "Oh..." "Yeah, dey are a special breed, ye only get dem in de Curragh" "Oh... I didn't know that" Whereupon he gazed (longingly?) at them, and drifted off to sleep. About Port Laoise, off he got, having uttered no more. I was alone again. The day was sunny, and I moved over to the other side of the carriage so that I could see trains passing me on the up road. I remember a goods train of loose coupled "H" vans, and another "A" ahead of a string of coaches, most of which were Park Royals. There can't have been more than 2 or 3 other people in my carriage, and I hadn't even started singing yet. Into Thurles, and the platform was absolutely thronged. Jammed solid. The carriage door opened and an avalanche of young ladies, all aged I'd say 15-18 started pouring in. Soon every seat in the coach was taken and more; in the seating bay opposite me one was sitting on the table with her four friends in the seats either side of her, and another three surrounding me. The decibel level obliterated the "A" class music through then window. Never before had this distinguished old carriage carted so many teenage female hormones about the place, I could sense it saying. Some were talking in English, some in Irish. They were on their way to one of the "Gaeltacht" summe schools in Ventry, Co Kerry, one of them told me. Buses would await them at Tralee. Probably every bus in Counties Limerick, Kerry and Cork, I thought. There were over 150 of them in the train, I was told. The older ones were allowed to sit on their own, and the younger ones (more my age!) were under supervision in the next coach. It occurs to me now, some 40 years later, how these elderly carriages had their last swansong in this way, with a crowd of exuberant, excited teenagers cramming their faded doors and dark red GSR upholstery, in the Swinging Seventies; a far cultural cry from the conservative Thirties when they entered service behind "Maedb" on the very same line. At Tralee, I left them, and retreated to the peace and quiet of the old T & D station, and the erstwhile Basin Halt, which still had a T & D "No Trespass" notice. The way home was more orderly. A cab run in 135 to Mallow, and a laminate diner with a steak dinner en route back to Dublin. This day last week I was in an ICR, (or is it an iPad? I can never be sure) speeding through the Curragh. The sheep still look the same to me as any others.

It may be of interest that certain enquiries are being made from within the broad preservation movement with regard to 6111 right now. Now, don't get excited; funding, current manpower and hard practicalities will dictate whether anything comes of these enquiries or not. But at least somebody's trying.

Liverbird; accurate models of Irish stuff will indeed set you back. But if you want authenticity, I always take the view that it's like "getting what you pay for" - thus, certainly, it's worth it. (I remember the 80's being delivered... and I was able to take a pic of one alongside an old BCDR wagon at the old Great Victoria Street....! Showing me age....)

Make yourself known, Heirflick. Can't be certain what days I'll be there, as I will be going myself on hol prob to Greece!

DOWNPATRICK & COUNTY DOWN RAILWAY SUMMER TIMETABLE 2013 - starts this Saturday. Every Saturday and Sunday until mid September. Downpatrick depart: 1400 1445 1530 1615 1700 Inch Abbey depart: 1420 1505 1550 1635 1720 Motive power: O & K No. 1 normally rostered for all public passenger trains. Shunting / empty stock movements will mostly be hauled by A39 or a G class locomotive. Carriages will normally be GSWR 836 or 1097 (or both) with CIE brake standard 3223. It's No. 1's first full season in passenger traffic. Come and travel! Modellers will be made welcome. If anyone wants to photograph or measure up any item of rolling stock, ask a member of staff at the railway and every effort will be made to accommodate you, subject to restrictions necessary while running trains. Of possible interest to modellers are the O & K locomotives, an NCC signal cabin, 146 and A39 (and the E and G class locos), and various carriages and wagons. No. 90 is in the museum, and is in authentic pre-1890 GSWR green. Original BCDR carriages also present... see you there!

Yes... The FR is indeed adept at marketing, and its appearance in a dark corner at one side of Heuston station is part of a tour. Therefore, it's not really an IE attempt at publicising the "Gathering" at all!

Sooner they get the genny vans back in use the better....