jhb171achill

None of it's true, and I wasn't even there when I didn't do it...................

GAHHHHHH!!!!!! Only seeing this NOW!

MALAHIDE MODEL RAILWAY MUSEUM As of now, the museum will open five days per week; Wednesday to Sunday inclusive. On Mondays it’s closed for layout and model maintenance anyway, but Tuesdays have been very quiet since it first opened. This will be reviewed periodically in the future to see if Tuesday (or Monday afternoon) opening is warranted. ……and here’s a photo of Fry’s; Ballinamore, believed to be 1959 just before closure. Yes, modellers, it has a RED buffer beam!

Maybe they'll have some narrow gauge "customer tubes" left over from HS2 to use on it............

One ended its days on CIE apparently still in faded GSR maroon, albeit with the letters "C I E" where "G S R" had been. Another got CIE green. Maybe more than one did. The black'n'tan one above may well have been the green one repainted.

"Clare"...... is this the new WRC Tuam-Galway commuter service?

A shame...... plus, I won't be booking any of my tourists in there any time soon!

And it shows Broadstone! Relative of mine was there with partner the other week. Excellent setting (though they were in the 1950s BR standard coach(!)), and excellent food. However, the service, both at the meal, and at breakfast the following day, was truly atrocious; kept waiting 2.5 hours for dinner, and over an hour for breakfast - and delayed from later appointments as a result. And that's in January - hardly high season! Management gave them a derisory 30 euro voucher!

Indeed - that's actually the only way I recall them, a few mixed in with all sorts of other stuff.... so for a modeller who only has one or two, no need to keep 'em all in a single dedicated rake.

For anyone who wanted to put together a very minimalistic small, sleepy branch terminus shunting layout, a thing like this and a loco and a few wagons is ideal. Services like the Clonakility line and Drimoleague to Baltimore in the late 1950s could often consist of simply one brake coach like this and a few wagons.

Looks well weathered!

This is correct - they did use black latterly! Plus, the green was in fact so dark that weathering and grime would have made it look black even if it was green. Bit like GNR blue domes, CDRJC red domes, and GSR / CIE grey livery - the all-enveloping smoke, coal dust, soot and oil patina that covered a hard-working steam engine almost made the actual livery invisible...

The level of detail on that beach alone is just fantastic.

When I saw this headline, I thought it was something to do with 12th July............

There needs to be a rusty supermarket trolly, some used nappies, cigarette ends, plastic bags, beer bottles and burger wrappers.....

The MM 182 looks, to me, to be too deep a colour for any era. The other shades are more accurate.

I wonder why some of those containers had a black band round the middle, and others maroon....anyone know? And - WHERE did they go to when they got to Larne?

Saw that only just now! Would that motor bogie suyit the GSR one? What do the wheels look like close up - hard to make out from that photo?

Wasn't even aware that any of them even ventured over there at ll..... but we can discount them pulling trains there! Youghal's the best bet, or as mayner says, very outside chance Galway - Tuam. Actually, Limerick - Sligo went all railcar prior to the 121s, so not on that service - but possibly a Tuam local?

Busy oil traffic today…. IMG_9942.mov

Simply the fact that they didn’t get round to repainting literally every single vehicle by the time the black’n’tan started to make its presence felt. The last dark green passenger-carrying vehicles in regular use, if we discount several narrow gauge vehicles, seem to have been several old relics in West Cork and at least one 6-wheeled brake third on the Valentia line.

In "time" terms, possible. The 121s appeared in 1961 and the very last six-wheelers were withdrawn in early 1963. However, there were only so many 121s, and they were actually used a lot on freight in their first year or two; passenger usage was all main line. None ever worked regularly on branches, and six-wheelers were by then only to be found on the Ballinrobe, Loughrea, ballaghadarreen and Kenmare branches, all of which were fully steam worked until after the last six wheelers were withdrawn. However, every good rule has an exception. Cork retained a couple of rakes of the six wheelers right to the end, and they were retained for use on Youghal excursions. It is therefore at least theoretically possible that a 121 hauled one of these - it would have to have only been in the summer of 1962. I'd almost lay money on it that they didn't, but they COULD have - and as always, "Rule 1" applies! I've an 00 Works CBSCR saddle tank on Dugort Harbour until the end of steam in '63, some sixteen years after the last of the real thing was scrapped! There's another exception. Several ex-GSWR FULL passenger brakes wre in use until 1968-70, and these are the inspiration for the Hattons black'n'tan brakes. THESE certainly WERE hauled by 121s, in particular on the galway mail trains - but in black'n'tan days. Correct - a 121 hauling anything in the darker green livery wouldn't have happened - it was not to be seen on main lines by the time 121s appeared. Lighter green in the circumstances described above. Of course, when 121s first appeared in grey, ALL passenger stock, including the most modern laminates, were green, or else the short-lived "silver". The earliest vehicles in black and tan started to appear when the 121s were some 18 months old.

Noticed today that one of the DD sets had blue 216, and another had one of the zebras, either 231 or 233.

Had forgotten about the Worsley etch, right enough…. probably easy enough to put together…. had a look at their website, though, and can't find it. Maybe they've stopped doing it? Power bogie an issue, of course, as you suggest!

Correct. That one was previously green, and as far as I am aware it's the only one which ever got the black'n'tan livery. I've no idea how many were green - again, possibly only one. I'm aware that one kept GSR maroon well into CIE days, but I do not know the details.