jhb171achill

I just cannot understand why those otherwise excellent vehicles ended up with those blue seats. They never had anything of the sort. For most of their lives, particularly in the earlier livery, the seats are best painted a dark grey, almost black - top bits and all.

Great result!

Wagons are often the least understood and least appreciated things on rails. Irish modelling is no exception. We have now a pretty good array of locomotives, even steam, and carriages are now beginning to get serious attention. But by FAR the most numerous rail-borne vehicles in all time were the various unsung four wheeled wagons and vans. Until Provincial and a few others appeared with their very fine kits, Irish wagon modelling remained in the 1960s era of buying something very vaguely Irish-ish, a model of a British vehicle, and slapping a flying snail on it. There was nothing. British wagons were in almost all cases totally, completely unlike their equivalent Irish designs. If JM Design and Provincial Wagons didn’t exist, we would have not a solitary wagon of the pre-40ft fitted flat era. We may hope for the offerings to expand, but here are the standard designs adhered to by the main companies - GNR, MGWR and MGWR. In later times also the DSER and belatedly the NCC. Naturally, the BCDR, CBSCR and SLNCR were….. odd. But there ye go. Always thought the water tasted funny in Ardglass, Glenfarne and Wisht Caaark boy.

A much-neglected, but superb locomotive. Scratch-build, anyone? From a 1924 edition of the Railway Engineer magazine.

From the Railway Engineer magazine in 1924.

The earlier ones were “GSVs” = “generating steam vans”. The boilers were, I believe, under the brand name of “Swirlyflo”. In later days the diesel generators were of several makes. Cummins rings a bell, yes, possibly Perkins too? ttc, of Tara Junction, would be the expert on this, I would think…,

Good stuff - they’ve come out well. I got done too but haven’t got round to applying them to anything yet…..

Are these waterslide or rub-on types? (Wagons just need grey or brown chassis now, too!)

My late mother worked in the GNR catering department and on one occasion she had to stand in for a supervisor on board a Bundoran Express. At one stage, and she wasn't entirely sure where, as the train rounded a curve, a pile of dishes and glasses, just washed up and stacked on a counter in the kitchen car, crashed down onto the floor, leaving her and others ankle deep in smashed cups, saucers, plates, teapots and beer glasses. The kitchen car had a double door in the kitchen area (like the RPSI's 88; perhaps the same vehicle). Whilst in motion they opened the doors and just swept the whole lot out onto the track, where the fragments will remain today! They opened the "customs" shutters and raided more beer glasses out of the "northern" bar part, as they would have run short otherwise! On arrival in Bundoran (where she was based in the railway-owned hotel), she ordered the hotel stores to stock the diner up before the train left again......... On an entirely separate tangent, last summer I spent a very pleasant afternoon in the company of a large group of retired CIE men, a consequence of my ongoing research into the Loughrea branch. Some 20 years ago, I assisted Selwyn Johnston in his researches into finding old GNR, SLNCR & CDR men to be recorded (by him) of their railway experiences. When you get a gathering of old railway people together, the stories you get out of them are absolute pure gold dust. While naturally it would be impossible to condone, let alone tolerate such things nowadays, the things they got up to behind the door, out of sight of rule books and health & safety men, often fuelled by Guinness - would make your hair stand on end........... tales of a boy porter and fireman taking a goods train up the Lisburn - Antrim branch during the war years, while the driver slept in a drunken stupor like a baby on the coal in the tender....and so on. As the man says, "ye couldn't make it up"! The late Billy Lohan recounted a tale of a loco crew overnighting in Limerick Junction to take an early cattle special to Ennis the next day. They knew that the crew of another special included a notoriously awkward, paranoid and over-cautious driver. They decided to extract the wee-wee out of him. They rigged the dorm up with thin wires which allowed them (at the other end of the wire) to pull objects under his bunk at dead of night - this dorm always had a reputation for being haunted, and our Cork man was always highly reluctant to go near it. All night, our driver heard all sorts of unexplained bangs, scraping noises and the like. Eventually, he jumped out of bed, wrapped his blanket round him, and scarpered across the frost-covered tracks to the station waiting room, where embers in the fireplace had kept it warm. Upon his return to Cork the next day, he sought out the loco foreman, grabbed him by the lapels, and explained extremely graphically what he would do to him if he was ever again rostered for an overnight in Limerick Junction.......... I digress; back to the Enterprise and its relatives.

When Senior was on the GNR, even senior GNR men referred to it (privately!) as "the slowest named train in civilisation"! He saw it crawl through Enniskillen all the time - between the very sharp curve in the station, and its apparent inability to exceed 35 miles an hour anywhere west of Dundalk, its appearance was something that he saw as a non-event; a bit like a yellow machine or ICR at Stacumny Bridge on a wet February Tuesday morning, or a 29 at some graffiti and concrete halt in the Pale nowadays........... but what wouldn't we give to witness this slow-motion "express" today!

OK, yes, confusion abounds! Firstly, until the 1970s there were some trains which were not Enterprises. The last steam workings in the mid-60s between Dublin and Belfast, for example, were through trains all right, but not Enterprise-branded. The last REGULAR steam loco on these trains, which were a Belfast set, was Vs no. 207, now owned by the UTA. From 1957 the GNR had one diesel railcar set on the actual "Enterprise" but the belfast set was still steam. After the UTA took over, this situation continued for a short time, but after 1961 CIE's new B121s were used - in fact, the Enterprise was, as far as I recall, the first regular run for B121s; their earliest forays of any sort were on goods. For a while, loco-hauled services had a CIE diesel as far as Dundalk, where a UTA loco - by now a "WT" class 2.6.4T, would take over. After a short while of that ridiculously unwieldy practice, railcars were used by the UTA and NIR (until 1970s), with CIE using diesel loco-hauled sets of coaches. Initially these were ex-GNR loco-hauled stock, gradually repainted into green, then black'n'tan, with various varieties of laminates and eventually cravens thrown into that eclectic mix. Standard CIE dining cars mixed with ex-GNR ones; one coach (brake 3rd 114, later in RPSI ownership) retained its brown GNR livery until 1967, the last GNR vehicle operating in GNR livery. Within this period of time an old GSWR dining car appeared on the Enterprise at least once. All was modernised within a decade, with the Hunslets and identikit Mk 2s in 1970 from NIR, and 141s with "Supertrain" aircon Mk 2s from 1972. The troubles in the north led to the derailing of a CIE "Supertrain" set, so CIE, anxious to keep their best coaches in good order, promptly changed to using varied sets of a mix of park Royals, laminates and so on, on the Enterprise - scarcely a Craven even - for some years. By the time the 071 / 111s appeared in the late 70s / early 80s, CIE reverted to using more modern stock, and eventually the De Deitrichs. While the short-lived loco change was at Dundalk, customs was at Dundalk and Goraghwood until they closed the latter station in 1965, after which it was carried out via a "green / red lane" system in Belfast Central and in Connolly. Nobody bothered much with it. I brought two bottles of the very best Donegal poítín through it once.............. Incidentally, if you look up today's Translink website, which other than the atrociously unwieldy Bus Eireann website is the most truly awful website that exists; note their description of stations. Within the north, Translink uses the term "train station" for everything from large places like portadown or belfast, to tiny graffiti-strewn one-platforms halts in the boondocks. Yet, on the "Enterprise" listings, if you can find them amongst the No. 32 bus from Buckna to Desertmartin, Dundalk station is listed as "Dundalk Rail Halt". Is it me getting old and cranky, or are these people mentally challenged in some way? It could be. They put a new railcar set on it at that time. However, what he might mean is the last Dublin-based one, as the Belfast set remained steam for a few months longer. Lambegman will have exact dates, I am sure.

I'm pretty partial to them myself, Noel!

Was it the SAR coaches & vans? I'm getting a 12mm gauge 6J 4.6.0 to go with them, hopefully for some sort of portable mini-layout based on an imaginary Cape Province terminus in the 1960s.

This won't open any more. What does it show - SAR brake vans? If so, I got them on fleabay.

Which is precisely why a RTR J15 and AEC sets are essential!

May we assume that Mikado biscuits were not unknown in the past on the Ballina branch?

Enlightenment.

I think that if I presented this to the Chief Executive of the Dept. of Domestic Policy, Implementation and Expenditure, I would end up partly-dismembered on the scrap line in Inchicore, along with those oul 201s.........

Outstanding!

I see there's a youtube of it in steam..........

Quite a long way to there, in fairness....

Doesnt count!

And amend the question to what is there more than one loco preserved of, excluding industrials? DCDR sugar engines Donegal 2.6.4T DCDR O & K J15 Diesels…. A C G E 80 class …….?

Never thought of those.... I was thinking "G" class. 611 - extant, DCDR / ITG 612 - scrapped 613 - extant, DCDR 614 - scrapped 615 - scrapped 616 - extant - ITG 617 - extant - DCDR / ITG

100%! For ten bonus points, one more “majority preserved”? Hint; also locomotive.