jhb171achill

Personally, I think it's pure laziness. The information IS out there. I am sent historical queries of all sorts from time to time. In the past, I often had to delve deelpy, often in the IRRS, CIE archives, or even National Archives, before (or IF) I could answer. Now, I either spend half a minute to half an hour on the Interwebnet, or fish out a document from a filing cabinet beside me, or a book or journal from an (admittedly big) bookcase behind me. Couldn't be easier. Sadly - and as many here will know - this is an absolute bugbear of mine - all of our preservation societies seem to have either an uninformed or cavalier attitude towards liveries. In two of our major ones, I have heard it said, when a correct livery is being discussed for something being restored "Yeah, but I don't LIKE that colour". I bite my tongue; it would be tempting to say, "it's not about what you like - it should look like it WAS"...... The British take that seriously, going to great pains to get such details right. Here we just don't. The RPSI, UFTM (above all!), DCDR, KIltimagh Museum, you name it - all do a fantastic job preserving, conserving and painting something - and the final touch is the paint job - but a "touch" which is the very first thing that people see - the colours and markings. In the past, wrong liveries were usually through lack of knowledge. But now - worse - preservationsts know the colour something was, but actually make a conscious choice NOT to paint it accurately. Fancy a pink GNR 4.4.0? Only a matter of time. Brown and green 071? Sure. Now just watch - serious historians and artists painting pictures of what some railway scene "used to be like", will copy that. The preservationist who "just doesn't like" the correct livery will have single-handedly created a false narrative - perfect example being a black chassis on Irish model wagons. Model manufacturers are at it too. I don't want to put down anyone who makes Irish models - we need ye all! - but two in particular turn out models in all sorts of fantasy versions.... one of them I have personally (and tactfully!) pointed out various incorrect details to in the past, seemingly falling on deaf ears.... Now, before anyone accuse me of being an armchair whinger, I spent the best part of ten years painting RPSI carriages myself, and being "at the coal face", so I've been there........................................................ennnnyway; rant over. Happy Christmas to all...........

You're building up a nice little collection of wagons there. May I recommend, though, some of the Provincial Wagons range, as the Irish goods van designs were very different to British ones? The "Toad" - yes, a very nice design - I like them too, and when I had a GWR-inspired layout in my teens, they were on the goods trains - I think I had about 3. As you know, they're nothing remotely like anything that ran here, but Rule No. 1 applies here - "it's YOUR layout"! Stick a flying snail on it and you're good to go! So, for CIE brake vans, the liveries are like this. All grey (not just the body; the roof and chassis too), with painted-on "flying snail" until the late 1950s, when it became a stencilled flying snail until 1963. After that, all grey but with the new CIE "broken wheel" roundel. After only a year or two, they started painting yellow and black diagonal stripes on the protruding ducket with plain black above and below it. (Not the black and WHITE of Cultra; accuracy, museum folks, accuracy, if you want to be taken seriously as a museum!*). So, it the mid 60s, you might get one brake van all grey with snail, another all grey with new logo, and another with new logo AND stripes on ducket. From 1970 they start painting them brown, same as other stock. The CIE vans were either 20 ton or 30 ton. JM Design does these vans in the original wooden-planked version (some of which were very much in use into the 1970s); later ones were steel-panelled. Pre-CIE vans were still about occasionally into the late 1950s. Some of these - particularly of ex-MGWR design, had no duckets, and GNR ones didn't either. So while a ducket on a "Toad" would make a very interesting freelance (please post it here?), it is not an absolute necessity. (* And while you're at it, UFTM, either take the "G S" lettering off "Maedb" and put a "flying snail" on it, OR paint the damn thing in GSR green! NOT CIE green and GS markings..... I'll get me smelling salts.....) Everything grey until 1970, and gradually brown afterwards. You will see some old colour photos in the late fifties, often exaggerated by winter sunlight, in which wagons appear brown or at least brown-ISH. That's brake dust, and the passage of time since the vehicle concerned ever had an encounter with a paintbrush. Now, in Britain, and latterly on the GNR and NCC, they painted fitted wagons brown, and unfitted grey, but this was not even an exact science. But other Irish railway companies had grey as a standard from way, way, way back. The GSR and CIE simply continued it. Private owner wagons were just not a "thing" in Ireland. There were a few examples, though, of wagons in private liveries (not the same thing) - Ranks grain wagons, Downshire Coal wagons on the BCDR - but VERY few, and as others suggest, since they were normally the property of the railway company (Downshire excepted), just liveried for a customer, they often ended up in the railway company's standard livery when repainted. There's an important point here. Comparing Irish goods trains with British, as in train sets - dufferent animals. Your standard British train set will have an open wagon, van, tank wagon and maybe flat wagon. Without large quantities of bulk oliquids to carry in Ireland, or any sort of heavy rail-dependent industry and no mines to speak of, the vast majority of goods vehicles in ireland were either goods vans, cattle vans, or convertible "soft-top" goods / cattle vans. Not as many opens as in a typical train in GB, and tankers were few and far between before the short-lived bulk oil of the 1960s-80s. Lovely collection, and with the ferts you're spanning the old loose-coupled era and more modern fitted freight. You ask about livery details. Ferts first - just an onservation - as expected, IRM did extensive research. One detail i very much like on these - look at your right-hand fertiliser wagon. It appears to have a dull tan coloured "roundel" logo; this is, in fact, a brake-dust-stained WHITE logo; a ready-weathered logo on the wagon. This was perfectly prototypical. IE / IR / CIE never put anything "tan" on any brown wagon - ever - always white. However, they often ended up looking precisely like this! Now, to your four-wheelers. To make them look Irish, actually either shade of grey is OK - but the shade on the "Toad" is somewhat closer to the mark. A bit of weathering will sort them all out, but ditch the white handrails and BR markings on the brake van. Far more importantly, the "black chassis disease". Even early commercially-produced "Irish" wagons - plus an actual preserved one at Downpatrick - are seen with black chassis. Can't be emphasised too much; this is utterly unrealistic for Ireland. Grey wagon, grey chassis. Brown wagon, brown chassis. Roofs too - the brown wagons should have brown roofs, grey wagons, same shade of grey roofs; but nin both cases so heavily weathered that they actually often just looked a dirty colour. So I would repaint all of the chassis on all of them either grey or black, depending on body colour; the brown vans need brown roofs too. Regarding running numbers, yes, Des Sullivan (SSM) will sort you out with authentic (5-digit usually) wagon running numbers. A "D" suffix indicates a vehicle formerly of the Dublin & South Eastern Railway; their wagons stock did not look remotely like the BR-style vans above! I would just put a CIE number on that....... The "Murphy" wagons - in all reality, personally, I would just paint them CIE grey and stick either snails or roundels on them. You might paint one brown; while by 1970, when the brown livery came into being, almost all open wagons were the steel corrugated type, there were still a small handful of wooden-bodied ones about. I saw just one in brown, and I've seen a picture of a couple more, but open wooden wagons gaining the brown livery were very few and far between indeed, and very short-lived. Yes, you're right about double-headed grey 121s. They'd have been all repainted before it was possible to link them up. As you suggest, double-heading in different liveries was indeed possible with OTHER classes; and with 121s when maybe one was still in black'n'tan in the 70s, and another in orange and black "supertrain" livery. In fact, the first time I ever saw a newly-"Supertrained" 121 (in 1972) was in Heuston Station - and it was coupled to a black'n'tan one on a Cork train about to leave! Hope all of this helps! It's worth pointing out also that while "Rule 1" applies to all layouts and all modellers - where accuracy is sought, it is worth knowing that literally 100% of all types of model "Irish" wagons by Bachmann, Hornby, whoever etc etc etc - until our own specialist manufacturers came along* - are entirely inaccurate in both design and livery. Every single one of them. But we now have these: *Provincial, JM Design, SSM, KCME, and many others whose speciality would be more modern bogies wagons......plus, of course, IRM.

This is the type of thing that the "historian" side of me absolutely detests, like the lazy, amateurish and utterly contemptible attemps at any sort of historical background to Indakinny's series about cycleways on railways. Especially today, five minutes on the internet gets pretty much 90% of all the detailed historical research anyone would want for an RTE or BBC programme..... pathetic!

I think we included the best pics (if not all!) of what Barry has, but I will check with him to see if he has anything else. I know someone else who might have something - though probably a long shot.

Superb, Leslie!

No Achill bogies yet, but I’d certainly be up for a couple! Had a guy lined up in Brexitstan to do one, maybe two, for me, but apparently he now has a “proper job” and won’t be able to…… So if anyone can do one for me, PM!

Using photos too for detail, they'll alomost all give basic dimensions and design. There were four main phases in GSW design. There is a more comprehensive set than the above, too.

Either Seagoebox or myself will bump into herbie at some stage in the New Year in January - one of us can ask him. It's possible he might have a spare copy. You're welcome to borrow mine, if the post office doesn't require you to sell your five bedroom mansion in the Bahamas to pay for it!

That whole thing is a little cameo. Pure 1960-ish Dunmurry / Lisburn!

That actually looks beautifully filthy; quite authentic. I have a picture somewhere of a 400 which I stared at for many a year, thinking it was black or grey. I eventually got hold of a better print of it, and a tiny bit of lining could be seen on the cab and tender - so it was green! Look at late-in-the-day colour pictures of Donegal engines. In many, you’d swear that the tank and cab sides were red, but the entire boiler, dome, tank tops and cab front were jet black, but they were red; similarly many a blue GNR loco appeared to have black domes or boiler tops…. My painting and lining skills are beyond atrocious, so an easy default is to just weather things - especially wagons - within an inch of their lives….

Easy enough to pull the deflectors off it, I suppose, to make it a K2.... and stir it about in a pot of grey paint!

Pity they only did the black and green versions - a grey one would have been nice, and in a much longer-lived livery.

I must say I’m not a fan of the often VERY crude Shapeways stuff. Often looks like pebbledash, as others have pointed out, and window frames make the thing look as if the walls are as thick as a Norman castle…. Much of the detail is cruder than a three-year-old’s toy….. But; each to their own - and in many cases it’s better than nothing, plus (as others again point out) there are alternatives.

Yes, for a few years. The “tin vans” appeared in the late 50s, and would have been used everywhere, with diesel haulage as a necessity, and even on steam trains as a brake van. Bogie, six-wheel, mix of both, branchline, main line, mail trains, the lot.

So 1961-5, light green six-wheelers until 1963, but maybe an old dark green full brake. After 1963, a light green ir black’n’tan full brake but no passenger ones…. ….hope that helps!

Light green started in 1955, and while the black’n’tan appeared first in late 62, green (bogie) coaches were to be seen until as late as 1968. Since the last passenger-carrying six-wheelers were retired in 1963, none were black’n’tan. Several full vans survived though, and at least 2, maybe 3 of those ended up black’n’tan. The darker Green livery was 1945-1955, but when any livery changes, the transformation is never overnight. So just like you’ll have a decreasing handful of green coaches into the black’n’tan era, you’d have had a few darker green coaches up to maybe 1960/1.

A friend of mine on his stag do ended up in his underpants, duct-taped to a swivelling office chair on which he’d been wheeled through the lunchtime packed shopping streets of 1980s Belfast, and left - chair and all - in the former Cornmarket fountain…. Being Belfast in the 80s, there was a religious crank nearby bellowing into a microphone the usual eyewash about “Yizzer all SINNNERS and UNLESS YIZ REPENT! REPENT! REPENT!!!! yiz’ll all GO TO BURRRRRRRRRNNN in th’ETERNAL FIRES OF HELL!!!!!!” You couldn’t have made it up. Worth every penny of a shilling a box…

The sidings under the bridge, the “loco depot”, would have been empty of locos by 1963, so possible….

A friend who used to be in the policing business told me of a time he arrested someone who was absolutely off his face with drink and acting the (very aggressive) maggot in a night club, and got thrown out, whereupon he started fighting with a bouncer. Tired oul tale in that line of business, I know, but he was done for a quite serious assault. What made HIM different was that once he was en route in his blue light taxi, he projectile vomited all over the back seat and floor, and his driver...........

Indeed! Especially by Stormont...........

Ah! Just had a look. It's 1950 mine go up to, not 1960! Maybe I'm wrong in thinking 1960 in the first place, but if I'm correct, then (as far as I can see) I don't have any later than 1950. If I find out anything else I'll post here, however, the IRN and IRRS Journal would be more complete in their coverage, I would think.

A very "Great Northern" thing; with no parallel even remotely like it on any other railway - the 1940s-purpose-built turf wagon on the left.

I'll have a look!

Without looking them up, sixties I think. Mine are in the attic somewhere!

Yes, I would avoid twitter like the plague - on principle!