jhb171achill

Talking of shunting locos, spotted at a friend’s house today (“O” gauge):

Very good and detailed account, which certainly corresponds with my own memories - and in every detail!

A 2600 class is marrying a UTA MED, to produce a NIR "Castle" class railcar as a nasty child; scary or what? Well, it IS near Halloween..............

For oul wans like me, it is very encouraging to see the growing interest in things pre-1980 or pre-1970, and steam. We are well catered for with wagons now, thanks to Mayner, Provincial Leslie, Des Sullivan and others (you know who you are). With carriages, SSM and Worsley have some very nice brass kits, though not for the novice. Steam engines too in the latter two cases, and let's not forget 00 Works' GNR, GSWR and CBSCR locos. More of all of the above, and the more RTR the better, would be very welcome.

Good afternoon, all! A busy centre, this....... I suppose someone will say that there's a shopping mall and a cycleway here now! Does it still have the CLC and other railway companies' initials / names on it?

SUPERB info, Hexagon; this is exactly why I'm posting this stuff here!

One more for tonight......

The VoR was a highlight of that particular trip for me. That was in 1975.

Tonight's visit to Brexitstan. Over a period of time I will post all of my father's British stuff here. There's quite a lot. Given the excellent responses to details of locations and the like above, I among others can benefit from this information being offered. I will post some also that I have posted in other places in the past, so that it is all together here. Senior's earliest visits over there were in the late 1930s / early 1940s, but I don't think he took any pictures there until into the 1940s. He recalled seeing an old coach somewhere in badly worn LNWR livery, on a teenaged holiday in - I think - North Wales. They used to get the mail boat from Dún Laoghaire to Holyhead and stay in North Wales. A visit there in 1969 or 70 for me was the first time I had been out of Ireland, and what I now believe were 101 class railcars were on many local trains, some in green, some blue & grey. Main line trains often had 47s, and possibly "Peaks"? About half of them green, the rest blue & yellow. Carriage stock was all Mk 1s as far as I recall - can't swaer to there being no Mk 2s, but I don't recall seeing any. About a quarter were still maroon. Goods trains were loose-coupled, like the picture above, but longer - and locos the same as, or similar to the above were to be seen on the lines from Pwhelli to Barmouth and on to Aberystwyth. Two-car railcars did most of the passenger trains on that line. And of course, THIS was in corporate BR blue!

I saw this passing through Malahide earlier today. It’s not even slightly photoshopped, of course. It’s well able for a full twelve Taras, though they have to be N gauge ones.

Actually reminds me of an 0.6.0 (or, I suppose, "C") wheel arrangement on a shortened 121 - a 121-style six-wheeled loco which GM did a trial run of about six of, about the same time the 121s were built. Same engine. One was used all its life BY General Motors in their plant at La Grange as a shunter. Two went to Lebanon and were used on public trains and one may possibly still exist. Another one at least ended up somewhere in South America. I have a MIR cast metal 121 body which if there ever comes a day when I've nothing else to do (unlikely) I will shorten and pair with some sort of old 6-wheeled power bogie from the under-a-tenner department of Fleabay. It will be a GM experiment that wound its way to Inchicore in 1961 as a luck penny with the 121s.

I LIKE that!

Yes, they were used almost everywhere. However, the mallow-Waterford line was more normally worked (in diesel days) by the B101 and B121 classes, with A and B141 types also making appearances. The goods was usually B101 or A. Go back a decade and various old 4.4.0s were to be seen along with (mostly) K2s ("Woolwiches"). J15 0.6.0 types and their derivitaves were common too. The colour balance on that photo isn't quite right - while the railcar is clearly brand newly painted, it is a bit bright for reality. The GSWR third in the background is in the older green, but weathered, and devoid of snails and lining, as some secondary stock based in Cork in later days was.

Where did that come from? Hmmmmm... an 0.7.0.......... Correct, no "C" ever ran in "tippex" livery, nor carried that logo; the last of them was withdrawn over a year before the "set-of-points" logo was devised. I agree, though, it looks well. What is this model - who madse it, what scale, where did it come from? And why 448?

Well, that’s it in a nutshell. Nothing silver ever stayed that way more than a few days - or if steam-hauled maybe a few hours! No wonder they started repainting them green after a couple of years.

Despite coming from a decidedly steam background, Cyril Fry threw himself enthusiastically into making models of the new diesel era. Here are a few of his locos from the grey’n’green (and silver!) era. For modellers, note the attention to detail; I particularly like the gangways on the tin vans - a detail not the most sophisticated on many models. Lettering in pale green, looking as”weathered” as the real thing. These were the only models of well over 360 that he weathered. Simple reason was that (especially since ends, chassis and roofs were silver too) you never saw a pristine one in traffic. The shaded gold on the PO van and luggage van are incorrect.

448 would be 221 double-heading with 227……

You might know the “weatherer”…….

Not only that, but the DCDR is a working railway behind the scenes. Recent ballast wagons, plough vans and "yellow machines" are tools needed to look after the railway, so even to the most detail-obsessed purist, whether such items ever "ran like that" or not, is entirely irrelevant..... Also, there's another point. When a preservation scheme is set up, in an ideal world it will take over the entire stock of the working line to be preserved, á la Isle of Man. If the IOMR had been closed, with everything scrapped, decades before it became a modern tourist attraction, gawd knows what would be running on it - but it wouldn't be original. The BCDR closed in 1950 for the large part, with its stock of six-wheel carriages fast becoming firewood and a few henhouses. When the DCDR was set up, well over thirty years later, it was (and is) a case of take what you can get, even if it ran on Mars (as all yellow machines did). Incidentally, this now gives the DCDR two ploughs - there's this yellow one and an old GSWR one.

Summer 1958, and the 11:40 morning mixed leaves Dugort Harbour for Castletown West with J15 No. 134, while sister loco 195 awaits its next duty on the goods. "G2" No. 650 reposes in the loco siding at Dugort Harbour after bringing the goods train in on a bright day in 1959. Modelling note: all three locos were initially painted grey - this shows how comprehensive weathering makes them LOOK black, as in so many photos!

Blue'n'grey era........

Luxury executive transport today. I think that between the two carriages, this thing had at least two, and possibly three wheels......and a stop and go button in the driver's cab. . Now an orange and black one. Must be at Leixlip (Druggie).

Just before Raheny.

Steam this time - Barry. I may have posted this before, but here goes anyway. . I have to say I like this one....

If John (an absolute gentleman, who I knew years ago) is still alive, but he's a good age. He deals only by letter. He and I used to write to each other regularly. I must look out his last letter - I THINK (but would need to check) that he has handed his entire collection over to someone / somewhere.