jhb171achill

He was indeed an interesting character. I toured India with him in the 1970s and he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of a number of (long gone) narrow gauge systems we visitied - all steam, of course. Very droll, dry wit and great company, as was his wife. Had a huge interest, as we all know, in all things narrow gauge especially; the T & D and CDRJC were personal favourites of his.

Not originally. Snails on delivery….

Trick photo? Garda vehicle with a British numberplate????

Actually, those are not at all unlike one style of GSWR design! They’re actually the best fit there is of anything ready to run that there is. And at the equivalent of €155, not too hard on the wallet. I’m planning to get one of the full brakes myself.

Sheer artistic genius; nothing less. Faded Post Office signs too - perfect! Yes, beet wagons don't look at all right clean, and nor do these things - nor, come to think of it, do steam engines any time after 1955! (Senior recalled looking at loco buffer beams on some locos, which were painted red (at SOME distant time past) in the 50s and noticing that they were indistinguihable from body colour (dark grey) given the level of filth.......)

Outstanding stuff, Ernie.

Wrong livery an'all..........

Hi Johnny! OK, your questiions: all trains had to cater for 1st, 2nd and 3rd class passengers. Companies in Ireland started abolishing second from 1914 onwards, so that by the GSR era (1925-45) there was only first and third on most lines. The MGWR had already done away with it, but the GSWR kept it to the eamalgamation, but the GSR abolished it everywhere in 1930. If you're modelling in the GSR era after 1930, you won't have to worry about 2nd, nor fiddly liveries, as you'll have plain maroon with simpler lining on coaches and plain grey on locomotives and wagons. So, they would provide accommodation for each according to deman. On many rural lines, almost nobody travelled first class, whereas third class was the choice of the vast majority; a few bowler-hatted travelling salesmen and better-off farmers would be in 2nd. Therefore, carriage accommodation reflected demand. Almost never was more than one first class coach needed - even on the main lines. One second usually was enough as well, with as many thirds as needed making up the rest of the train. Most companies had a stock of carriages of each class, so that a branch or secondary line train would typically have one 1st, one 2nd, and one or two 3rd class. However, there were many "composite" coaches, or "compos" as the railwaymen called them. A compo could be part 1st / 2nd, part 1st / 3rd, or even part 2nd / 3rd. A TRI-compo had at least some accommodation for all three classes. There were certainly 1st / 2nd FOUR wheeled compos way back on GSWR lines. So you might get a line where the powers that be took the view that never in all time would there be enough first class fares to fill more than a compartment or two, so they'd put a compo or tri-compo on that line, with maybe two compartments of each class, and string this along with a couple of thirds. As far as the van was concerned, this again was adapted for likely use. Most companies had a stock of coaches with a guard's compartment and brake plus a large luggage space, with no seating at all - plus a stock of vehicles with maybe half or a third of the coach given over to the guard and luggage space, and two or three first, second or third class compartments at the other end of the coach. So a coach with guard/luggage at one end, and lets say two 2nd class compartments, would be a "brake 2nd". There were brake 1sts, brake 2nds, brake 3rds - and yes, brake compos; even brake tri-compos, where you've a need on a lightly used branch line for very little passenger seating. They might stick a full 3rd with a brake tricompo, the latter maybe having only onle compartment of each class, plus the brake. So a full brake has no passenger accommodation at all. In GSWR terms, most designs had the guard's compartment in the centre, with double doors for parcels or mailbags either side. A brake 3rd will have one set of double doors, a guard's compartment, plus (with most GSWR designs) either two or three 3rd class compartments. I must add that in all of the above, I'm referring to six-wheelers, though the precise equivalent (albeit with even MORE variations) was very much the case as the railways changed over to bogie vehicles. All six-wheeled passenger coaches were either non-corridor, or in a very few cases on the MGWR and GSWR, internal-corridor - that is, you could walk up and down a side corridor inside the coach, from one end of its 30ft length to the other, but not from it into the next vehicle. Now, all of that reprseents a truly bewildering variety, which is actually the best way of illustrating the substantial lack of any standardisation. Within a fleet of only a few hundred vehicles, there could be fifty variations.... so how do we convert that into your model? The answer is simple, and good news. If you're planning a GSWR layout, you've two choices. One is to spend a lifetime obtaining definitive information on which vehicle ran where, obtaining drawings, making models of each yourself, etc etc etc.... OR, going freelance, which is quicker and cheaper and has no rules to stick to! I see you're doing the latter (you'd need to live to be 120 to do the first), so your four wheelers and various repaints of "old-looking" coaches will make a very satisfactory start. The GSWR did indeed have "lavatory" coaches. Most were 1st and 2nd, few were 3rd. I guess that 3rd class passengers just had to cross their legs. Toilets were being fitted in carriages on some lines going back to the late 1870s, though in earlier coaches only in 1st class areas. The GSWR introduced their first "lavatory" coaches in 1882, these being 6-wheeled 1st / 2nd compos. No six-wheeled 3rds, even those which lasted into the 1950s, ever had toilets. Unfortunately for the modeller, there is no British design of cattle wagons which is even remotely close to anything Irish. Most are too long a wheelbase, and all are of utterly different designs. Really you're looking at kits there - while there isn't one of a specifically GSWR design, Provincial Wagons' GNR or SLNCR cattle wagon - inexpensive and very easy to build - is as close to a GSWR design as is necessary for you. With cattle being a very large part of rural railway traffic in all areas and on all lines in the past, cattle trucks are as necessary to create the right scene as a locomotive is to pull a train. The reason that second class coaches are elusive is that they were disappearing from many lines a century ago and more. The LMS(NCC) was the last company to retain 2nd class, right up to the 1940s. I hope the above is helpful.

Nice little yoke, indeed. Often thought of a small BR blue shunting layout, maybe of a parcels depot with an 08. Been looking at pictures of the quite bewildering array of BR blue parcels vans ever since!

Not sure I've seen an "M" suffix on a plate either. I would say that in GSR days there should have been a few, but there was a pogrom of MGWR wagons in the fifties, so probably few - if any at all - CIE, and as you suggest any few GSR ones long gone. 10 tons would presumably have been a goods van.

And I'm just noticing - I threw a few sleeper off-cuts into the open wagon amongst the turf, but they don't blend in as well as you'd think! Probably about six in there......... (Must do better!)

Eamonn Ryan, if you’re listening, turn your head away. Because they’re still digging turf down in West Kerry, and will be until I pop my clogs. Here, loads in a truck and an open wagon must come from somewhere, so there will be a turf bog as seen. Vertical marks where it has been cut were a fiddly thing to reproduce half-convincingly. Acrylic paints next….

Got that - just wondering what possibilities for N gauge 6-wheel coaches!

EXCELLENT kits! I've yet more on order......... I love those 6-wheel fish vans....... what's that 6w chassis like?

When starting scenery, in this case with DAS clay and a handful of stones out of the garden as rocks, I have found that it’s very easy to make even ground features very overscale. I have found that setting features in place first, then taking pictures of them in black and white against a backdrop of a wagon or locomotive, tends to show up very starkly whether they’re about right or not. Here, an area intended to be very rocky with gorse or brambles all round it. I removed some bigger ones, and pressed these ones down more into the DAS clay.

Following another visit by my Learned Friend, today was a momentous occasion as the first goods train rolled into Castletown West from the Dugort Harbour direction. The evening sunlight illustrates this, and the great detail on several Provincial Wagons products, plus a JM Design brake van, perfectly.

The Mallow goods is busy tonight…. IMG_4386.MOV

“Wheel’s off it. We’ll have to carry the rest to the van” “That oul trolley hasn’t even been oiled since the Tans were here…..” On a September afternoon in 1966, the afternoon train leaves Dugort Harbour…

I went through some material I have last night to see what was visible in photos of wagons. No photo I saw had a plate even remotely like that. With a number that high, it cannot be a locomotive obviously, nor a carriage; in any event, MGWR carriages had a very distinctive type of plate, totally different from those in every way - shape, print font, the lot - and ALL carriages ones had "MGWR" on them. Thus, if it is genuine it can only be off a wagon. Wagons seem not to have had cast plates on the chassis at all - instead they had only the painted numbers on the sides. I have seen no photo which shows any sort of wagon plate. As I suggested earlier the only likelihood is that it is off some very non-standard vehicle. Such things did exist - at one stage I had what I suspect was a one-off GNR(I) plate for a rebuild of a wagon in 1940. It was made of lead rather than cast iron too, but had a proven provenance as genuine - jhb171Senior wrenched it off a scrapper in Dundalk in the 1960s. Indeed, yes - the actual number of this thing is indeed plausible - the Midland had vast numbers of cattle trucks which would push up numbers. When the GSR and later CIE cast plates with the "M" suffix, they were of their standard "D" shaped design, with "GSR" or "CIE" on them rather than MGWR (with or without the "I"!)......

It does LOOK genuine; if it's a dud it's a very good one. Yes, the Midland could have had numbers that high - but my concern is the "(I)" bit after "MGWR". The OFFICIAL name of the company was, note order of wording, the "Midland Great Western of Ireland Railway Company"; not the "Midland Great Western Railway of Ireland". Thus, strictly, if the "I" is to be included, one would be inclined to think it would translate into initials as "MGW(I)R". It was normal on MGWR carriage plates and other notices, trespass signs and the like to use simply "MGWR". I would prefer to see this thing in the flesh, as it were, in order to deremine its authenticity or lack thereof; as of now, the jury's out. It is possible it was off one of those imported Belgian wagons - like General Motors' 1976 livery for the 071s, which was arong in several ways from the actual CIE livery of the day, and the "flying snail" on the control desk of NIR's three 071s, it's possible that a "foreign" manufacturer got the details wrong - but that's on the assumption that it was they, rather than Broadstone, who cast these plates in the first instance.

Looks great! Very West-Corkish......... (or Waterford-Macmine-ish...)!

I was asked recently by an esteemed fellow member of here about what older passenger rolling stock might be suitable (possibly with a 3D print in mind) for layouts set in the post-1955 period up to the present, and where they might have operated, and in what circumstances. In the late 1940s CIÉ did a massive purge of older wooden stock, resulting in the elimination of most types beyond MGWR and GSWR standards. DSER stock, in particular, took a big hit - although the GSR had been drafting "foreign" stock into the DSER since the late 1920s - many MGWR six-wheelers on the Harcourt St line and GSWR main line types on the Amiens St - Wexford route. By 1955, the Park Royals were appearing, and within the next few years a large amount of varying types of laminates and their derivitaves, rebuilt early 1950s stock, and tin vans by the squillion - the latter replacing older six-wheel passenger brakes in many places. By 1960 and shortly afterwards, now many branch lines were closing. All of this meant a sharp decline in the late 1950s in older stock, but very many still remained in use up to and following the end of steam in 1963, into the "black'n'tan" era, and on into the mid-1970s; the VERY last wooden stock, including one or two non-corridor types, appear to have been withdrawn in 1974, by now confimed to Dublin peak hour traffic and the odd Cork-Youghal excursion. Six-wheelers which carried passengers were last seen in traffic in early 1963. However, several (I think six) six-wheeled full passenger brakes remained in traffic, the last couple ending up in black'n'tan (the only six-wheelers ever to do so) and surviving until 1968-70. All of these six or so were ex-GSWR types; one, as a convert to a brake first, is No. 69 preserved at Downpatrick. Hardly any two of those which were in use in the mid to late 1950s were precisely identical, especially the bogies. There were many, many one-off alterations and rebuilds over the years. Some of these vehicles were seventy years old and more, and still in daily use. Therefore, on the face of it, where does one start when deciding what is a good "typical" model of an all-too-necessary WOODEN coach for a 1950s or 60s layout? If we look at the different lines, and what was to be seen on them, we get a reasonable answer - MGWR six-wheeled 2nds and 3rds, and GSWR six-wheel passenger brakes; and in the world of bogies, GSWR side corridor composites and non-corridor 2nds and 3rds. By the late 1950s, a typical branch set on many lines was a GSWR bogie as above, with a tin van or two (one LV, one HV) topping and tailing it; thus, the guard could switch ends at the terminus. The north & south Wexford branches, Kenmare, Valentia Harbour, the West Cork branch lines, Loughrea, Ballina, Ballinrobe and Ballaghaderreen often had a make-up like this. Before the railcars the West Cork main line often had a similar consist, albeit with an old MGWR bogie apparently resident for some time at Albert Quay also; this set tended to be two bogies and a van. On the main line, GSWR bogies, albeit corridor ones, were still commonplace amongst main line and secondary trains, in amongst Bredins, Park Royals, laminates and even Cravens in the 1960s. The Cork line also had quite a few old GSWR bogie and six-wheel mail vans - the bogie ones lasting well into the 1960s. Few MGWR bogies seem to have made it into the diesel / black'n'tan era; there were a few, but GSWR stock ruled the roost in this category. On the other hand, MGWR types dominated in later days (up to 1963) amongst the passenger-carrying six-wheelers. These tended to run with ex-GSWR passenger brakes. Thus, if typical wooden stock is sought after by modellers, inasmuch as anything could be termed "typical"; we must look at three types: Up to 1963: 6-wheel MGWR 2nd & 3rd, 6-wheel GSWR passenger brake and GSWR bogie composite; all green. 1963-74: One of two GSWR 6-wheel passenger brakes, GSWR bogie composite, both black'n'tan. AS suggested, this is neither definitive nor absolute; there were a small few other types, but most wooden-bodied survivors tended to be of these types.

I thought Henry Casserley took that one?

An excellent piece of work, indeed. Joe would be one of a small band of people who would be absolute authorities on latter-day UTA and NIR steam, a much-neglected topic in our railway history.

Ah! OK - I had forgotten............... so circa 2012 maybe.