minister_for_hardship

Or (c) being dragged dead somewhere!

Wallet takes another hit. *Cough* technically only one was a mythological queen, the other two goddesses...

Contractor's gate and fencing. Manufactured by William Bain & Co, Loughrin Iron Works, Coatbridge. New Ross branch.

Ex GS&WR gates with sheet metal to prevent small animals getting through.

There's still an older orange/black "Mallow" nameboard still in place, missed by the crew tasked with taking down the old signage. It's hard to spot, but it's still there!

Mass market Hornby stuff in days gone by (and to an extent now) were sold as toys in their millions, most are next to worthless now. The logic for buying IRM or AS or whatever you want to call it is similar to the older gents buying the aforementioned classic sports cars and bikes, they are top end products in limited numbers, they've got the spare cash and it reminds them of their youth. Probably a bit of speculation thrown in there too.

I think the second button is a steamship crew button. A friend of mine in Westmeath dug up a Caledonian Railway button.

If you're on Facebook, it's worth checking out On Historical Lines. https://www.facebook.com/share/1BFjHShWWH/ In pre Grouping days, green, brown, blue were common as well as the expected black and navy blue. Lower grades were glad to see the end of the hated green corduroy by then; because it was dated, too hot in summer, too cold in winter, retained sweat and BO(!), in addition the fabric itself actually stank due to the dye used The dyes were also non colourfast and leached and stained in wet weather. Following a trip to Brussels by one of the directors, the Waterford & Limerick adopted coloured caps as Continental practice; red with gold braiding for station masters at Waterford and Limerick, at second class stations ie Tipperary, Clonmel, Carrick on Suir and Fiddown, as well as Captain Weir, master of the steamer Rosa, they were to have blue caps with plain gold braid.

Obsolete signage missed a date with the skip.

A Guard Of The Great Southern and Western Railway. (Ireland) 'Our Home Railways' - W.J. Gordon (1910) Early uniforms owed much to police and military wear, gradually becoming civilianised over time. I suppose they're nearly "athleisure" wear now, suit jackets and waistcoats still hanging on with clerical and some on board staff, traditional uniform caps have almost disappeared in favour of beanies and baseball caps. There's one garment that was unique to the railways, the sleeved waistcoat.

Obsolete council road sign for a gated level crossing, could be from anywhere not necessarily BnaM, older ones were pressed metal rather than today's aluminium with reflective stuck-on vinyl. Scarce enough.

A number of places got chunky plastic ones during the IE era which discoloured badly. A tubular steel IR(?) era nameboard survives at Charleville, isolated from the platforms and gone completely white from sunlight.

Flying snail 1945-1964 (1941-1964 if you count DUTC use) Broken wheel 1964-1986, continued as is as group/tours logo until 2000 makeover. Stand corrected. The IR Killarney junction logo was quite clever but short-lived. The IE one didn't last much longer. Gotta keep those design consultant boys in a job I guess.

With the passage of time, the longest lived and once seen everywhere logo is now the rarest of all to spot in the wild.

This was for many years the definitive book on badges and buttons, long out of print. There is an Irish section down the back, but mainly detailing buttons.

Just go to your chosen stations, ask around if they still have the older signage still on hands after it was taken down. Maybe it got skipped, maybe got tossed into a back room if contractors weren't sure what to do with it. Worth a shot, don't ask, don't get. FOI is probably not really of use for small scale stuff.

Enquire locally, in person. Going through departments rarely if ever works. An enquiry through formal channels gets forwarded through a merry go round of people unable or unwilling to do anything for you. They are definitely missing a trick, they could easily offer obsolete signage that has been replaced for sale, maybe giving proceeds to charity. Good PR too.

The metal skip most likely. There may be instances where they may get thrown into a store room to gather dust until a clear out. You would really need to contact whoever is in charge before the old stuff comes down or better still be there on the spot when it's happening.

An interesting example of reusing the old tubular steel. Haven't seen that anywhere else. Cork has an ancient faded network map showing the south wexford, no Ennis to Athenry, no midleton either.

A lot of this can be down to practicalities. A loco is in for repainting, someone's there to do the job but there's not enough of the correct colour because someone else has forgotten to reorder. Rather than delaying / putting off the job, paint it with anything acceptable on hands because it's desperately wanted out in traffic again. We see oddball liveries to this day for pragmatic reasons, the public won't care what colour the loco pulling their train is.

They had the blue/white scheme in the Telecom Eireann era. A very small number survived into Eircom days.

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https://www.oakhillworks.co.uk/shop/00-scale-listowel-lartigue-locomotive/

Still lots of examples of the "three pin plug" logo in evidence. On rolling stock theres still etched glass on mirrors and sliding doors and luggage rack signs with them. Probably literally thousands of trespass and "keep back from yellow line" notices with the old IE.

Still money to be made from shonky signs made out of Chinese bed irons. Auctioneers are worse to be flogging this sh*te, especially when posing as experts on the Sunday newspaper supplements urging people to invest in so-called antiques. Del Boy Trotters most of them.