minister_for_hardship

I always disliked that linkage of "agricultural" appearance running along the boiler. Spoils the look for me.

Looks a bit on the big side.

All North British Loco of Glasgow products. Scarva, class QG of 1903, passed to CIE, scrapped 1962. Mars, class QL of 1907, scrapped 1957. Culloville, class LQG of 1906, passed to UTA, scrapped 1958.

It's lined "photographic grey", they were intended to be GNRI green but green appears black or nearly black in b and w photos and doesnt show detail very well so they were painted grey for their works photos.

Amazingly sharp photos too for the time. You can zoom in and read the signal cabin clockmaker's names on the dials in some of them. Some nice photos of staff at rest and work too. I find the standard 3/4 front view of locos and trains without any humans in sight to be rather boring and lifeless. You could be forgiven for thinking that trains ran themselves without any human intervention in some photo collections.

Absolutely ridiculous two decades into the 21st century we have to put up with this. Packages being inspected returned to sender, disappearing into Limbo, receiving ransom notes from Revenue and An Post. Bloody 19th century Pony Express would have been more reliable, efficient, and cheaper! It's all very well to say buy local or buy EU but when the most popular scale most on here model in is by and large a uk thing.

https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collections-Research/Collection/Irish-Travel-Posters May be useful for those who want to print off miniature versions for their layout.

Investment loco buyers, it's worse than the property market.

Well yes and no. Preserved steam on public display some might say is, unfairly, concentrated at Cultra and precious little elsewhere. There are probably zero(?) standard gauge steam locos on display in the whole of Munster and Leinster bar 36.

Shame that 36's tender didn't make it but still very lucky that it survived at all. Came within a whisker of scrapping I'll bet. Who had the 5" model?

Some faded lettering can be made out on the doors, Road Merchandise(?) Services. It must not have been in service very long having never been repainted.

The station site is on the opposite side of the road, beyond the old road bridge. The goods store is surrounded by the derelict remains of some sort of factory and the station building sited beyond these. The station house seemed to be unoccupied last time I stopped off there to look.

Tried gmail address. No reply either.

Like some urban legends theres a grain of truth to them. https://www.railwaymagazine.co.uk/398/sweden-disbands-final-strategic-steam-reserve-locos/

Even looking at old maps of the alleged area, the land doesnt appear overly boggy, a quicksand that would swallow a whole loco, just flattish with shallow embankments and cuttings. The value of metal alone meant that if a loco could not be recovered whole it would be cut up where it lay and carted off piecemeal.

Something non railway that DOES have the Imperial Russian crest is indeed in Cork. A number of old cannons by the Marina. As for the sleepers, unless a pic or an example surfaces colour me unconvinced.

I don't know about the veracity of the Macroom story, all but one of the CMDR locos bar one are listed as scrapped in the late 20's/mid 30's which looks very much like a thinning out of small and obsolete locos by the GSR. The odd man out is an early disposal of CMDR No 1 in 1905 and mentioned as 'scrapped' in Colm Creedon's CMDR book. Anything later would likely be noted by either Walter McGrath or Creedon as an unusual event of a bogged down loco was bound to attract their attention, a mention in 'de Paper' and at least a photo. I've heard the story before but no actual proof it's anything other than just a story. A similar tale is told about a West Clare loco that went off the rails and a photo purportedly showing it before it sank beneath the bog, but its subsequent career and date with the scrapman years later is well documented.

The original green was a lot darker, was it?

Great, one weekend. Back at their usual duties the following week.

I dont see the point of an electric bike for the short ish spins I do, none of the health benefits of a regular bike, plus a magnet for thieves. I haven't bought a brand new bike in years, free skip rescues and house clearances. If one gets robbed, it's not a big loss.

As long as it's out of sight, out of mind we in the west can pat ourselves on the back for our 'green' credentials. Not buying an EV, keeping an 08 on the road until it reaches the end of its useful life. I dont believe in our consumerist throwaway society.

Strike action by staff threatened. Can't say I blame them. It's an open secret Dublin Cork services are a free distribution network for the kinds of substances that often fuel bad behaviour. It's a wider societal issue too, low level maggot acting has been tolerated and normalised for far too long now, the ne'er do wells are constantly testing the boundaries as to what they can get away with. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/irish-rail-staff-speak-out-i-m-sick-of-seeing-heroin-being-sorted-out-at-the-tables-1.4713482

It should be called scumbag behaviour, "anti-social behaviour" sounds like a faux pas at a dinner party.

Most of the windows are smashed, the side has collapsed out of the near side one (butchering by the owner having weakened it) and theres scorch damage from a fire someone set in the space between the two. Like so many things in this country they'll end up destroyed through greed and ignorance.