minister_for_hardship

And still cheaper than building model railways...

People were easier to please back then, most of the major manufacturer's offerings back then were riddled with inaccuracies, wrong colours, wrong fonts, motors and wheelsets from whatever shoehorned into bodies, moulded handrails, etc.

JHB would be IE's answer to Michael O'Leary...

Feign an illness or something. There will always be more weddings, not many opportunities like this...

http://www.athlone.ie/visit/open-day-at-midland-great-western-railway-station/ The Midland Great Western Railway station, Grace Road, Athlone, will open 2.30-5pm on Saturday, November 19th to launch a new radio series about the railway in Athlone called The Railway Children. The station has been closed to the public since 1985 and holds fond memories for locals. The event will include a guided tour which will allow access to the old platform, railway memorabilia, tea and snacks, and radio presenter Noel Henry will be taking song requests for his Through The Years programme.

How I understand the works is that the portion of the cabin outside of the overall roof is life expired and will be removed and the portion that is inside the roof retained and the void bricked up. Not so bad, the bit outside looked rather shack-like anyway. In other news, the old dorms on Water Street (and nearby billiards/reading room) are no more.

Read a book on North British Loco works once (which had some Irish interest in the NBL "might-have-been" offered to CIE) Some toe curling stuff on completely deaf boiler-makers and a charming little story about a lad involved in assembling loco frames...instead of putting any sort of tool in to check if the holes were lined up, he put in his finger. Frames moved momentarily and you can guess the rest.

Add to that the widespread use of asbestos in insulating coaches at the time.

A tarp will only stop rain getting in, it won't stop salt laden sea air circulating around under the tarp.

Like the Titanic conspiracy theory?

The blame culture, find someone...anyone to blame for one's own actions. It's the new thing now, like.

Looking across the pond at Tornado and other projects (Hengist/GER 4-4-0/Beachy Head/Patriot/P2 etc) I wonder is there an appetite for a replica??

800 getting the chop would have been a shameful loss. Not the most practical loco in terms of ever getting it to run again but still... Pity no MGWR representative survived the purge, or even something like an ex GSWR 4-6-0 which could have been very useful to the RPSI, or a Bandon tank for a handy Maynooth run.

If that is 800, looks like scrapping was about to happen but was stopped in time. Name and numberplates removed obviously but the cab windows appear to have been taken off as well. I assume it was contractors that scrapped the locos, with the sheer volume of withdrawals CIE gangs couldn't possibly manage all that?

I think that was the one where under certain firebox conditions with the milled peat, a mini explosion could occur. Its regular crew in time could engineer these minor bangs to get rid of unwanted footplate guests.

The rest of the scanned online collection of Colm Creedon's scrapbooks can be viewed here... http://www2.corkcoco.ie/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=1391429S67J2P.44415&profile=hip&uri=link=3100009~!290032~!3100001~!3100002&aspect=basic_search&menu=search&ri=1&source=~!horizon&term=Colm+Creedon+collection&index=SERIES

Tidbits of info here... http://www.corkcoco.ie/photographs/ColmCreedonCollection/Cork&YoughalRailwayAlbum.pdf

One local had uncovered rails, red bricks and pieces of masonry (granite I think) over the years from the trackbed. He reckons there's a lot more rails still down there that were never lifted, just covered in earth and debris. There doesn't seem to be any extant station building on the osimapviewer c.1900 map, but the rails can be clearly seen. Was connected up until 1927 or so iirc.

In Cork itself, a Queen Anne house was gutted, a hole cut in the wall and some sort of glass box effort bodged onto the side in a 'sensitive redevelopment'. It is now a Starbucks. Many Celtic Tiger era redevelopments were more drastic, just the façade of the old building was all that was retained. An art deco era tiled shopfront was painted over in the Superdry outlet, formerly the Moderne, contrary to planning regulations, which surprisingly raised a lot of public ire and the paint was eventually stripped off revealing the tiles once more.

A fragment of the old Penrose Quay station building survives, now boarded up. The building to the LHS of the tunnel portal also dates from that time.

It was in a bad state of decay so I hear. Now if this was anywhere else, there would be at least an effort at reusing some of it, replicating the rest and repurposing it, but this being Ireland we will have a great big newly bricked up void and modern ugliness in a Victorian era building. We seem to opt for the 'Yellow Pack' method of renovation/rebuilding when dealing with old buildings.

I have it on good authority that it is the disused one on Plat 5 that is planned for demolition, not the one at the eastern end.

They will go to town on commemorating centenaries leading up to the Truce. Will be interesting to see how they will treat the War that dare not mention its name.

"Preservation" Irish-style. Might meet the cutters torch yet, nothing stopping anyone torching them.