minister_for_hardship

Interesting the way the H&S culture has changed, climbing on top of an IE railcar to get a similar pic would land you in some fairly hot water!

The one with Inchicore no 38 is a lamp for illuminating loco water gauge glasses in darkness.

Similar urban legend was doing the rounds about one of the WCR's near-useless Bagnall tanks. Came off-road and ended up in boggy ground, photo was taken of aftermath. Story was embellished over the years and if was assumed that the loco sank further into the bog and never recovered. But of course we can account for its later career and eventual scrapping. Another story concerned a submerged Admiralty loco 'somewhere' on the bottom of Cork Harbour.

Parsonstown - now THAT is a label. That got renamed sometime between 1891 - 1901!

The 800's never carried anything other than lined green in service. There are a few pics floating about with 800 in lined 'works grey' and white painted tyres for getting its official photo taken.

The GSR did continue building GSWR pattern stock for a bit, but they would have carried GSR insignia and coats of arms of course. Maybe you'd want to go to an original source in the IRRS library for a definitive answer?

I have seen quite a number of pre-GSR tickets used and dated well into the 1950's, usually issued from fairly rural locations to use up old ticket stocks, didn't think a personage such as WHM was into 'recycling' as well. (though presumeably it was his office secretary that wrote it out, judging by the ink stamp)

Wasn't that impressed with the place. The auction lot numbers were still stuck onto some of the memorabilia, incl. an SL&NCR poster...which had nothing whatsoever to do with Clifden, or the MGWR for that matter.

Used get 2nd hand childrens' picture books of railways of the world as a kid, one had a pic of one of those as the 'way of the future' so to speak. The books were so old I thought places like Ceylon and Rhodesia still existed...and one book had a full colour pic of a GNRI VS on the Enterprise!

First class all the way to Dingle, no slumming it with the great unwashed!

The 'snail' came in 'left hand' and 'right hand' versions so that the upper 'wing' always pointed towards the front of the loco or cab of the bus/lorry. Once came across a poster in a derelict station building, still pasted onto the timber poster board. Had a big tear in it but thought it rather odd as it was headed with a large black snail printed the 'wrong' way round. Shortly afterwards the building it was in was torched by vandals.

IIRC it dates back as far as the late '30's when the DUTC introduced it for their trams and buses. The term 'flying snail' may pre-date CIE...Dubliners being renowned wits at nicknaming things humourously.

Westrail had a red 'E'. http://images.yuku.com.s3.amazonaws.com/image/pjpeg/2dc367171d18a4e8cbaedddbff208186d8697abf.pjpg http://irishrailwaymodeller.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=12453&d=1395315452

Some info on the floating stock (as opposed to rolling stock) of Guinness's. http://lugnad.ie/guinnessfleets/

There was rudimentary track system to go with those, not offered on cornflakes packet afaik. https://img0.etsystatic.com/022/0/6454105/il_570xN.478011210_70ga.jpg Also a GWR Pannier tank, diesel shunter and seem to remember a Wild West (-ish) loco. EDIT: the wild west loco was a Corgi item. http://globaldiecastdirect.com/20085-thickbox_default/corgi-juniors-wild-west-show-steam-locomotive.jpg

The Lough Swilly had 4-8-0s as well.

900 was built in 1915 and 901 in 1924. Withdrawn in 1928 and 1931 respectively. Used for shunting and banking goods trains between Kingsbridge and Inchicore. Both were prone to derailments and banned from certain sharply curved sidings. 901 was the only loco brought into traffic during the existence of the Great Southern Railway (in the singular)

Think that might have been the cheapest grey paint they could get simply to protect the woodwork, appearances didn't even come into it. Re painting the doors a different or contrasting colour. One wonders how on earth did emergency services manage to find doors when they were all the one colour?

The GSR had it tough, a triple whammy of WW1 and Civil War legacies and then worldwide depression from '29. They weren't slow to experiment...Sentinel shunters and railcars/Drumm battery train/various gimcracks for increasing steam efficiency, etc. I'm sorry for all the fanboys out there, but the 800s were rather unnecessary white (or is that green?) elephants. Pity they had to strip almost all pre-GSR locos of their sometimes evocative names, doubtless they found their way into the melting pot to make brass bearings or something. Think one of the biggest losses to preservation was the Tramore 2-2-2, word on the street had it that it might be an early candidate for preservation had it not come a cropper. NBL also tendered CIE with a centre cab loco, but they chose GM instead, have a drawing of it that might-have-been somewhere.

Stiff upper lip and all that chaps, what?

I know the ones, O scale-ish. Not 100% sure how authentic they are, the Garda insignia on the Model T looks enormous.

On Gregg Ryan's Inchicore 150 book, there's a pic of a worker with a flying snail tin stencil for marking goods wagons. The idea was that the bits that held the stencil together were supposed to be 'filled in' by whoever was painting them on, some pics of wagons you can see where the painter had neglected to do this!

Have an original transfer that I framed a number of years ago. Pale green, edged in gold. About a foot and a half long by 12'' high.

The scattergun approach to ebay selling, in the hopes that some mug will place a bid.

Would imagine it would be worth around a grand or so, don't think anything Fry made came on the open market (open to correction on this!) so nothing to go on. A million is moonshine talk. Seller is chancing his arm. If this was a 'normal' country, we would have a transport museum that would get in contact with the seller and check it out. It is a pretty unique item of our transport heritage, but our National Museum simply wouldn't be bothered.