Broithe

Some US ships still carried dazzle camouflage in WW2. The ship in the picture, along with 23 others, was built in sections in the Rocky Mountains, then transported 1,000 miles to the coast for final assembly.

For the sake of completeness, this is Mountrath & Castletown/Kilbricken - https://www.google.com/maps/@52.9634348,-7.4660293,102m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu - not so easy to see from the Street View, but still fairly complete. Catching a glimpse of it fleetingly as you go past can have you thinking you've passed Ballybrophy.

Within the last year, I have had two fairly local people tell me that you could get a train from Mountrath to Kilkenny - probably the same similarity misremembrance. I have no idea, but I may investigate one day...

There's a lot more evidence of the station in Mountmellick, than there is in Attanagh. https://www.google.com/maps/@53.1200704,-7.3384635,3a,20.1y,201.38h,89.98t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sG5hIm-GsDLpksyQfOHfhsA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DG5hIm-GsDLpksyQfOHfhsA%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D213.32684%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

Was it ever possible to run a train from Mountrath & Castletown/Kilbricken to Abbeyleix without reversing in Maryborough/Port Laoise? My mother's family had connections in Waterford and would travel from Rathdowney to Attanagh via a pony and trap, to catch the train southwards.

Attanagh station was here - https://www.google.com/maps/@52.8332176,-7.3521547,3a,73.5y,151.01h,81.54t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s5vDn3ZBiKC6IaZccCQ82Lg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D5vDn3ZBiKC6IaZccCQ82Lg%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D245.84381%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu - if you look on the 'satellite' view going northwards, you can see parts of the route of the line, which eventually becomes the Bog Walk south of Abbeyleix.

Another one, for comparison.

This one is currently for sale. The railway equipment forms a separate part of the sale, but is should be easy to combine the two. https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8323624,-3.5565762,255m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

And it would be handy in the event of a train failure. A friend of mine spent a dull time yesterday stuck on a replacement bus, when that broke down...

Nice cameo for anybody modelling the modern Welsh era. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-13437279

I once spent a productive 15 minutes with a new 'train manager' on a Heuston/Cork train. Being of a southern African origin, such places as Thurles and Cloughjordan were not phonetically obvious to him from the paperwork, as he read out the pre-stop announcements. Trying to locate a place near Lough Derg yesterday, the sat-nav woman from the driver's phone kept referring to Nenagh like a toddler impersonating a cop car - Neeee-Naaah.

It's from back when Mahmoud Ahmedinajad accidentally ticked the next box under 'Iran' when he posted his application to be President.

There were quite a few traction engines around that area, due to the Castlecomer coalfield. I can remember seeing a few sitting in Stradbally, idling at the side of the road, having drawn grain trailers into town in the 70s. I do have a set of the 1912 1" maps, with the coalfield lines on - I did start building a 'Goggle Maps'-based thing with them overlaid on it - I might even finish it now...

If you have any other points you're thinking of making, you really ought to post them before the 29th of March. It'll be hard to type with your hands nailed to a plank.

You can't fire me, I'm on strike anyway.

I wish I hadn't posted that now, I suspected this would all flare up again.

Maybe it hasn't backfired after all..? https://www.rte.ie/news/newslens/2024/0209/1431328-match-tower/

Time for a Celebration?

Sweet!

Cricket.

Hardly a worthy workbench item, but does anybody have a Timpo Prairie Rocket? I got roped into 'fixing' one and each step of the process takes a long time - it's been a couple of months to get this far, I only finally got to see the actual problem today. All I've had delivered is the motorised tender, in a non-functional form. I've got it apart without busting anything. The motor seemed to be dead, with no circuit through it at all, even when I could get straight onto the motor terminals. The motor is a bit 'special', in that the mounting requires this actual motor, using the shape of the case to fit and hold it. On a hunch, suspecting that it just hadn't run for many years and the commutator was merely oxidised, I gave it a 'robust manual spin' to polish it up a bit and did get an occasional circuit then - so I persevered and was then able to get it to run and clean itself properly. I've cleaned the carpet fluff from the gears and it runs OK now. Anyway, the real point is that the tender does not have rear, unpowered, bogie in place. I'm guessing that the two bogie wagons that are part of the set will use a compatible 'dead' bogie and thus I could cannibalise one from there - but, the wagons are 60 miles away and two to three weeks from arriving here. It would be nice to know if my suggestion of this temporary fix is likely to work, before another month passes and I get to see the wagons.

Change the password on the phone and try that on the desktop..?

Apart from the fatality and the injuries, this one was an interesting case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Stafford_rail_crash The chaos of the immediate response and the madness of trying to negotiate the responsibilities through the maze of privatised owners and service providers were (hopefully) salutary lessons. The chap who lived in the house that the 86 hit was a friend of a friend. He had been out earlier to clear off a load of kids kicking a football against his wall - he heard the thud of the loco hitting the outside skin of his cavity wall and went out to tell them off again, only to find "a railway engine, with a bloke still in it". The legal cases went on for years and were never really resolved completely.

Numbers comes into it. There's a lot of people on the Big Island, but as potential volunteers and as potential visitors. Living in both places, I know more people in Ireland actually involved in heritage activities of various kinds than in I do in England. There are cultural issues, too, railways just aren't 'as important' to people in Ireland It's a matter of what is possible and viable. If people aren't interested as volunteers or visitors, than so be it, unfortunately perhaps...