Any bagged freight in 90's to Kildare, Portarlington or Athy?

[murphaph]

Looking through Rails Through Tipperary it strikes me that bagged cement, fertiliser etc. seems to have been offloaded at some fairly small stations like Roscrea. Would any freight have been offloaded at any of the above 3 mentioned stations as late as the 90's? I'm guessing proximity to Dublin maybe meant no, that this type of freight would have just gone by road instead but happy to be proved wrong. There was a pic of ferts parked in Portarlington on Facebook recently and the train wasn't just in the passing loop but reversed back into the yard it seemed.

[Mayner]

 

It looks like Roscrea Bagged Cement train continued to operate as late as 1997.  

The Bagged Cement trains tended to serve smaller depots like Nenagh and Roscrea on a weekly cycle and depots like Abercorn Road Dublin on a more frequent or daily basis.

Fertiliser was mainly transported in trainload lots from Shelton Abbey and possibly Marino Point to a single railhead, the traffic was more seasonal in nature delivering an entire seasons or several weeks supply.

Clonmel and Thurles are likely to have handled fertiliser and bagged traffic into the late 90s.

Reduced demand for bagged cement and bagged fertiliser and high inventory costs would have been a factor in the shift from rail to road. Builders shifted from using bagged cement to pre-mixed products during the early 80s as readymixed mortar was cheaper and less wasteful than mixing the stuff on site, similarily farmers have been cutting back on Nitrogen fertiliser use for many years as intensive farming became increasingly un-economic.

Roscrea was also served by a Liner until the early 90s. 

IEs Liner trains mainly carried "Sundries" (small lots) in caged pallets in 10' & 20' containers for local delivery, Individual Containers and Keg traffic. Stations which had been relatively busy such as Roscrea, Nenagh and Clonmel appear to had lost a lot of freight traffic following the conversion from Loose Coupled to Liner Train operation. Roscrea and Nenagh were now served by a trip working from Limerick with increased transit times for sundries and freight traffic to and from Dublin, rather than a direct service provided by the Dublin-Nenagh-Limerick goods trains.

Clonmel appears to have mainly handled Bagged Cement and Fertiliser traffic with road transfer of sundries and keg traffic from Kilkenny

 

 

[jhb171achill]

4 hours ago, murphaph said:

Looking through Rails Through Tipperary it strikes me that bagged cement, fertiliser etc. seems to have been offloaded at some fairly small stations like Roscrea. Would any freight have been offloaded at any of the above 3 mentioned stations as late as the 90's? I'm guessing proximity to Dublin maybe meant no, that this type of freight would have just gone by road instead but happy to be proved wrong. There was a pic of ferts parked in Portarlington on Facebook recently and the train wasn't just in the passing loop but reversed back into the yard it seemed.

I think Barry has exact dates for this. I will check. If Barry doesn't, I know someone else who should know this.

[murphaph]

Thanks chaps. Much appreciated.

[flange lubricator]

14 hours ago, murphaph said:

Looking through Rails Through Tipperary it strikes me that bagged cement, fertiliser etc. seems to have been offloaded at some fairly small stations like Roscrea. Would any freight have been offloaded at any of the above 3 mentioned stations as late as the 90's? I'm guessing proximity to Dublin maybe meant no, that this type of freight would have just gone by road instead but happy to be proved wrong. There was a pic of ferts parked in Portarlington on Facebook recently and the train wasn't just in the passing loop but reversed back into the yard it seemed.

I don't think Kildare, Protarlington and Athy were served with bagged cement but bagged cement would have certainly passed through on occasion. The bagged cement ran to Wexford towards the late 1990's early 2000's from Waterford arriving from Dublin North wall as part of the nightly liner . Places like Cork . Ennis,Clonmel ,Thurles receiving bagged cement trains up to the early 2000's.

[h gricer]

Carlow Kilkenny regularly got bag cement, I remember one particular Saturday 29th April 1995, driver Tony Cook arrived into Kilkenny on the 15.00 passenger from Heuston with 076, driver and guard proceeded to the yard and started up 072 in clouds of blue smoke which was attached to 10 bag cement wagons, on route back to North Wall they attached another 10 wagons at Carlow, interesting too, in the whole 20 wagon rake there was only 5 ''curtain siders'' the other 15 wagons were made up of the old type, chains and wheels, a nightmare for depot men, a pub quiz question back in the day, ''how many wheels on a bag cement wagon'' answer  18 wheels, 14 used for opening the doors, them chains pull the arms off ya.

Back to Saturday 29th April 1995, a very busy day for Bell Ferry liners, the Aclass locomotives had just been withdrawn, 078 and 082 worked the Bell liners, and everything went into Kilkenny as the Lavistown Loop was under construction at the time, but that another story.

[Mayner]

On 13/12/2021 at 10:39 PM, flange lubricator said:

I don't think Kildare, Protarlington and Athy were served with bagged cement but bagged cement would have certainly passed through on occasion. The bagged cement ran to Wexford towards the late 1990's early 2000's from Waterford arriving from Dublin North wall as part of the nightly liner . Places like Cork . Ennis,Clonmel ,Thurles receiving bagged cement trains up to the early 2000's.

Kildare, Portarlington and Athy closed to wagon load and sundries traffic during the 1970s as they were not included in the CIE freight development plan. 

I think Kildare and Portarlington closed to regular goods traffic late in 1975. 

Athy goods yard continued to handle goods traffic until the Dublin-Waterford goods went over to Liner operation at some stage during the late 1970s with Carlow and Kilkenny the only intermediate stations handling freight.

Goods for Athy appears to have been conveyed in CIE ISO containers on standard 20' skeletal flat wagons rather than H Vans and Corrugated Opens  during the its final year of operation.

Wagons with side door and half height ISO containers were in the good yard when I travelled to Waterford on a Railrover ticket during my 1977 or 78 summer Holidays!

Portarlington continued to handle sugar beet in corrugated opens into the late 1970s possibly early 80s possibly served by Tullamore-Thurles specials which also served Geashill on the Portarlington-Athlone line

[Irishswissernie]

Bagged cement lasted until at least June 2003 from Limerick to Waterford, on that date here is a set of 4 bagged plus 16 bubbles behind 169 returning from Waterford at Limerick Junction. 

I basically visited Ireland during 2000 to 2005 and in the earlier part of that period there were still several bagged workings from Limerick and odd ones from Platin which are covered in Ernie's Railway Archive on Flickr.

 

[murphaph]

What a pic. Could almost be a model.