New Announcement - Hosanna Is A H Van

[Mol_PMB]

On 13/1/2025 at 6:34 PM, Patrick Davey said:

Seems like there is a significant arrival due at IRM Towers on January 15th.........

Since the H vans will be winging their way to us soon, let me share this photo which is also a new arrival on the IRRS Flickr archive and dates from March 1964, at Inchicore. 
In the foreground is @jhb171achill’s nemesis, with a brush of black paint in his hand!

This H van 18981 may be one of the first wagons to receive a tan roundel, as the logo had only been introduced couple of months previously. It’s in an odd place low down on the side of the van, and of course there’s that black underframe…

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/54251291181

The vehicle behind, also available from IRM is an LB flat, I think 23379, with snail logo and looking pretty clean and freshly painted in a slightly darker shade of grey than the H van.

The flat wagon is carrying some sort of swapbody or Lancashire Flat painted bright red. This must be shorter than the later types as the wagon is only 16’11” long. It would be interesting to find more photos of these.

Meanwhile, Limerick was painting smaller white roundels on wagons in 1964, and had got JHB’s memo about the underframe colour!

https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000307038

Edited January 18 by Mol_PMB
reinstated missing link

[leslie10646]

Hi guys

When are you going to send out the H vans, grain wagons which I paid for ten days or so ago?

Thanks

Leslie

[jhb171achill]

On 17/1/2025 at 9:34 PM, Mol_PMB said:

Since the H vans will be winging their way to us soon, let me share this photo which is also a new arrival on the IRRS Flickr archive and dates from March 1964, at Inchicore. 
In the foreground is @jhb171achill’s nemesis, with a brush of black paint in his hand!

This H van 18981 may be one of the first wagons to receive a tan roundel, as the logo had only been introduced couple of months previously. It’s in an odd place low down on the side of the van, and of course there’s that black underframe…

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/54251291181

The vehicle behind, also available from IRM is an LB flat, I think 23379, with snail logo and looking pretty clean and freshly painted in a slightly darker shade of grey than the H van.

The flat wagon is carrying some sort of swapbody or Lancashire Flat painted bright red. This must be shorter than the later types as the wagon is only 16’11” long. It would be interesting to find more photos of these.

Meanwhile, Limerick was painting smaller white roundels on wagons in 1964, and had got JHB’s memo about the underframe colour!

https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000307038

That roundel was also somewhat larger than normal. The black chassis would have been a one-off, as this was an experimental livery. In the same way, the very first half doizen or so coaches to get black'n'tan had one-off differences, like numbers in different positions, and non-standard fonts.

In the early 1970s, I believe that consideration was given to painting goods wagons a sort of beige-y "desert sand" colour, instead of brown, like Dublin buses. But it was not proceeded with, and I am unaware even of an experimental paint job being done.

The CIE roundel with tan surround, as opposed to white, was as far as I am aware confined to new vans - namely "H"'s and "Palvans". All older vans, all open wagons, plus SOME "H"s, had all-white roundels. I never saw a palvan with a white roundel, but it's at least theoretically possible.

All logos on all brown-painted wagons were always white. Some got discoloured with age and brake dust, but all were white initially.

Very few wagons ever got the "set-of-points" logo after CIE became IE. The few that did tended to be departmental stock. Ordinary wagons - IF repainted - just had the numbers, no logo.

[Dempsey]

Coming late to the party on these but will there be stock available after pre orders are dispatched or is it completely sold out as per the website?

[Mol_PMB]

On 28/1/2025 at 11:10 PM, jhb171achill said:

The CIE roundel with tan surround, as opposed to white, was as far as I am aware confined to new vans - namely "H"'s and "Palvans". All older vans, all open wagons, plus SOME "H"s, had all-white roundels. I never saw a palvan with a white roundel, but it's at least theoretically possible.

I do wonder if the tan or white roundel was an Inchicore/Limerick thing?

Inchicore built the Palvans with tan roundels, and judging by photos of Inchicore in the 1960s which seem to feature vast numbers of H vans, they seem to have done most of the H van overhauls. Perhaps there was a 'production line' type overhaul process?

Limerick meanwhile seems to have been more focused on overhauling the older wagons, and especially those with wooden underframes, as shown in these NLI images from 1962 (interior shots) and 1964 (lineup of wagons newly painted with white roundels):

https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000306905

https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000306904

https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000307038

In the last photo all the visible wagons have white roundels, and all except one have wooden underframes. The one steel underframe wagon looks like an H van, but a closer inspection shows that it's a bulk grain van (catwalk on roof, extra gubbins on underframe).

 

Other freight items to receive the tan roundel as standard were the swapbodies for Guinness:

 

 

As ever, there were oddballs and exceptions. Here's a 20t brake van with tan roundel:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511648559

And a GNR cement van with a tan roundel (on the right):

On the left here are a pair of H vans with white roundels (67C 42909 photo on Flickr):

 

And then there are some H vans which don't seem to have any logo at all, as in this photo from Ernie:

And that begs the question - what logo was put on wagons in the 1962/1963 era? Remember at this time, the roundel hadn't been invented yet, while locos and carriages were being outshopped in black'n'tan with no logo at all. Containers were being built with 'C.I.E.' in block letters rather than any logo. Did they keep putting snails on wagons, or just omit the logo entirely?

[minister_for_hardship]

C.I.E. in block caps was a placeholder "logo" until the broken wheel, but survived for a time on road transport containers and vehicles, uniform cap badges and some publicity material.

[jhb171achill]

3 hours ago, Mol_PMB said:

And that begs the question - what logo was put on wagons in the 1962/1963 era? Remember at this time, the roundel hadn't been invented yet, while locos and carriages were being outshopped in black'n'tan with no logo at all. Containers were being built with 'C.I.E.' in block letters rather than any logo. Did they keep putting snails on wagons, or just omit the logo entirely?

The livery changed before the logo did, which is why you’ll see read and cream or navy and cream buses with snails. 

So they went on applying snails to everything until about very late 63 / early 64, when the roundels took over with immediate effect.

It was almost never you’d see anything without either - those vans above apparently with no logo could possibly have a very badly faded, barely discernible snail…