Swillybegs

David Holman · 2024-12-20T22:02:09Z

Swillybegs out of Fintonagh

Guess it is about time I started a new thread for the conversion of Fintonagh to Swillybegs. The work isn’t too drastic [& certainly far less so than Arigna Town to Belmullet], but an explanation as to my rationale may be useful first.

The idea is that the Famine wasn’t quite as severe in this part of Ireland, which then didn’t suffer the same population decline as other parts of the country. Hence there was scope for the sort of railway development seen in Brittany, France, where in addition to the main lines and metre gauge systems like the Reseau Breton, various other feeder lines were built, including some roadside tramways. Hence, when the Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway arrived in Letterkenny in 1883, the County Donegal Railway came soon after [rather than in 1909]. The two companies then joined forces to construct a branch to the port of Swillybegs on the shore of Lough Swilly, somewhere near present day Rathmelton. Meanwhile, an independent roadside tramway, the North Donegal, was building a line from Downies [on the Atlantic coast], via Carrickart and Millport to Swillybegs.

Downies was an important herring fishery in the 19^th century [true], so there was a decent amount of traffic at first. However, this soon declined in the 20^th century, so it is likely that the section beyond Millport gradually fell out of use. Indeed, both railways would have struggled from the 1930s onwards, but my assumption is that The Emergency [aka 2^nd World War] kept them going. Redundant locos and stock from the Clogher Valley Railway found work on both lines during the fuel crisis, right up until the early 1950s, when both sections finally closed at the same time as the L&LS railway.

The reasons for all this nonsense go back to the last Cultra Exhibition, when I took Fintonagh there and got several new books from the Donegal Society stand. From these, I learned about how Clogher Valley stock went to both the Donegal and the Swilly and with a long held admiration for both railways, the die was cast!

However, both lines tended towards quite long trains and big locomotives, which made me think that the only way to do it would be a brand new layout. Equally, the smaller Donegal railcars and latter day trains on the Swilly – which could be as short as a couple of wagons and a bogie brake coach – gave food for thought that maybe Fintonagh could be adapted. Both the Barclay 4-6-0T and Kerr Stuart 4-6-2T would fit on the turntable, while from the CVR, Railcar No1 [Donegal No 10] and Phoenix diesel tractor were easily converted – little more than a repaint. CVR wagons went to both companies, but I still needed to find a role for my two 0-4-2T – hence the additional fiction of the North Donegal Tramway.

Still with me? Well done! So what of the layout?

The map below shows the geography, while the track plan shows how the two lines meet up at Swillybegs. If you haven’t clocked the name yet, it is of course a play on Killybegs, the actual Donegal terminus.

There are no changes to the track plan of Fintonagh. All I’m doing is adapting the front edge of the layout to look like a quayside. The Donegal/Swilly line comes in, at the rear, behind the rebranded warehouse, while the Tramway enters at the front, squeezing between that warehouse and a new ‘flat’, complete with a bridge joining the two, which will also hide the exit to the fiddle yard.

The Tramway is deemed to be where the goods yard is, so there is some transfer traffic, which will largely be in the hands of Phoenix. Swilly trains will most likely be short mixed ones, with a coach and a couple of vans, while Donegal ones will be railcars, one with a passenger trailer, the other with a couple of vans. There’s a temptation to enhance the layout wiring to enable two trains on the layout at once, but this will probably make the scene very crowded and also cause sight line problems for operators. So things will probably remain one train at a time, though [as on Fintonagh], a train loco can go to the turntable while Phoenix does the shunting.

So, there we are – an introduction to my latest piece of nonsense. Most of the layout stays the same and the backscene is not entirely unlike the Rathmelton townscape anyway. The new and revised stock will partly set the scene, but presenting a convincing quayside will be the main challenge, especially with so little room to work with. The photos below show where I’ve got to and with this new thread to chart progress, more will follow in due course.

Anyone invested in Fintonagh can find the whole story in the Layouts thread under Clogher Valley Project, while locos and stock are within David's Workbench in that section.