Jump to content

B101

Rate this topic


Recommended Posts

Posted (edited)

Just came across this, thought I’d share it out of interest.

Don’t take the shade of green seriously - the original colour slide is in awful condition!

At Waterford obviously, about 1962.

Like the A & C classes, some had a pale green “waistline”; some didn’t. None had “flying snails”.

Black on top of roof.

IMG_3034.jpeg

Edited by jhb171achill
  • Like 11
Posted

In the green livery, only some of the B101's had the cowling in the bufferbeam area painted red, with the ends apparently outlined in black. Here's a view of B107 from Ernie:

CIE 1960-09-14 Waterford B107 DT18-35

Others had the front cowling painted the same colour as the body, like B102 here:

CIE 1959-06-27 Thurles B102 up passenger

The 'bufferbeam' colour doesn't correlate with the presence or absence of a waist line. Again from Ernie, here's B104 with red cowling outlined in black, but with the waist line:

CIE 1960 CA Waterford B104 x027

For the initial livery, the whole front was silver. This slide sold on ebay recently, for rather more than I was willing to pay!

B104_brand_new.thumb.jpg.95f696782a556bf999fbaa205444ee41.jpg

 

  • Like 5
Posted

The waistline, both on these and the A / C classes, appears to have been completely arbitrary (like the dayglo orange-red on locos in the 1990s) with no relation to any other livery details.

I have seen pics of silver locos with red buffer beams too, but never a green one without at least some red on the buffer beam area.

The one thing I have never seen is a B101 model with numerals of exactly the right style and size…. especially on a loco that is otherwise plain silver, plain green or (mostly) plain black, inaccuracy in numerals or lettering sticks out like a sore thumb, unfortunately.

The initial pic, I should add, is possibly one of Cyril Fry’s. If not, it’s one of my dad’s.

Posted
36 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

The waistline, both on these and the A / C classes, appears to have been completely arbitrary (like the dayglo orange-red on locos in the 1990s) with no relation to any other livery details.

I have seen pics of silver locos with red buffer beams too, but never a green one without at least some red on the buffer beam area.

The one thing I have never seen is a B101 model with numerals of exactly the right style and size…. especially on a loco that is otherwise plain silver, plain green or (mostly) plain black, inaccuracy in numerals or lettering sticks out like a sore thumb, unfortunately.

The initial pic, I should add, is possibly one of Cyril Fry’s. If not, it’s one of my dad’s.

Ah, @jhb171achill - I have - see below! Lance King's photo at Portarlington in 1958. Copyright IRRS

N17PortarlingtonB112copy.jpg.e86e558f2f949089139326094863cb1b.jpg

  • Like 4
Posted
15 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

I have seen pics of silver locos with red buffer beams too, but never a green one without at least some red on the buffer beam area.

Here's a first for you then, at Portarlington in July 1958 according to the slide mount. This is a slide I bought secondhand on ebay, but I'm not sure of the copyright position. I apologise if I have transgressed, please let me know and I will remove it.

B112.thumb.jpg.3a8fe02b38be8a23af67ed87678ce57a.jpg

Colour-Rail image FIE02922 also shows B112 in this livery without any red on the front, but at a later date as it's more grubby. I did look on the Colour-Rail website for the image above but it doesn't appear to be listed, so I assume it's from another source.

I think B112 was one of the locos displayed at the Inchicore open day in 1958, and was parked next to A46. 

If so, you can just see it behind A46 here, along with some kettles, all in colour:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53449604144/

And in this video in monochrome:

Taken together, these photos should fuel the 'shades of green' debate... The Inchicore photo appears to show both A46 and B112 in light green, and they are considerably lighter than the adjacent 800. But the established wisdom is that these first repaints of diesels in green were in dark green, and B112 in the pic I've posted above looks pretty dark. 

Aha, @leslie10646, looks like you beat me to it with posting a near-identical image.

  • Like 1
Posted (edited)

The slide which you bought was probably taken by another of the group with Lance, hence the near identical photo - your "man" took his shot a few hundredths of a second after lance! Not eat position of the loc vis a vis the ground signal.

They went on to the Cavan and Leitrim next day.

By the way @Mol_PMB, thanks for the link to the Inchicore film. I'm recovering from the shock of seeing a well-known IRRS member when but a boy .......

But better still, when the film ended YouTube gave me a link to a super film about "The Elizabethan" - no interest to you, of course, seeing streamlines "kettles".

By the way, can we have less offensive references made to the next most important invention after the wheel, please?

Edited by leslie10646
  • Like 1
  • Agree 1
  • Informative 1
Posted

Most interesting, yes, that was a new one to me. And yes, B112 IS in the darker green, not to be seen on many diesels at all. A46 had it, and so did Downpatrick's C231 at one stage anyway. Of the extrremely few A, B101 & C's with dark green, all images I've ever seen of them have a waistline.

Posted
2 hours ago, David Holman said:

Still think that first picture might be a model - all the other photos show flush glazing on the cab front....

It’s an old kit I found, but it’s 12 inches to the foot scale. No DCC, though, and the couplings are completely incompatible with both standard Hornby ones and Kadees. It won’t run on code 70 OR 100 track, nor HO scale anything. It won’t go round curves, even a 2.4 metre radius one. So I’m not sure what I’ll do with it…. if someone will give me a tenner for it, it’s yours, but I’m told the postage could be high enough….

  • Funny 4
Posted
27 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

It’s an old kit I found, but it’s 12 inches to the foot scale. No DCC, though, and the couplings are completely incompatible with both standard Hornby ones and Kadees. It won’t run on code 70 OR 100 track, nor HO scale anything. It won’t go round curves, even a 2.4 metre radius one. So I’m not sure what I’ll do with it…. if someone will give me a tenner for it, it’s yours, but I’m told the postage could be high enough….

Oh, and just as a health warning, it's full of asbestos!

  • Funny 1
Posted
4 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

And worse, it’s not even Hornby asbestos, it’s Hornby Dublo!

Ah yes, the blue variety is particularly nasty. Not sure what sort was in the CIE Sulzers. 
I wonder what B103’s eventual fate will be? It’s probably more of a liability than an asset now, sadly.

Posted
3 hours ago, Mol_PMB said:

Ah yes, the blue variety is particularly nasty. Not sure what sort was in the CIE Sulzers. 
I wonder what B103’s eventual fate will be? It’s probably more of a liability than an asset now, sadly.

At least the ITG have managed to secure one. Probably a static exhibit, I'd say - but with the moracles the ITG have been unveiling lately, including last Saturday, who knows! I wonder are any of the Sulzer engines in England of any use in terms of compatibility? I think B103's engine is largely gone?

 

  • Like 1
Posted
1 hour ago, jhb171achill said:

At least the ITG have managed to secure one. Probably a static exhibit, I'd say - but with the moracles the ITG have been unveiling lately, including last Saturday, who knows! I wonder are any of the Sulzer engines in England of any use in terms of compatibility? I think B103's engine is largely gone?

 

Class 24/25/26 seem to use same power plant 

  • Like 1
Posted

It would be technically possible for it to run again, but very challenging. Even when I briefly worked on 226 at Carrick with Aidan about 20 years back, 103 was a basket-case, and despite having the box built round it, there's another 20 years of deterioration to deal with.

103 is in a poor state with many major missing bits, and spares will be very hard to find. I'm not sure what level of technical documentation still exists to help with re-creating parts that are missing or beyond repair. Restoration to running order would be more akin to the new-build diesel projects in GB - such as the LMS 10000 or the Baby Deltic.

It would need lots of money (I'd estimate over a million euros) and a dedicated team of people working on it over many years. Sadly I suspect that's unrealistic and if that level of funding and effort was available it would be better focused on restoring/maintaining the existing ITG fleet (including some of the Moyasta locos) and finishing 226. Someone's going to want to save an 071 as well...

The B101s were never a large or widespread class, the last were withdrawn about 50 years ago but it's been over 60 years since they were in fleet service on passenger trains. Anyone that remembers them vividly enough to really care about seeing one run again probably won't be alive to see the job finished. I'm afraid I just can't see it happening.

A cosmetic restoration for display would be easier but a lot of bodywork would need replacing, and before any work is done on the loco any asbestos issues would have to be resolved. A cosmetic restoration doesn't have any earning capability either. Also, there's only any point doing the cosmetic restoration if there is somewhere dry and secure to display the loco - where would that be? If there were to be a large museum with plenty of covered space available, then it's worth considering, but even then I can think of higher priorities. 

The best we can do is to build models!

  • Like 2
Posted

Absolutely. There just isn’t the same nostalgic pull for people as the GMs have. You’d have to be well over 60 to have any clear memory of them in use. Although the same applies to the G class, they have the advantage of being cute, a little less complicated to restore, and useful at Downpatrick. As and when the time comes for an 071…Downpatrick’s PW people might be looking anxious !

  • Like 1
  • Agree 1
Posted
2 hours ago, Galteemore said:

Absolutely. There just isn’t the same nostalgic pull for people as the GMs have. You’d have to be well over 60 to have any clear memory of them in use. Although the same applies to the G class, they have the advantage of being cute, a little less complicated to restore, and useful at Downpatrick. As and when the time comes for an 071…Downpatrick’s PW people might be looking anxious !

Well, I am well over 60, and have only one single memory of seeing one in traffic!

Posted

Im in my late 60s and have distinct memories of B101s in the late 60s-early 70s usually waiting at Island Bridge Junction to work Kingsbridge-Northwall transfer goods trains, though my first sighting of a B101 was in the terminal section of Dunlaoire on a parcel train.

The B101s were bascially considered a "Southern engine" with Waterford one of their strong hold working over the Cork-Rosslare Route, Waterford-Limerick and Dublin lines, though there is a photo of a B101 in Supertrain livery on a north bound goods at Gort on the Limerick-Sligo line.

The Class appear to have been mainly used on Kingsbridge/Heuston-Northwall transfer freights and possibly Kingsbridge-Dunlaoire parcel/mail trains in their leater years. Although less powerful than an Ar the B101s would have had an advantage over the 121 Class and single Bo Bos in working loose coupled goods trains over the steeply graded Island Bridge Junction-North Wall line.

I bought a Qkits B101 in my teens, but the body was quite badly warped and at the time hadn't gained the skill to assemble or motorise the loco.

  • Like 1
Posted

I have great memories of north wall transfer freights heading up the bank passing the then IRRS premises in Dromcondra in the early 70's. On Wednesday Library nights you knew by sound if a 101 class was either in the lead or banking. The sound of the Sulzer engine working hard was so different to anything else running at the time. Also I heard them more than saw them as there were no windows looking out on the track. If you wanted to look out you had to open the emergency exit. So yes I am well into my sixties! 

  • Like 2

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use