From the Catacombs

[jhb171achill]

1 hour ago, Georgeconna said:

What the hell is this ? German WWII smoking Haus for soldiers of Dubious morals?

 

It's a locomotive shed on the former Indonesian Staats Spoorwegen......."SS".....

[Westcorkrailway]

4 hours ago, minister_for_hardship said:

Auctioneers in the general antiques trade hide behind feigned ignorance "caveat emptor" and let bidders make up their own minds.

This thread reminded me of this photo......many of the classics here including Coras Iompair Eireann railway......

[jhb171achill]

5 hours ago, Westcorkrailway said:

This thread reminded me of this photo......many of the classics here including Coras Iompair Eireann railway......

Ghastly. I detest that sort of stuff!

[jhb171achill]

Back to the LLSR; more from the "catacombs"; in this case, Senior's stuff. This was a visit to Burtonport in 1937, I think. He footplated No. 12 the whole way, and said the track was shockingly bad, especially beyond Letterkenny-hi.

I posted his view from the cab earlier.

The second image, 038, shows what must be a unique view back along the tender.

The excellent live steam model of one of these seen elsewhere on this website earlier - 10 1.4 inch gauge, I think - I can't pass by without commenting that they were never that colour - for modellers; I'm not nit-picking. LLSR green was an extremely dark green.... Fry's model has it wrong too.....

[Westcorkrailway]

27 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

 

Now there is what the sign SHOULD look like, take note chinese/indian scrap metal industries

[minister_for_hardship]

8 hours ago, Westcorkrailway said:

Now there is what the sign SHOULD look like, take note chinese/indian scrap metal industries

Dont encourage them.

[Mike 84C]

Brilliant photos JHB, your father has done us proud with those photos. Fresh angles on a well known subject. All the Swilly locos were attractive and distinctive. I like the human element and little things like the shovel leaning against a coal pile. Thanks for posting.

[Irishswissernie]

This L&LSR trespass sign was still in situ at Letterkenny 27 June 1968. The company was still running bus services then .

Is that the paint scheme in use during the railway era.

 

[NIR]

The railway closed before I was born but that was certainly the colour of the Lough Swilly buses at that time.

[jhb171achill]

28 minutes ago, Mike 84C said:

Brilliant photos JHB, your father has done us proud with those photos. Fresh angles on a well known subject. All the Swilly locos were attractive and distinctive. I like the human element and little things like the shovel leaning against a coal pile. Thanks for posting.

Many thanks, Mike. I always think things like that are invaluable for modellers. Once the extension to my own layout is done, I’ll be drawing heavily on such detail, of things just lying around the place….

15 minutes ago, Irishswissernie said:

This L&LSR trespass sign was still in situ at Letterkenny 27 June 1968. The company was still running bus services then .

Is that the paint scheme in use during the railway era.

 

I doubt if, judging by a small number of pics I’ve seen, which appear to show a dark colour (black?) with letters not picked out at all. 

5 minutes ago, NIR said:

The railway closed before I was born but that was certainly the colour of the Lough Swilly buses at that time.

In the 1968 photo, that’s quite possibly the reason for the sign colour.

The trains had cherry red and white (or cream) carriages WAAY back, but latterly they were the same ordinary wagon grey as the actual wagons. Locos and freight lorries had an extremely dark green.

Edited July 24, 2021 by jhb171achill

[DERAILED]

On 22/7/2021 at 11:18 PM, bufferstop said:

Some poor bollix paid €320 for this classic last week in an auction in Cork. When you add in auctioneers fees and delivery, you're talking well over €400.

This is the twentieth example of this sign that I've seen auctioned, someone is pumping them out, mind you it's a masterpiece, compared to this one that's regularly appearing................

 

Whatever fool paid that deserves precisely what they got - a few kg of cast iron scrap. No sympathy - be informed or don't bid.

Edited July 24, 2021 by DERAILED

[minister_for_hardship]

On 23/7/2021 at 2:55 PM, Georgeconna said:

What the hell is this ? German WWII smoking Haus for soldiers of Dubious morals?

 

From a quick Google it would appear to be a sort of brothel that operated within a concentration camp. Why the hell would anyone want to make a sign of this is beyond me.

[jhb171achill]

Another delve into the "catacombs", a.k.a. Senior's stuff, produces this:

Question is, what is it and where? The picture will date from the 1930s.

(c.   H C A Beaumont)

Edited July 24, 2021 by jhb171achill

[Galteemore]

Original 1863 era Dundalk and Greenore sign before the Newry extension. I’d say it was a boundary marker with the GN (or to be precise its D and B J R predecessor). Barrack St Dundalk is my guess. 

Edited July 24, 2021 by Galteemore

[jhb171achill]

1 hour ago, Galteemore said:

Original 1863 era Dundalk and Greenore sign before the Newry extension. I’d say it was a boundary marker with the GN (or to be precise its D and B J R predecessor). Barrack St Dundalk is my guess. 

Yes, it is indeed a boundary marker and it is Dundalk, as it's with his DNGR pictures. Just didn't know WHERE he had seen it!

They were still keeping the letters on it painted when he saw it!

[airfixfan]

Must be worth 10 pound in Northern Bank notes at least for a job lot?

[David Holman]

Fabulous photos of the Swilly. What an extraordinary railway it was.

[airfixfan]

Agree with David that the Swilly was an incredible railway. That model loco is at the High Legh Minarture Railway in Cheshire. Loco is 7 and a quarter inch and photos do not do it justice!

[Midland Man]

3 hours ago, David Holman said:

Fabulous photos of the Swilly. What an extraordinary railway it was.

agreed I always feel like it gets overshadowed by the CDR which is a disappointment.

[minister_for_hardship]

22 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

Another delve into the "catacombs", a.k.a. Senior's stuff, produces this:

Question is, what is it and where? The picture will date from the 1930s.

(c.   H C A Beaumont)

Nmp but a stone example still in situ.

[jhb171achill]

Wow! That’s some find. Where is it?

[David Holman]

I guess the reason the CDR tends to overshadow the Swilly is that things like livery and architecture  are seen as better. Red and cream coaches will outdo grey ones most days, while the Swilly's stations were hardly attractive even on a good day. Add in all the quirky railcars and fine tank engines - plus the fact that the Donegal lasted long enough to be regularly photographed in colour &  it is easy to see why the Swilly tends to play second fiddle in many people's minds.

 If only it had stayed open ten years longer...

[minister_for_hardship]

5 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

Wow! That’s some find. Where is it?

Greenore. According to my informant: just outside the golf course where the Greenore-Dundalk line diverged from the Greenore Newry section.

"There is a similar stone out in the estuary at the place called Hamills Pier just beyond Bridge No. 24 after which the Dundalk line turned left out of Greenore at the shore (but I have no idea if it has any initials on it, and, if there were, the tide will have probably wiped them)"

[airfixfan]

The CSR lasted until 1960 and tried to run a railway until the end. Unlike the Lough Swillya lot of former CDR rolling stock survived more by accident than design. Have written an article on the CDR from 1960 to 1989 in Narrow Gauge Steam 3 by Kelsey Publishing just out this month.

[jhb171achill]

From Senior's stuff........

When? Not sure - probably about 1942.

Where? No idea. Somewhere in the southern half of Brexitstan.

[StevieB]

Halwill Junction, the southern end the North Devon and Cornwall Junction Railway, one of the last of Colonel Stephens lines to be built. He used to refer to them as associated railways, the fifth group of lines in GB.

Stephen

[jhb171achill]

4 hours ago, StevieB said:

Halwill Junction, the southern end the North Devon and Cornwall Junction Railway, one of the last of Colonel Stephens lines to be built. He used to refer to them as associated railways, the fifth group of lines in GB.

Stephen

Ah! Superb! Very many thanks, Stephen. I'll post some more of his British stuff by degrees. What is that coach with the loco?

Also, what few notes I have suggest it might be earlier even - possibly HIS father took it in the mid 1930s. I wish he had kept proper notes, though I'm one to talk regarding my own stuff.......!

Here's another from the Union of Brexit Republics......this one is 1930s. I have an idea they were over there about 1937, but again, no confirmation.

For modellers interested in British private owner wagons, this place would be heaven......

Edited August 1, 2021 by jhb171achill

[jhb171achill]

I'm wandering off topic in that while the above is "from the catacombs", it's not Irish!

So, to ease us back home, here's one taken in Switzerland and one in Ireland. The Swiss one is 1956, as Senior was on his Funnymoon. That's a serious looking electric loco..... I remember seeing an elderly one something like that, with "steam"-era wheels and connecting rods, in Austria in 1979..... funny to hear it clanking past but no steam or smoke.

The Irish one is one of Cyril Fry's (this particular one c. Hassard Stacpoole), and is the mixed train at Cahirciveen, about to depart for Farranfore. It is this type of scene that I will eventually want to emulate on "Dugort Harbour" once IRM get the "C" classes out! That MGWR Cusack-era six-wheeler is a long way from home.

Edited August 1, 2021 by jhb171achill

[StevieB]

18 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

From Senior's stuff........

When? Not sure - probably about 1942.

Where? No idea. Somewhere in the southern half of Brexitstan.

The loco is an E1R 0-6-2T, a Southern rebuild of an LBSCR E1 0-6-0T, but then you probably knew that. The coach appears to an LSWR gate brake, similar to the kind of thing produced by Kernow Model Centre.

Stephen

[jhb171achill]

Actual GSWR paint, livery & lining on this model in Cultra made by Inchicore apprentices over 100 years ago.

[airfixfan]

7 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

Ah! Superb! Very many thanks, Stephen. I'll post some more of his British stuff by degrees. What is that coach with the loco?

Also, what few notes I have suggest it might be earlier even - possibly HIS father took it in the mid 1930s. I wish he had kept proper notes, though I'm one to talk regarding my own stuff.......!

Here's another from the Union of Brexit Republics......this one is 1930s. I have an idea they were over there about 1937, but again, no confirmation.

For modellers interested in British private owner wagons, this place would be heaven......

Loco appears to be an LNWR Coal Tank

[NIR]

7 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

...here's one taken in Switzerland...

That looks a lot like Niesen in the background, the first high ground you see going south on the Bern–Lötschberg–Simplon.

Maybe Emdthal between Spiez and Reichenbach

https://goo.gl/maps/nrD155RETCLW2VFP7

The background is pretty much uniformly high from there on into the Rhône valley, where the forest looks sparser, more Mediterranean.

Edited August 1, 2021 by NIR

[jhb171achill]

So I've got several very excellent and informative answers to locos and locations in Switzerland and Britain, just by posting three pics. First, many thanks to those concerned.

Secondly, by degrees I will therefore post some of Senior's other 1930s-50s British and mainland European bits on the "overseas railways" section of this website. Hopefully they will be of interest to modellers of these places. Some very nice Isle of Man stuff too, which is probably among the older material - I think they were there when Senior was a teenager, which would make it mid 1930s.

I'll start a new thread for that stuff.

 

[jhb171achill]

Started on Senior's colour stuff. An eclectic mix from about 1961 (which is when, judging by family photos, he got a camera suitable for colour slides.

They're a mixed bag, in all honesty; many now badly deteriorated, though "my man" worked his magic on them - to such extent as possible - this evening.

So, randomly:

1.  A Brexit Rail diesel doing BR things on narrow gauge tracks in Brexitland; my geographical knowledge of British railways is virtually nil, and beyond one shot Senior has of Kyle of Lochalsh, and one or two of the Vale of Rheidol, I have no idea where the rest are.

[jhb171achill]

Filthy Fert passes through Lisburn during the time of the utterly hideous red colour scheme that station was "adorned" in; a Hunslet leaves Belfast Central on - I think - the "Enterprise"; a Derry train thunders past a PW gang on the NCC main line, running wrong line as Senior had a possession on the other line; nice portrait of a Jeep at Adelaide (can't make the number out - could be No. 3?), an excursion coming off the (then closed) Antrim branch at Knockmore Junction, showing the unique Mills-designed brick-built cabin there, and a narrow gauge railbus in the United Kingdom of Blighty.

Edited August 7, 2021 by jhb171achill