Waterford Wagon

[K801]

Is this still in use or close to scrapping?

[Riversuir226]

It's out if use for years 

[Railer]

There is one almost identical to that in Northwall yard too stored next to the retired ballast hoppers.

[Glenderg]

15 hours ago, Railer said:

There is one almost identical to that in Northwall yard too stored next to the retired ballast hoppers.

I don't think there's a Lowmac on the North Wall. There's a converted 42' flat wagon with a crane on the end though ? 

[Robert Shrives]

The lowmac  has modern axleboxes and a modern style handbrake wheel just to add to fun of modelling..  nodoubt experts can say but I wonder if it was an import job.

Great finds still to be had 

Robert 

[Glenderg]

It's first cousin is this - https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/brlowmacwv 

Since they'd have had to push the sideframes out for gauge reasons, the top deck and supporting steel fins would have gone outward too, making it a BR pattern, but CIE-ized to suit. In departmental use for perway and I've only seen  645A, 650A, & 651A, but there might be more. Last inspection date I've seen is 1993, but they were knocking around until 2006, as captured by Mr Gordon Hawkins. 

A Priestman Crawler was it's guest load on that occasion. 

 

[Railer]

8 hours ago, Glenderg said:

I don't think there's a Lowmac on the North Wall. There's a converted 42' flat wagon with a crane on the end though ? 

Right you are Rich, but I could have sworn I got a pic of it right there from the now closed upstairs Odeon Costa across the road from the yard about 2 years back. Trawling though my collection......

[DiveController]

Definitely an interesting oddity.

[Mol_PMB]

Reviving an old thread, the GSR built several of these and CIE copied the design. There were never many of them - maybe 10 in total but it’s complicated to keep track because they were on the borderline between the ‘traffic’ number series and the internal use wagons with an A suffix.

The old-school Airfix kit now marketed by Dapol is a pretty good match, I think. But the space under the deck is very limited on a lowmac so I’m not sure how practical it would be to produce an Irish gauge version from the kit. I might give it a try…

Here’s 651A at Limerick in 1991 (Adrian Nicholls photo:

 

[Mol_PMB]

Having done some research, here's a little more info on the CIE lowmac (low machinery) wagons.

Pender & Richards (1967) list:

• 23959-23962, Machinery, 20 ton capacity, 26'6" length over headstocks, built in 1954.

'Machinery Wagons...The four-wheeled wagons built in 1954 are to the same design as two built by the GSR in 1925'.

Pender & Richards only list CIE-built wagons, and there are 4 of them, plus 2 GSR, suggests a total of 6.

 

The 1975 CIE working timetable lists:

• 23957-23962 Machinery Truck, 20 tonnes capacity, 12 tonnes tare

That's a total of 6 and suggests that the GSR wagons were 23957-23958.

 

They do not appear in the 1985 or 1986 working timetable listings. Nor do they appear in the 1979 or 1981 Doyle&Hirsch stockbooks. I think this is because they were renumbered into the internal use series with the A suffix.

 

The very first photo in this thread appears to show 649A, also mentioned in the thread above are 645A, 650A, & 651A. Intriguingly, the range from 645A to 651A represents seven wagons, not six.

 

Here are some links to more photos on Flickr; only IRRS members will be able to see these in the IRRS archive.

One of the GSR pair in the late 1920s, carrying a damaged ballast hopper wagon:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53813126331

23958 in 1969, with plain bearings and older buffers:

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

A couple of photos of one carrying a yellow and black mobile crane in 1976:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511728140/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53511296761

A series of photos with one carrying a blue mobile crane in the 1980s:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53526421602/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53527462883/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53526383912/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53527462893/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53527285271/

650A at Inchicore in 1986, with a load of alternators:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/irishrailwayarchive/53509017991/

 

The livery appears to be black in all these photos; only the Gordon Hawkins image in an earlier post is red-brown.

 

The Dapol Kitmaster (ex-Airfix) plastic kit for a BR diagram 2/244 'Lowmac EK' is a pretty close match to these wagons in style, shape and size. The Irish wagons were a foot longer, probably a little wider, and there were detail differences, but it's not bad:

 

 

Hope that helps and inspires?

Mol

 

[bufferstop]

649A is in Maam Cross, It arrived there from Waterford in Oct 2022.

Its sister, 651A (23962) is in Whitehead. Its previous location was in the siding adjacent to the Coolnamona stub in Portlaoise.

Ironic that 2 out of such a small build survive when so many more numerous types disappeared.