Ireland 1975 - 2017
I became interested in Irish railways as a teenager growing up in East Sussex. Our library in Haywards Heath had a good selection of David & Charles railway books, which included the E M Patterson histories of the legendary narrow gauge railways and Michael H C Baker's Irish Railways since 1916. I was hooked.
Of course by the time I crossed the Irish Sea for the first time the narrow gauge was no more (apart from the peat operations of Bord na Mona) but the broad gauge operation was equally fascinating, being both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
These pictures were taken over a period of 40+ years on both CIE (now Iarnród Éireann) and NIR (now Translink) and includes both steam and diesel (and a little bit of the electric DART operation)
Read MoreOf course by the time I crossed the Irish Sea for the first time the narrow gauge was no more (apart from the peat operations of Bord na Mona) but the broad gauge operation was equally fascinating, being both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
These pictures were taken over a period of 40+ years on both CIE (now Iarnród Éireann) and NIR (now Translink) and includes both steam and diesel (and a little bit of the electric DART operation)
June 16th 1975
In June 1975 I went to Ireland on my first solo holiday 'abroad'. I stayed at a B&B in Drumcondra, run by a Mrs Creagh, riding CIE most days on a rover ticket. Arriving on a Monday morning from Holyhead I caught the boat train from Dun Laoghaire to Connolly (rather horrified by the plastic seats IIRC :-)
Not being able to check in to the B&B until the afternoon I hopped on the first train, the 08:20 mail train to Galway, which ran over the M&GW route via Mullingar, today the Mullingar to Athlone section via Moate is OOS. Metro Vick/EMD A class 054 is waiting to leave Connolly. Nice set of GNRI signals. E421 is the station pilot.
