European Railroad Discussion > The Enterprise - now and then

Yesterday the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland ran one of their Northern Enterprise steam charters from their base at Whitehead, on the shores of Belfast Lough, through Belfast along the former Great Northern Railway of Ireland mainline to Dublin and back. That's some 250 miles of mainline steam haulage, mostly at speed. The loco was GNRI 3-cylinder compound 4-4-0 of 1932, no.85 Merlin.

And of course Merlin had to mix it with the latter day variant of the Enterprise, today run jointly by Translink (NI) and Iarnrod Eireann (RoI), utilising special push pull train sets based on the Eurostar design and built by De Dietrich and, yesterday, in the hands of Enterprise liveried class 201 EMDs. So here are a couple of pictures of Merlin plus one of today's Enterprise.

1: Yesterday morning 85 is on the climb to Cloughoge over the Mourne mountains, passing Drumbanagher on the Armagh / Down border a few miles north of Newry 
2: At lunchtime a 201 pushing the 13:00 Belfast to Dublin south of Drogheda
3: Final shot, there was a shower of cataclysmic proportions late afternoon as 85 climbed to Cloughoge from Dundalk on its return to Belfast. This is (normally) the most scenic part of the journey. I returned to the car to dry off :-)

I took a few more 
https://nick86235.smugmug.com/Trains/2016/Autumn-2016/i-5s6gCZH

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Nicely done! 

Really enjoyed your photos. wag216

Nice shots, Nick!