European Railroad Discussion > From the Before Time: Ireland 2015 Part II

On Monday morning, September 7, 2015, it was time to leave Dublin for Cork and southwest Ireland on a modern, locomotive-hauled streamliner, complete with a dining car, out of Heuston Station. There was not time or opportunity for photography of the power at either Heuston or Cork.

15. The train arrival and departure board at Heuston Station.

16. Nothing says the ‘before time’ like masses of unmasked, closely-spaced people. This was while waiting to board the train shown at the platform.

17. A view to the west from the station platform.

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At one point on Day 1 of the tour, we were in the port of Cobh (Cove) with a final destination of Killarney. In a very pleasant surprise to me as it was not clear from the itinerary, we boarded a little two-unit DMU in Cobh that took us through Cork and up to Mallow where we transferred to a conventional intercity DMU set for the trip into Killarney.

18. A two-unit DMU sits at the station in Cobh (note the reflection in the windshield).

19. The intercity DMU set has arrived on the platform at Killarney.

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Three [marginal] grab shots from within trains passing through Cork and in Mallow.

20. The curved platform at Cork and portal to a 3/4-mile-long tunnel.

21. Any kind of freight car is fairly rare in Ireland, but one cannot avoid maintenance of way. Here is a massive ballast hopper in the small yard at Mallow.

22. And at the end of the string of ballast hoppers is EMD JT22CW No. 072. I do not find that paint scheme attractive, but note that the door on the front cab still bears the older orange and black with white stripe scheme.
 

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After working our way up the west coast of Ireland by bus, we eventually traveled from Galway back to Dublin by intercity DMU. The last day of the tour centered around a trip to and from Belfast in Northern Ireland (UK).

23. The compact two-track station and platform at Galway.

24. I enjoyed this example of Irish humor at the attractive station at Dundalk.

25. The Belfast Central Railway Station in sunshine.

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26. Our Northern Ireland TransLink DMU set loads at the Belfast station for the trip south to Dublin while an Irish Rail DMU set arrives from the south.

27. Another view of the Spanish-built NI TransLink DMU set at the Belfast Central Station platform. Please Mind the Gap.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/10/21 13:51 by NMlurker.

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Nice set, always good to see pictures from Ireland. By the way the operator in Northern Ireland is branded Translink.

That's a nice series.  The "gap" to the platform in Belfast looks significant.  Over, and down a little.

Thanks for the Irish photos. The first foreign travel for my wife and I was to Ireland, in 1989. We loved the country, the people and their dry wit. We liked the trains also. They were all orange and black back then, like the cab door of the MOW locomotive.

Posted from Android

Latebeans Wrote:
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> Thanks for the Irish photos. The first foreign
> travel for my wife and I was to Ireland, in 1989.
> We loved the country, the people and their dry
> wit. We liked the trains also. They were all
> orange and black back then, like the cab door of
> the MOW locomotive.
>
> Posted from Android

The orange and black livery dated from the late-1960s and survived with the addition of white lining stripes from 1987 and a lightening of the orange from the originally described "golden brown" colour, on InterCity trains until the Mark 3 cars were withdrawn in 2009.

The original darker version was known as Black 'n' Tan, that introduced in 1972 on the then new Air-Con Mk2D cars was termed 'Supertrain' and with white stripes added it was called 'Tippex'.

The current Green InterCity livery dates from about 2006 having first appeared on the 201 Class locomotives and the new Mk4 cars then.

Personally I prefer the orange!

I would expect anything named Black and Tan might raise an eyebrow in the Republic.