A Look at the Final Beet Season.
Between September and January Irish Rail moved sugar beet from a loading facility at Wellingtonbridge to a processing factory in Mallow county Cork. In the last beet season, six days a week Wellingtonbridge loaded six to seven trains.
This was Irish Rail’s most intensive freight operation and operated with a fleet of ancient looking four-wheel beet wagons.
Short sidings at Wellingtonbridge required the shunting of most laden trains. On this frosty clear autumn afternoon, I made a variety of images on Fujichrome with my Nikon F3T to capture the atmosphere of this operation.
What sticks in my mind were the background sounds of conveyors dumping freshly harvested beet into the old wagons and the signal cabin with its mechanical signals and Victorian-era electric staff machine and bells. The scene is all quiet today.
The beat is dead, long live the beat!
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These photos brought to mind your mention of sugar beet trains in “Railroads of California” and the detailed discussion and photographs in “Southern Pacific Railroad”.
Although it most likely does not warrant an entire book for such a narrowly focused topic, was wondering if you ever thought about presenting the similarities and differences you saw between the Irish and Southern California beet train equipment and operations?