This pair of photos depict Irish Rail class 201, engine number 214 at work on passenger and freight.
The top photo was exposed in July 2005. I wanted to make a photo of the 0700 (7am) Dublin-Cork passenger train departing Dublin Heuston, before the service was changed to one of the new Mark4 sets.
My theory was that this service was rarely photographed leaving Dublin owing to the early hour and backlit sun. I had months left to do this, but by July the days were getting shorter, and by the following summer the Mark 4s would be in traffic. (It pays to think ahead).
So I went to my favorite spot on the St. John’s Road, and used my Contax G2 with 28mm lens and exposed a few frames of Fujichrome Sensia (100).
The bottom photo was exposed at Mallow on 18 July, 2003 at 0622 (6:22am). I’d gone out for another train, but instead caught this late running cement that was carrying some containers at the front. The train paused for three minutes at Mallow to change crews.
These are part of my continuing series on the Irish Rail 201 class locomotives aimed to mark my 20 years of railway photography in Ireland (1998-2018).
Irish Rail has crews based in different depots (not a passenger station in the American sense, but a base of operation). Crew qualifications vary. In some situations, trains may need to change crews because they are entering a territory where the out going crew may not be qualified, in other instances a crew change may be necessary because the out-going crew may be out of hours. In the case of the down cement train, I suspect it was the latter situation, as the train would have come overnight from Dublin. In some situations, crews swap trains so that each crew can return toward their home depot. Perhaps one of the Irish Rail readers can elaborate on this? Brian S.
Brian I did not realize that IE crews had “crew change ” points as we have here in America. Would you happen to know where they are? I was under the impression that a train crew based out of Cork on a run to Dublin stayed with train until the end of the journey.
I’m liking this series more than I thought I would. That Mallow shot is particularly effective.