In the summer of 1999, I was standing on the footbridge at Kildare station where I focused on Irish Rail 225 leading Mark3 carriages as it approached at speed.
My first Nikon N90S was loaded with Ilford HP5 and fitted with an old Tokina 400mm fixed focal length telephoto.
The train was common; my photograph was unusual. Working with extreme telephoto compression, I’ve framed the train in the arch of road-bridge, which has the effect of accentuating the pattern of the crossovers east of the bridge.
I recall the piercing Doppler squashed screech of 225’s horn as it neared the platforms, warning passengers to stand back.
The memory of that sound and the following rush of air as the train raced past puts me back in that place in time nearly 20 years gone. I know too well how I was feeling at the time. Strange how one photograph of a train can summon such memories and feelings.
Irish Rail has two of it 201 class General Motors diesel painted in a simple livery; silver with a broad black stripe (plus yellow semi-circle upfront). These have been coined ‘raccoons.’
Although 231 had been working the Mark 4 sets on the Dublin-Cork run for several weeks, I was still momentarily puzzled when I spotted the down Cork approaching Mallow back in February 2018.
‘What’s this?’ I thought, expecting something green.
‘Ah! 231, of course.’
I always like it when I get something unexpected, yet if I had known this was approaching, I’d probably have positioned myself on the far platform.
Photos exposed digitally using my FujiFilm XT1 with 18-135mm zoom.
I made some exposure and contrast adjustments to this wide angle view to allow for greater detail and more balanced exposure on the shadow-side of the train.
In more than 20 years of photographing Irish Rail, 23 September 2018 was the first time I’d photographed a pair of 201s together on a train.
FujiFilm XT1 photo.
I’d been alerted by folks on the Cork-end of the railway that this unusual move was on it way to Dublin. Although the Cork – Dublin Mark 4 with 229 and 228 arrived after sunset, myself and Jay Monaghan documented this unusual occurrence at Heuston Station.
FujiFilm XT1 photo.
I made photos using my FujiFilm XT1 and Lumix LX7 digital cameras.
Successfully capturing unusual or unique events are among the challenges of the railway photographer.
In my earlier 216 post I pictured Irish Rail 216 in its ordinary paint liveries, before it was specially adorned for service on the Belmond Grand Hibernian cruise train in 2016.
This post features 216 in fancy dress.
Off season, 216 will work other services. It is seen arriving at Kent Station in Cork with a Mark4 set from Dublin.
216 looks best on a bright sunny day.
The slightest change in colour balance will dramatically alter the tint of Belmond’s navy, making this train unusually challenging to picture accurately. It is seen passing Islandbridge on a sunny Sunday morning.
216 up close. Unfortunately the navy colour tends to show dirt and grime more readily than other liveries.
I wonder, with all the attention now paid to 216, has this become the most pictured of the 201 class diesels?
Next up for my 20 years in Ireland/class 201 numerical retrospective is old 208/8208: to be different, I’m posting views of 8208 (one of two Class 201s owned by NIR for Enterprise service) working a variety of trains but not the Enterprise!
Originally, the locomotive was number 208, and it had been painted in an attractive NIR blue livery, similar to the 111-class diesels.
I never saw it in blue.
208 as I first saw it; a thumbnail scan from a slide I made in 1998.
Working a Dublin-Waterford train at Athy in July 2003, shortly after it was renumbered 8208.
For few years 8208 worked in a unusual variation of the Enterprise livery, as pictured here on an RPSI excursion near Clonsilla on the Sligo line in 2009.
NIR 8208 in the latest Enterprise livery working Irish Rail’s IWT liner from Ballina at Memorial Road in Dublin.
Here’s the backstory: In the dozen or so years between 1998 and when Irish Rail withdrew and stored a portion of its relatively modern EMD-built 201-class locomotives (numbers 201-205, 210-214), I spent a lot of time wandering the system making photos.
Some locomotives were common; I must have a hundred photos of class leader 201 on the roll (featured in the first 201 Retrospective installment). And every time I turned around, I seem to find 215 leading a train.
Of the 35 201s, I found that engine 202 was by far the most elusive.
Several years ago, I scoured my files and located just 3 colour slides of 202.
A subsequent review of black & white negatives turned up another image (displayed in my October 2017 post, linked above).
I knew there must be more. Irish Rail 202 was among the 201s to receive the improved orange and black livery with bright yellow ends. I simply had to have made photos of it in that livery!
So, as I was trolling through hundreds of boxes of slides over the last few months, I kept an eye open and lo and behold! I found several more images of the elusive locomotive.
My questions are: why was 202 so elusive? Was it simply luck of the draw that I rarely saw it on the move? Was 202 hiding somewhere? Was it especially unreliable and spent most of the time at Inchicore awaiting repair?
You might wonder why I didn’t find these photos sooner. The answer has several considerations; at the time of exposure the photos didn’t make my final cut. While there’s nothing horribly wrong with these photos, there’s minor technical flaws that resulted in me discounting them.
Also, the significance of these images wasn’t evident to me at the time of exposure and so remained in the little green boxes and hadn’t been transferred to my preferred files. Lastly, I don’t organize my slides by locomotive number, so finding a specific engine photo can be challenging.
On 5 May 2006, I made this view of Irish Rail 202 at Portarlington. If you look carefully, you’ll notice that the photo isn’t level. That was the initial reason I rejected it. Easy enough to fix digitally now, but a no-go for the slide show!
The point of this exercise is that sometimes the content of a photo becomes more interesting as time passes. The photo of a fairly ordinary locomotive at work has greater interest after that engine is withdrawn from traffic.
So what’s wrong with this photo. A 201 with Mark3s at Cherryville, at the time it couldn’t get any more common than that! As a result this slide stayed in the box for almost 12 years. Now, I’m really glad I made the picture!
To mark my twenty years photographing Irish Railways, I thought it would be a neat exercise to display images of each of the 201-class General Motors diesels in numerical order. I’ll intersperse these posts with other Tracking the Light features.
Today, I’m beginning with the class leader. This engine famously arrived in Ireland in a Russian-built cargo plane.
That event was before my time in Ireland, but I made hundreds of photos of engine 201 around Ireland before it was withdrawn from traffic and stored at Inchicore.
On 23 May, 2003, Irish Rail 201 leads a Dublin-Galway train at Athenry. Exposed with a Contax G2 with 28mm lens on Fujichrome Sensia.
It was on 6 April 2005, that I framed Irish Rail 201 in the bridge arch at Thurles, County Tipperary. Exposed on Fujichrome with a Nikon F3 with 180mm Nikkor lens.
Begin in 2005, Irish Rail began applying a variation of its orange and black livery to the 201s that featured largely yellow ends to make the locomotives more visible. Class 201 works a Rugby special at Cherryville Junction in 2006. Exposed on Fujichrome with a Nikon F3 with 180mm lens.
Next in this series, I’ll feature never before published photos of Irish Rail’s very elusive 202.
I’ve been exploring and photographing Irish railways since 1998. To mark my twenty years photography, I thought it would be a neat exercise to display images of each of the 201-class General Motors diesels in numerical order.
Irish Rail and NIR together have 34 class 201 diesels. This series of posts will feature the locomotives in numerical order, while imaging them in various ways. Here were have two of the liveries applied to the 201s by Irish Rail.
I realise this is a specialised exercise (Americans may substitute ‘ize’ of ‘ise’ as required), but I though it would fun.
Originally I was going to do this in 2014, which marked the 20th anniversary of the 201-class locomotive in Ireland, but I was foiled by my inability to locate suitable images of locomotive 202! (I went over the derail before leaving the yard, as it were.)
So after some serious closet scouring and sifting though other arrays of old photos resulted my locating of various images of the every elusive Irish Rail 202 (presently stored out of service at Inchicore in Dublin).
Now over the coming weeks, I’ll be making EXTRA posts with images of the 201 in order.
