In April 2007, standing on the road bridge east of Limerick Junction, I framed one of Irish Rail’s relatively new Mark4 trains with an antique rod-operated mechanical semaphore. The Mark4 driving trailer was leading the train with an Enterprise painted Class 201 diesel at the back of the set.
The Mark4 train set entered service in 2006, while the signal was retired in late 2010.
This was exposed on Fujichrome film using a Nikon F3.
I scanned the slide with a Nikon LS5000 slide scanner powered by VueScan 98.4.2 software. This enabled me to make a multiple pass scan to maximize data capture. I then conducted final processing of the TIF file using Adobe Lightroom to better balance color, exposure and contrast.
Why make photographs in the same places of the same trains over the course of days, months, years?
This pair of images shows one reason. So often, even the same train at the same place looks different every time you photograph it.
Both of the photos below were made of Irish Rail’s V250 (laden sugarbeet train that ran from Wellingtonbridge Co. Wexford to Mallow, Co. Cork.) The photos were made within a few feet of one another in late 2005; these were exposed a few weeks apart, in the final weeks of Irish Rail’s final sugarbeet campaign.
Although both were made at approximately the same time of day, the lighting was completely different. In one the lighting was dull, in the other, the light dramatic because the sun was emerging from layers of cloud. In both photos, a mixed pair of Class 121/141 diesels were running around their train—a move necessary because of the lack a direct curve that would have allowed a direct move from Waterford to Cork.
The dull-light photo offers greater historical perspective. Beyond locomotive 134 is one of Irish Rail’s new InterCity ‘Mark IV’ passenger trains. While the sugarbeet concluded in January 2006, the MarkIV trains wouldn’t enter revenue service until May of that year.
I traveled on the first revenue Mark IV from Dublin to Cork. A few years later, I was a member of the group that worked with Irish Rail to preserve 134. This locomotive is representative of the General Motors end cab diesels bought by CIE in 1961, which were the first EMD’s in Ireland, and among the earliest EMD’s exported to Europe directly from LaGrange, Illinois. (Early, but not the first).
So which is the more memorable photo? Interestingly, both are from my ‘seconds’, since neither image was deemed ‘first cut’ at the time of processing. There’s at least one lesson in that fact.
For both photos, the stories I can’t tell will make for interesting history in the future.
Irish Rail class 121 number 134 is part of a mixed pair at Limerick Junction. To the left is one of Irish Rail’s new Mark IV trains. 45mm lens.Irish Rail 124 glistens in stormlight at Limerick Junction during a run-around of V250 on its way to Mallow. Exposed with a 28mm lens.
A dull winter sky prevailed at Limerick Junction, Co. Tipperary on 13 January 2006. Paused at platform 1 was Irish Rail 210 on a Cork-bound set of MarkIII carriages. A sister 201-class sat with a new MarkIV set in the sidings. The Mark IV was the vision of the future.
As far as I was concerned all of this action was a sideshow to what turned out to be Irish Rail’s final sugarbeet campaign. In truth, I was waiting for NIR 112 to run around its train to complete the laden beet run from Wellingtonbridge, Co. Wexford to Mallow, Co. Cork.
The end of the sugarbeet was just weeks away, but that is a slide for another day . . .
Fujichrome exposed using a Nikon F3 with 180mm Nikon lens. My shutter speed was 1/60th of a second. It really was pretty dull.
At first glance this view from November 8, 2005, might appear to be an ordinary container train.
It is not.
During its final season carrying sugar beet, Irish Rail took the tops off some 40ft container and fitted them to bogie (8-wheel) flat wagons to haul beet from Wellingtonbridge Co. Wexford to the sugar factory at Mallow, Co. Cork.
These unusual freight haulers were known as ‘bogie beet wagons’, since Irish Rail’s traditional beet wagons were rigid-base four wheelers.
In this photograph at dusk, a laden sugar beet freight reverses into Limerick Junction, having just come up the line from Waterford that crosses the Dublin-Cork main line at grade (to the right of the signal cabin).
The locomotive will cut off and run around the train in order to proceed to Mallow. This was necessary because there was no direct chord at the Junction to facilitate a direct move. The lights at left had been installed to make it easier to reverse the train at night.
I exposed this photo on a tripod using my Contax G2 Rangefinder with 45mm lens using Fujichrome Sensia slide film. I scanned the slide with an Epson V600 flatbed scanner.
