Today, we’d be happy to see a railcar cross Irish Rail’s dormant South Wexford Line.
Irish Rail 134 and 166 with a four-wheel ballast train on the South Wexford Line at Ballycullane on 26 April 2006. Exposed on Fujichrome Sensia-II 100 using a Canon EOS-3.
Back in April 2006, I made this photograph of a mixed pair (class 121/141) with a ballast train at Campile.
Not hard to take in retrospect!
On 10 March 2016 at 7:30 pm, I Will Present to the Irish Railway Record Society in Dublin a feature length illustrated talk on Irish railways as they were ten years ago; the year 2006.
My talk will be at the IRRS Dublin premises near Heuston Station.
By this date it was unusual to find pairs of small GMs working passenger trains in Ireland. Mixed pairs (dual-cab 141/181s and single-cab class 121s) were even stranger, but not unheard of.
I was in position on the platform at Ennis to catch the arrival of this Gaelic Athletic League special that ran with 134 and 163 and a set of Mark II carriages. The crew wasted little time in running around the train in preparation for returning the empty train to Limerick.
Exposed on Fujichrome Sensia 100 with a Contax G2 Rangefinder fitted with a 28mm Zeiss Biogon lens.
I had only a few minutes to make this image of the locomotives on the Limerick-end of the train before it departed. If you look carefully, you can set a shunter coupling the locomotives to the carriages.
I’ve always like the effect of dusk in this image. For me it serves as both a graphic and a symbolic role. However, I’m not completely satisfied with the composition. The orange cone in the foreground is distracting and the radio mast at the far right annoys me.
As I recall, I didn’t have time to refine my angles. Before I could relocate, the driver sounded the horn, throttled up and was on his way!
