rogerfarnworth's recently-posted material in "Railway History and Nostalgia" concerning the West Clare Railway, has prompted me to a few reflections. (All that follows, pertains to things in the Irish Republic; but I trust that there is sufficient "wiggle room" to allow this post to appear in this sub-forum rather than "International Transport".)
The 1951 Railway Magazine article by Patrick Whitehouse, included in the aforesaid item; draws on the experience of a visit to the West Clare made by him the previous year. It would seem that several publishing-accounts-of-their-doings enthusiasts of that generation, travelled on that line in its last all-steam years, between the end of World War II, and the introduction of diesel railcars for the passenger service approx. 1952. Whitehouse for one; also J.IC. Boyd (most famous for his highly comprehensive history of the Ffestiniog Railway) -- his West Clare experiences both pre- and post-modernisation, told of in his book Saga by Rail -- Ireland, written in his old age, but from mostly undimmed memory.
A salient feature of the line in that period was -- as told of in the 1951 RM article -- its extremely sparse passenger service; essentially, for its main line, one train each way per day: from "up-country" mid-morning; out again from Ennis in the region of 1700 -- connecting workings, between Kilrush / Kilkee, "depending" and Moyasta Junction. It was basically impossible to cover the whole system, without spending two successive nights at the "outer end": Whitehouse's mentioned two short workings per day Kilkee -- Moyasta -- Kilrush and back, were not thus timed, that they might help in this situation. Boyd -- one figures, lacking unlimited time -- had to sacrifice either Kilkee, or Kilrush: in the end, he took the former and forfeited the latter.
It can be reckoned that that era's very meagre service was, at least in part, a function of CIE -- the Irish Republic's state railways -- being then afflicted with severe loco-coal problems. Ireland, being almost without coal of her own, had always relied on coal from mines in Great Britain. The Irish Republic's neutrality in World War II is an issue which can be much discussed from various angles; but it had the practical result of effectively putting a stop while the war was on, to any coal supply from the UK; and for some years after, the UK's being in trouble on the economic front, plus some truly terrible weather, meant continuing difficulties re coal for CIE, and a long period when passenger services throughout that body's rail system were on the sparse side. One understands that when railcars were introduced on the West Clare's passenger services in the early 1950s, the line's timetable was significantly augmented.
Another railfan-and-writer who got to the West Clare some seven decades ago, was L.T.C. Rolt of Talyllyn Railway fame. Rolt, a keen student also of inland waterways, made a water-borne tour of Irish canals in summer 1946: narrated in his book Green and Silver - in which he tells of brief desertings of the waterways, to make hasty visits to and travel on at least parts of, the West Clare, and Cavan & Leitrim, 3ft. gauge systems. One feels with hindsight that -- with both of these lasting, it transpired, for over a decade longer -- it's a pity that instead of one of the two, he did not choose CIE's then third 3ft. gauge section with a passenger service: the superbly-named Schull & Skibbereen, in the far south-west. As things worked out, the S & S had then only a few more months of life ahead of it. The "coal famine" had caused the line to have its services suspended for most of WWII: with peace returning, things had started to get back toward something like normal, and by summer '46 the S & S's passenger service was running again. Winter 1946 / 47, though, proved to be an extremely long and hard one -- once again, the UK couldn't produce enough coal for its own needs, let alone for the Irish Republic's railways. Early in 1947, owing to the renewed fuel crisis, all services were suspended on the S & S (and on many of CIE's broad-gauge branches from the same date); and it so came about, that the S & S never ran again. (Of course Rolt on his canal tour, didn't have a crystal ball handy.)
In the late 1940s and early '50s, the official position re the S & S was that services were just suspended -- the track remained in place, and the locos and stock were in store at Skibbereen. Boyd writes of seeing and exploring the line in this condition, though he had not had the chance of witnessing it in action; I recall written reminiscences from other British enthusiasts who saw the line under these circumstances. Toward the mid-50s, I believe, abandonment was made official, and all was at last scrapped.
Again "late 1940s and on", CIE had one more 3ft. gauge section still in use, "sort-of": the Tralee & Dingle, already freight-only, then down to once-a-month cattle specials from the ill-omened January 1947, until the end of this traffic in 1953. Many enthusiasts from Britain obtained permission to travel on the cattle specials -- a unique experience from various points of view -- including Messrs. Whitehouse, and Boyd, as above.
I have posted previously on RailForumsUK, about an experience of relatives of mine -- two uncles (now deceased) who aged about twenty, took in summer 1938 a cycling holiday round the southern half of the island of Ireland. They weren't railway enthusiasts; but in west County Cork they encountered, completely by chance and unaware of its existence, the Schull & Skibbereen line -- which they found delightful: on their bikes, they raced the westbound train along the adjacent road, from "point of contact" into Schull -- and beat it. A little later in the holiday, they cycled down the peninsula to Dingle and beyond, and back. To my asking them about impressions of the Tralee & Dingle line, they recalled no memories of any such thing observed. With passenger services then still running on the T & D (they were withdrawn the following spring); I'd imagine they must have witnessed action on the line -- but basically, they were "normals": charmed though they had been by the S & S, I envisage them at subsequent meetings with the T & D, having hit a level of coming to find Irish roadside narrow-gauge railways rather "samey" and boring -- memories of the T & D had genuinely not stayed with them.
The other two 3ft. gauge constituents of the Republic / Free State's state-railways network -- Cork, Blackrock & Passage, and Cork & Muskerry -- having been abandoned in the first half of the 1930s (by CIE's predecessor the Great Southern Railway), would in all likelihood have been by that reason, out of reach of the gentlemen active some seventy years ago as dealt with in the earlier parts of this post. There are around, a considerable number of photographs taken of and written material about, these lines -- the work of visiting enthusiasts; but said enthusiasts would have been from the generation previous to "our guys above". Anyone with, nowadays, meaningful first-hand memories of the Cork 3ft. gauge lines, would pretty well have to be a nonagenarian.
The 1951 Railway Magazine article by Patrick Whitehouse, included in the aforesaid item; draws on the experience of a visit to the West Clare made by him the previous year. It would seem that several publishing-accounts-of-their-doings enthusiasts of that generation, travelled on that line in its last all-steam years, between the end of World War II, and the introduction of diesel railcars for the passenger service approx. 1952. Whitehouse for one; also J.IC. Boyd (most famous for his highly comprehensive history of the Ffestiniog Railway) -- his West Clare experiences both pre- and post-modernisation, told of in his book Saga by Rail -- Ireland, written in his old age, but from mostly undimmed memory.
A salient feature of the line in that period was -- as told of in the 1951 RM article -- its extremely sparse passenger service; essentially, for its main line, one train each way per day: from "up-country" mid-morning; out again from Ennis in the region of 1700 -- connecting workings, between Kilrush / Kilkee, "depending" and Moyasta Junction. It was basically impossible to cover the whole system, without spending two successive nights at the "outer end": Whitehouse's mentioned two short workings per day Kilkee -- Moyasta -- Kilrush and back, were not thus timed, that they might help in this situation. Boyd -- one figures, lacking unlimited time -- had to sacrifice either Kilkee, or Kilrush: in the end, he took the former and forfeited the latter.
It can be reckoned that that era's very meagre service was, at least in part, a function of CIE -- the Irish Republic's state railways -- being then afflicted with severe loco-coal problems. Ireland, being almost without coal of her own, had always relied on coal from mines in Great Britain. The Irish Republic's neutrality in World War II is an issue which can be much discussed from various angles; but it had the practical result of effectively putting a stop while the war was on, to any coal supply from the UK; and for some years after, the UK's being in trouble on the economic front, plus some truly terrible weather, meant continuing difficulties re coal for CIE, and a long period when passenger services throughout that body's rail system were on the sparse side. One understands that when railcars were introduced on the West Clare's passenger services in the early 1950s, the line's timetable was significantly augmented.
Another railfan-and-writer who got to the West Clare some seven decades ago, was L.T.C. Rolt of Talyllyn Railway fame. Rolt, a keen student also of inland waterways, made a water-borne tour of Irish canals in summer 1946: narrated in his book Green and Silver - in which he tells of brief desertings of the waterways, to make hasty visits to and travel on at least parts of, the West Clare, and Cavan & Leitrim, 3ft. gauge systems. One feels with hindsight that -- with both of these lasting, it transpired, for over a decade longer -- it's a pity that instead of one of the two, he did not choose CIE's then third 3ft. gauge section with a passenger service: the superbly-named Schull & Skibbereen, in the far south-west. As things worked out, the S & S had then only a few more months of life ahead of it. The "coal famine" had caused the line to have its services suspended for most of WWII: with peace returning, things had started to get back toward something like normal, and by summer '46 the S & S's passenger service was running again. Winter 1946 / 47, though, proved to be an extremely long and hard one -- once again, the UK couldn't produce enough coal for its own needs, let alone for the Irish Republic's railways. Early in 1947, owing to the renewed fuel crisis, all services were suspended on the S & S (and on many of CIE's broad-gauge branches from the same date); and it so came about, that the S & S never ran again. (Of course Rolt on his canal tour, didn't have a crystal ball handy.)
In the late 1940s and early '50s, the official position re the S & S was that services were just suspended -- the track remained in place, and the locos and stock were in store at Skibbereen. Boyd writes of seeing and exploring the line in this condition, though he had not had the chance of witnessing it in action; I recall written reminiscences from other British enthusiasts who saw the line under these circumstances. Toward the mid-50s, I believe, abandonment was made official, and all was at last scrapped.
Again "late 1940s and on", CIE had one more 3ft. gauge section still in use, "sort-of": the Tralee & Dingle, already freight-only, then down to once-a-month cattle specials from the ill-omened January 1947, until the end of this traffic in 1953. Many enthusiasts from Britain obtained permission to travel on the cattle specials -- a unique experience from various points of view -- including Messrs. Whitehouse, and Boyd, as above.
I have posted previously on RailForumsUK, about an experience of relatives of mine -- two uncles (now deceased) who aged about twenty, took in summer 1938 a cycling holiday round the southern half of the island of Ireland. They weren't railway enthusiasts; but in west County Cork they encountered, completely by chance and unaware of its existence, the Schull & Skibbereen line -- which they found delightful: on their bikes, they raced the westbound train along the adjacent road, from "point of contact" into Schull -- and beat it. A little later in the holiday, they cycled down the peninsula to Dingle and beyond, and back. To my asking them about impressions of the Tralee & Dingle line, they recalled no memories of any such thing observed. With passenger services then still running on the T & D (they were withdrawn the following spring); I'd imagine they must have witnessed action on the line -- but basically, they were "normals": charmed though they had been by the S & S, I envisage them at subsequent meetings with the T & D, having hit a level of coming to find Irish roadside narrow-gauge railways rather "samey" and boring -- memories of the T & D had genuinely not stayed with them.
The other two 3ft. gauge constituents of the Republic / Free State's state-railways network -- Cork, Blackrock & Passage, and Cork & Muskerry -- having been abandoned in the first half of the 1930s (by CIE's predecessor the Great Southern Railway), would in all likelihood have been by that reason, out of reach of the gentlemen active some seventy years ago as dealt with in the earlier parts of this post. There are around, a considerable number of photographs taken of and written material about, these lines -- the work of visiting enthusiasts; but said enthusiasts would have been from the generation previous to "our guys above". Anyone with, nowadays, meaningful first-hand memories of the Cork 3ft. gauge lines, would pretty well have to be a nonagenarian.
