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Co. Donegal Railways

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My wife and I were due to spend a couple of weeks walking in Co. Donegal in April and May 2020. Instead, we remained at home in Ashton-under-Lyne and continuing to do the jobs we love! I would have been writing a blog about our journeys and walks but instead I have started a series about the 3ft-gauge Co. Donegal railways. .....

 
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Altfish

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My wife and I were due to spend a couple of weeks walking in Co. Donegal in April and May 2020. Instead, we remained at home in Ashton-under-Lyne and continuing to do the jobs we love! I would have been writing a blog about our journeys and walks but instead I have started a series about the 3ft-gauge Co. Donegal railways. .....

As usual excellent Roger; have you come across Anthony Burges' book "The Swilly & The Wee Donegal"?
 
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Calthrop

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@rogerfarnworth -- indeed, fascinating; as ever. I think I've read that the Glenties branch closed as rather regrettably early as it did; chiefly because on this particular stretch of the Donegal system, the track was in such bad condition, as for operation to be on the verge of becoming unsafe -- and the money wasn't there to rectify matters. I believe that by some accounts, irregular freight working continued on the branch for a few more years; after which, total abandonment.
 
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Yes, I have heard that a few people got together to run a goods service without the knowledge of the owners of the line. But it sure where I heard it!
 

Calthrop

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A do-it-yourself goods service -- marvellous ! I had no idea that it was other than under official aegis. One can't help but say it: only in Ireland...
 

Calthrop

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I'd heard vaguely of this American TV show -- never seen it. Thank you for the link -- good heavens ! -- more here about the sitcom concerned, than one would imagine possible. So the eponymous place is not, and seemingly never was, a literal junction...
 

matchmaker

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Hi Altfish,

Is that the one which is predominantly photographs? If so, Yes.

Roger

Another excellent book is "The Irish Narrow Gauge in Colour" by Norman Johnston. It has a number of colour (obviously!) photos of the County Donegal, plus many other narrow gauge lines. Available from Amazon Link. Highly recommended for any with an interest in the now long gone Irish narrow gauge lines.
 

Taunton

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The two Donegal narrow-gauge railways both moved over to run replacing bus services, in different ways. Because of their cross-border ownership they didn't get included in either side's rail or bus consolidation, but remained independent.

The County Donegal invested in some fairly basic diesel railcars, but gave up rail services in 1960 for bus operation, which nevertheless was provided under subcontract by CIE with their buses. These still got based at the old railway stations, and the bus garages were on old railway property. This arrangement lasted into sometime in the 1970s when it was fully transferred. As the buses had always been CIE ones, there wasn't much change to notice.

The Lough Swilly provided their own buses, and had pretty much changed over by the 1940s, although like the County Donegal there would be special passenger trains provided for special large events, which presumably people just got to know about. They had an extraordinary ramshackle bus fleet, the sort that never buys a new one, and again were based in former railway premises. This lasted till very recent times, when they finally went out of business and the Irish state operator took over.

We did visit Donegal about 10 years ago and saw all this. The elderly and (alas) unwashed Lough Swilly buses, then trading as "Swilly", were still running out of Londonderry, sadly almost empty, straight across the border, and although almost all their mileage was in the Republic they had Northern Ireland numberplates. In Donegal we coincided with some sort of fair day. We managed to see three former County Donegal locomotives, one in the museum in Belfast, another sat on the quayside in Londonderry, and a third on a plinth at Donegal station. Looking at Google maps, these last two have moved on.
 
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Thanks Taunton. Hoping for a proper holiday soon. But still waiting for our money back on the cottage we were due to stay in in Co. Donegal!
 

Paul Kelly

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My wife and I were due to spend a couple of weeks walking in Co. Donegal in April and May 2020. Instead, we remained at home in Ashton-under-Lyne and continuing to do the jobs we love! I would have been writing a blog about our journeys and walks but instead I have started a series about the 3ft-gauge Co. Donegal railways. .....

This is a really well-researched piece of work; very impressive. Amazing how much you can do with freely available tools such as Google Streetview and the aerial imagery that Google makes available.
 

Clarence Yard

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I love the look of these. Are they a Beyer Peacock product?
They remind me of the Isle of Man locos a bit.

Nasmyth Wilson, who were a Manchester builder. They were very powerful engines for their size and one big item on my bucket list is to eventually travel behind one of them. Unfortunately I was far too young to experience one going through the Barnesmore Gap but if ever one gets restored and appears at Fintown, I'll be there!

The Glenties line was the weakest, financially, of all the Donegal lines and closed to regular traffic well before the others. It did have an afterlife for a few years as special freight trains continued to run (and officially too!) until the early 1950's.

One of the reasons the Donegal lasted so long was because of the economy measures their legendary GM, Henry Forbes, put in place. One of those was the introduction of diesel railcars, the first in these islands. But, unfortunately, his putting off of major track repairs also led to it's demise as by the time his successor Bernard Curran was in place, it was wartime and then the owners couldn't fund the necessary repairs and closures became inevitable.

It was a very well run system and served it's community with some distinction. E.M.Patterson's book (David and Charles) is a very good book to have if you want to learn all about it - I have had my well thumbed copy now for 50 years!
 

Taunton

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I love the look of these. Are they a Beyer Peacock product?
They remind me of the Isle of Man locos a bit.
Other side of Manchester, the railway normally patronised Nasmyth Wilson, of Patricroft, who mainly built locos for colonial companies, particularly India. They went out of business in the late 1930s.

The several locos which survived were all bought in 1960 when the railway closed by a wealthy American doctor, along with carriages and rails etc. They were however never shipped over, and lay, mainly at Strabane, for many years. It was the Donegal's own version of Barry scrapyard.
 
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alistairlees

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Given how rural the area was / is, I am astonished at how many lines were built at all.
 

Calthrop

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One of the reasons the Donegal lasted so long was because of the economy measures their legendary GM, Henry Forbes, put in place. One of those was the introduction of diesel railcars, the first in these islands. But, unfortunately, his putting off of major track repairs also led to it's demise as by the time his successor Bernard Curran was in place, it was wartime and then the owners couldn't fund the necessary repairs and closures became inevitable.

It was a very well run system and served it's community with some distinction. E.M.Patterson's book (David and Charles) is a very good book to have if you want to learn all about it - I have had my well thumbed copy now for 50 years!

I've been a devotee of the County Donegal 3 ft. gauge system ever since learning of its existence, at the age of about seven. Am prompted thus to take issue with something in the -- on the whole interesting and very readable -- book by Matthew Engel, Eleven Minutes Late -- a "broad-brush" and generalised history (social, rather than technical) of Britain's railways from their beginnings to the early 21st century -- plus random musings and first-hand anecdotes. There are only a couple of passing mentions in the book, of anything to do with Ireland -- essentially, it's about G.B. Touching on railways' attempting, some way into the first half of the 20th century, to make it possible to continue passenger services on lesser lines by adopting internal-combustion railmotors; he writes, "The world's shining example, somewhat improbably, was held to be in County Donegal." (One suspects that this chap's "world" is somewhat circumscribed.) A couple of pages later, he writes disparagingly of British Railways' (never numerous) four-wheeled railbuses, and adds: "The miracles [such vehicles] wrought could be overstated, anyway: the Donegal lines all closed in 1959. [If one is to be pedantic, that is not strictly accurate.] You do reach a point in trying to run a train like a bus when you might as well run a bus."

If I understand rightly, a feature of the Donegal system's railcar workings was that the cars would stop to pick up or set down passengers, at many points along the line over and above the officially designated stations and halts -- the conventions on this varying, I think, in different periods. At all events: though in the main, finding Engel's book an enjoyable read; his summary and cavalier dismissal of the Donegal's courageous and long-lasting passenger-service ploy, ensures that he will never be on my Christmas card list -- and to hell with who here is the sentimentalist, and who the dealer in common sense !

Given how rural the area was / is, I am astonished at how many lines were built at all.

I believe that some of the more remote stretches of line in County Donegal, received promotion and funding from governmental authority at the time: intended benevolent planning to assist development in impoverished and overlooked highly-rural regions. Am sure at any rate, that this applied to the Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway's long extensions to Burtonport and to Carndonagh.
 

matchmaker

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The last Irish narrow gauge network to survive (apart fron the Bord na Mona peat lines) was the West Clare which had also gone over to diesel traction in the mid 1950s. Manager at the time was Leo Curran, son of Bernard Curran of the Donegal. Alas, even the significant expenditure was not enough to save it, and the West Clare closed on 1st February 1961.
 
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I am working on the next length of the Glenties Branch but wanted to have a look at some of the railmotors/Railcars on the Co. Donegal Railways. This post covers the petrol-powered railmotors which were used on the network in the early part of the 20th century. ....

 

Calthrop

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@rogerfarnworth -- highly interesting, as ever. You write in the "linked-to": "I have generally called the petrol-powered vehicles 'railmotors' and when I get round to looking at the later vehicles starting with No.7, I will call them 'railcars' ".

In writings of mine, I adopt a rather similar ploy -- in my case, perhaps being a bit "weaselly": I avoid the possible ambiguity / confusion area concerning railcars / railbuses / multiple-units, even; and petrol versus diesel; by wording the thing, "[internal-combustion] railmotors".

Your mentioning "Patterson et al comment that the alterations to the railmotors before they saw service on the CDR took place at Dundalk rather than in the north-west" -- if I understand rightly, the "Donegal" being an outfit jointly owned by the (English) Midland / LMS 's (Irish) Northern Counties Committee, and the Great Northern Railway of Ireland -- the latter's principal works being at Dundalk -- wouldn't Dundalk be the logical venue for such doings?

Generally fascinating stuff here, concerning the very early days in these islands, of what I call "internal-combustion railmotors". I find it interesting, how some countries from the 1920s onward, took early and enthusiastically to this adaptation for railways re local passenger services, and continued along that road; whereas others "didn't at all so much". France, for instance, latched onto the "railmotor" thing early -- by my impression, particularly its independent light railways, but the big companies weren't far behind -- many weird and wondrous (often crude) devices in this line, served in France from 1920-odd onward -- would be glad to know more about same.

Per the picture which I get: i/c railmotors not in the main, fallen in love with "from an early date" -- or subsequently, till on BR in the 1950s -- in the British Isles overall. The one exception to this in our archipelago, being those railways in Ireland whose independence was preserved for a generation-plus, by the partitioning of that island in the very early 1920s: the Great Northern of Ireland, and assorted lesser lines cross-border or solely in the Six Counties -- for the second quarter of the twentieth century, they went in for railmotors big-time. Would that that whole thing had been able to last longer...
 
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Hi Calthrop

Thank you for the comments. .....There was work carried out at Stranorlar at times and the suggestion I read somewhere was that the railcars/buses/railmotors were adapted at Stranorlar. The more likely place, as you say, was Dundalk.

Best regards

Roger
 
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This post covers the remaining length of the Glenties Branch. I have been unable to find early photographs of the locations along the line.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/06/2...2-the-glenties-branch-ballinamore-to-glenties
We return to Ballinamore station to catch the next train looking forward to visiting the next station on the line at Fintown!

We can imagine hopping onto Railcar No. 6 heading for Fintown. … As we leave the ‘station’ behind we look to our left and see the station master’s house. Not large, but certainly bigger than the station facilities we have just enjoyed!

On the adjacent map extract the location of the station house can be picked out as a very slight bump on the side of the road just Northwest of the Station...
 
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Calthrop

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Interest-packed, as ever -- thanks. Feel that I would love to visit this part of the world.

My interest was piqued by the picture of a loco at Glenties -- likely, most of a century ago -- with the caption identifying its driver as B. McMenamin. I recall reading, long ago, a brief account of the very last days of the County Donegal system -- railway magazine? book on the Irish n/g? -- I don't remember; but I do have memory of its mentioning that of the last couple of steam loco crews in the railway's employ, one was the McMenamin brothers.
 

DerekC

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I find it interesting, how some countries from the 1920s onward, took early and enthusiastically to this adaptation for railways re local passenger services, and continued along that road; whereas others "didn't at all so much". France, for instance, latched onto the "railmotor" thing early -- by my impression, particularly its independent light railways, but the big companies weren't far behind -- many weird and wondrous (often crude) devices in this line, served in France from 1920-odd onward -- would be glad to know more about same.

"Minor Railways of France" by W J K Davies, Plateway Press, (2000) is worth a read in this context - I find it hard to follow through its various parts, but it is packed with fascinating photographs and snippets of information and also gives a very interesting account of the local and national politics behind the construction of light railways across the country - and their rapid decline.
 
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