European Steam Post-1945

Unrelated but I think marples should be much more of a hate figure than beeching. Beeching was the monkey, marples was the organ grinder when it comes to anti-railway policies in the uk.

I am not sure when steam ended in Romania. My book has it as 1990,but I suspect it was earlier due to austerity (Romania has oil so dieselisation makes sense). You can still see plenty of steam infrastructure around ie water towers etc. I don’t know if you’d class the forest lines as working or tourist lines these days.

 

there is no such place as Southern Ireland.

 

The Irish republic then

 

Agreed. Marples was THE most bent and corrupt politician of al time, in my opinion

 

Just Ireland, you don't say the French republic do you?

 

In a packed field I doubt he was the leader.

 

like all Politicians, they're all in it for what they can get out of it for themselves.

 

To distinguish it from Northern Ireland

 

The football team competes as the Republic of Ireland I think but the Rugby team competes as simply Ireland as players are chosen from both North and south IIRC.

 

the name of the Country in English is simply "Ireland". Parts of it are actually further north than the most northerly point in Northern Ireland. Anyway I digress, please don't call it Southern Ireland.

Back on topic. Steam in Northern Ireland was an anomaly and only survived until 1970 to carry material for the building of the M1. Otherwise Northern Ireland dieselised early with railcars operating most services .

 

"Bumping" thread after a fair few months; re the various posts concerning "end of steam" (various definitions) in Poland (that country rather a "hobby-horse" of mine): by my understanding, last completely regular-everyday steam duties (no "heritage" element) on the PKP (Polish State Railways) standard gauge, were in spring 1992: from Jarocin MPD, some 60km south-east of Poznan. (PKP narrow gauge was a different set-up: again as I understand, a little regular steam continued on a couple of n/g lines, a bit longer.) S/g steam went on post-spring '92 at several designated "heritage" venues: Wolsztyn (still active there today, though a shadow of what there was a quarter-century ago), Elk in the north-east (continued rather feebly, and increasingly so, for most of a decade), and Klodzko and Jaworzyna Slaska (at these two, basically didn't thrive and didn't last very long).