RPSI South Munster Railtour

Anybody on this?
http://www.steamtrainsireland.com/mayrailtour/

 

Are you on the RPSI South Munster tour?

 

Naturally! Home territory!

 

A group of four of us will be partaking this. Very much looking forward to it.

 

And very welcome will be all followers of Saint Oliver to the Land where he was CME for the last time. (Actually, I'm a Northerner, but had such amazing runs in 1966/7 with the Great Man's Pacifics that my second son is called Oliver, after him!).

Come and say "Hi" - I should be in seat C53 - I'll be the guy with the stopwatch, GPS and notebook!

Leslie

 

Good heavens, the RPSI has sent me a FULL schedule for the train - main tour, positioning runs, light engine runs, the lot!

How novel, I haven't experienced that this year on other tours I booked on!

 

We're in E and I'll be the one with the 92 Squadron beanie hat, goggles and a microphone window hanging - that's if it's allowed. Better stop before we take this thread completely off topic.

 

post it up (please)...I only have an estimated schedule!

I'll be following on the road and will post up my pics for you guys paying for it...least I can do....

 

Timings are £25 from the office, most people throw in more, you must have seen this if you have been searching for info.

 

must I have? that's a very beligerant attitutde you have there

 

Amazing run behind 85 today on the positioning run from Whitehead to Dublin. The "stack talk" was incredible at times, particularly on the climb from Poyntzpass to beyond Newry. Spoke to the driver and he said "the fireman was game so I gave her a lashing." He certainly did - 20 minutes early at Dundalk.

 

What sort of speeds do the Irish loco's get up to ?, I can't imagine 186 for one giving more than around 40 ish.

 

Caught a glimpse of a timer's log and a long list of 60+ entries.

 

I rode behind 85 a few years ago here to Belfast from Dublin and I can confirm she's a bit of a rocketship.

 

Looking forward to the blast down the main line to Cork on Saturday.

 

I think most of the forum is envious currently, even if UK steam was behaving itself we don't have any 4-4-0's touching those speeds, Truro must have been our most recent ?.

 

pics for you

 

Zero mph as it is no boiler certificate.

 

Just back from an excellent trip. Good to meet Leslie10640 and many other Irish enthusiasts. The show kicked off on the Thursday with a tremendous run from Whitehead to Dublin behind no.85. For a 4-4-0 she went very well indeed. Her performance belied her relatively small size. The Friday was an optional diesel tour so we gave that a miss and explored a rather damp Dublin. Saturday saw 85 in the hands of an IE crew and we had a very exciting run down to Cork. The track bashers received a bonus when we took the avoiding line round the back of Cork station for the gentle trundle down the branch to Midleton. Former D&SER 2-6-0 no.461 took us back to Cork. On Sunday we explored the branch to Cobh with 85 where 461 took over for the run back to Cork and on to Mallow and Killarney. The northbound departure from Cork is a 1 in 70 climb straight off the end of the platform at Kent station. This steepens to 1 in 60. 461 made an excellent climb - she was hard at it for a good fifteen minutes before the steepest part of the bank was behind us but shortly afterwards an injector started playing up and she had to be nursed to Mallow resulting in quite a bit of dropped time. A very generous allowance for watering and running round saw us regain a fair chunk of the lost time. A competent run on to Killarney followed. On the return run the first few miles out of Killarney were covered in fine style but on the steepest part of the climb it was plain that all was not well and we eventually stopped for a blow up. We eventually made the crossing point at Rathmore but had lost our path so we had to wait to cross a second train and this lost us even more time. At least this time was put to good effect and the fire was brought round and we made it back to Cork without more ado but just a tad late - 120 minutes in total. Monday was a long day for 85 as she was going from Cork all the way to Whitehead. The gutsy 4-4-0 made a tremendous climb out of Cork and with that behind her was soon blazing away on the main line to Dublin. This came to a sudden stop when we triggered a hot box detector between Mallow and Charleville. There was no hot box of course but the procedure to allow us to continue was not a quick one so we went from several minutes early to several minutes late. A couple of subsequent water stops were somewhat optimistically timed and in spite of a scintillating performance from 85 we dropped an hour to Dublin. The RPSI crew did a grand job in servicing her for the run on to Belfast and we were away on time. A thunderous run on the old GNR(I) main line saw us 10 minutes early into Belfast were my group left the train to go to our hotel.
No.85 did us proud. Mile after mile of sustained high speed running. I'm not sure what the upper speed limit is for steam in Ireland so I won't mention the maximum recorded but I will say that it would have delighted anyone on a tour this side of the Irish Sea.