131 Steams again ...over 50 years later

ah now there's an interesting question. The LMS involvement through on the one hand the Midland connection with the NCC and the LNWR connection with the DNGR, did actually resulting UK locos and carriages being re-gauged or built at Crewe and Derby especially for the 5'3" lines. The MGWR and thus GSWR had Woolwich-built Moguls of Maunsell design. The GNR and the other more southerly lines were more indendent but did have links to the UK lines, so who knows

 

Hughes Crab\? bit like this? https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/...qbxzOLTYYCKp-Kgp2oLzzETGxhfkN9XqODtWogZafKWxi

 

they undoubtedly would have I agree.

 

I have a feeling Bono will have something to say on that matter! Unless he could be persuaded to bankroll a major restoration, which could avoid War and end up with an Unforgettable Fire being put in the loco, perhaps in October and using Joshua Tree branches as kindling... Maybe a nice Achtung Baby would do the trick...

My coat is on and I'm heading for the door!

 

there's an ancint saying in Ireland, said with great feeling.....f*ck Bono!

 

Not restricted to Ireland ...

(A bit like the Latin legal phrase "cui bono", which roughly translates as "tuneless Irishman lectures us about foreign aid while keeping his own money in a tax haven"...)

Tom

 

yep, that's the guy....he seems to be hugely unpopular

 

A bit like St Bob - 'give us yer f**king money'!

 

It's terribly easy and trendy to bash Bono and his bandmates, but which of his critics has created such enduring and influential music, or done so much to combat poverty? The money he squirrels away from the taxman is doubtless spent more usefully and productively than it would have been by any one of the succession of useless Irish governments... /threaddrift

 

In the opinion of their fans maybe. The only thing their music influences me to do is change channels. The guy his so far up his own backside that he's almost past his tonsils. IMO Lilly Allen got it right about Live Aid 30 when she said "I prefer to do my charitable bit by donating actual money and not being lumped in with a bunch of people like that. It’s like the ‘success club’ and I’m not really in that club. I don’t think I’m above it all – I’m way below it. But there’s something a bit smug about it."

 

When you've invested as much money in ending poverty as the aforementioned Irishman, I think you're entitled to bend the ear of anyone else who might be persuaded to do something. You could say the same thing about those who provide match funding for heritage railways' appeals - why don't they just donate what they can afford? Because persuading as many others as possible to join you in donating what they can afford can significantly increase the total amount raised.

PS Lily Allen is a classless moron, one of these oh-so-cool 'rebellious' young Londoners who, in fact, have nothing in their heads and nothing to say. Think of her as the female equivalent of Russell Brand.

 

Oh dear. Their "One" charity was exposed as giving all of ONE PERCENT of it's income to relieve poverty. A spokesman said that they spend much of the money on "raising awareness". Like we need our awareness raising after seeing the horrors of war, disease and famine on countless news reports.
Lilly Allen wasn't the only one who criticised Live Aid 30. Both white and black artists were unhappy with it one way or another. One said
“Having been to many countries and gotten to know many people, it always seems that we have only one view of it. There are problems with our idea of charity, especially these things that suddenly balloon out of nothing and then create a media frenzy where some of that essential communication is lost and it starts to feel like it’s a process where, if you give money, you solve the problem, and really sometimes giving money creates another problem. The artists appearing on the single could benefit by visiting Africa themselves." As for classless morons, I offer you Bob Geldof.

 

I'm sure that not every call they've made has been the correct one. That is human nature, and God knows enough heritage railways have had their fingers burned by poor board decisions. However, more awareness is never a bad thing. Oh, and Geldof may be coarse and unsubtle at times, but, unlike Allen, Brand etc., he is nobody's fool. Perhaps misguided, but not stupid...

 

Britain is an island, but having a common gauge with Continental Europe allowed through running of goods and passenger trains via train ferries. I imagine if Stephenson's gauge had been chosen for Ireland I imagine there would have been several train ferries serving it from GB and possibly France, but that was precluded by the change of gauge. I'm sure a London-Dublin sleeper train similar in concept to the Night Ferry would have been very popular. Still, since the decision was made before the invention of the train ferry we can't really knock those who made it.

 

that doesn't really hold water. The market in Ireland is almost entirely Dublin. That rail lines beyond that aren't standard wouldn't really have made a difference. The same arguement can be made fro Belfast in the North. If what you say is true, there would be container trains running from Dublin to all corners of Ireland , which do not depend on the gauge.

 

But now road traffic is the predominant way of moving freight more or less everywhere in Europe, Ireland especially. Go back a century or so, and the railways moved everything. How much easier with wagonload or above loads to simply roll the wagons on to the ferry at Holyhead, and roll them off at Dublin, than to unload one set of wagons onto a ship just to load up another set? Even sub-wagonload traffic could be loaded up in London or Birmingham or wherever and sent straight over to Ireland.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

But as I said, most of the traffic was for Dublin itself and still is. If there was a need for a train ferry, then it would have developed anyway. The fact is most of the flow across the Irish sea would have been handeled in the docks at Dublin and not further afield. If there was a flow beyond Dublin,of any size, there would today be container services to all points. The fact is most places of any size in Ireland are Ports in their own right.

There are just 4 freight flows in Ireland today Containers from Dublin and Waterford to Ballina (which has no Port), timber from Ballina (ditto)to Waterford and Ore locally into Dublin from Navan.

 

There are many reasons that modern Ireland has largely eschewed rail freight, including as you say Dublin is the dominating economic focal point, added to the fact that distances within the island are small enough that point-to-point lorry journeys are more efficient than using the now-sparse rail system with its archaic infrastructure. However if there was no break-of-gauge to worry about, implementing a train ferry system would have required very little effort in the early years of twentieth century, and I cannot see any overwhelming reasons why it would not have happened.