Operations and Rolling Stock
| Downpatrick and County Down Railway | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Legend
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Approximately 5 km (3 mi) of Irish standard gauge (1600 mm / 5 ft 3 ins) track are open as of 2005, along which one Orenstein and Koppel steam locomotive and some early 1960s era diesel locomotives (three CIÉ G611 Class and two CIÉ E421 Class) are run, drawing preserved rolling stock, including no. 836, a carriage built for the Great Southern and Western Railway in 1902. The DCDR has also introduced back into service 1896-built BCDR No 148, the first Belfast and County Down Railway coach to be restored by the railway and the oldest operational passenger carrying railway vehicle in Ireland. After withdrawal from traffic in the mid 1950s, 148 did duty as a henhouse until rescued by the DCDR in 1987.
The railway also operates one of the prototype BR-Leyland Railbuses, RB3, which was modified in the early 1980s to run on Irish metals and was used for a period by Northern Ireland Railways. The railway has also been donated by Irish Rail, Sligo Leitrim and Northern Counties Railway Railcar B, built in 1948. This railcar is in poor condition and it will be some time before the DCDR can return it to operational condition. A second O&K steam locomotive is also under restoration. 1875-built 0-6-0 tank engine, GSWR No.90, which was delivered to Downpatrick in October 2007 after overhaul at the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland's workshops in Whitehead, Co Antrim, is Ireland's oldest operational steam engine. A mainline diesel locomotive, CIÉ A class locomotive no.A39 was moved to the railway in November 2009. This locomotive is on loan from the Irish Traction Group. ITG-owned 141 class locomotive No.146 joined the railway's fleet in late November 2010.
Read more about this topic: Downpatrick And County Down Railway
Famous quotes containing the words operations, rolling and/or stock:
“It may seem strange that any road through such a wilderness should be passable, even in winter, when the snow is three or four feet deep, but at that season, wherever lumbering operations are actively carried on, teams are continually passing on the single track, and it becomes as smooth almost as a railway.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Look, we’re all the same; a man is a fourteen-room house—in the bedroom he’s asleep with his intelligent wife, in the living-room he’s rolling around with some bareass girl, in the library he’s paying his taxes, in the yard he’s raising tomatoes, and in the cellar he’s making a bomb to blow it all up.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“I met a Californian who would
Talk California—a state so blessed
He said, in climate, none had ever died there
A natural death, and Vigilance Committees
Had had to organize to stock the graveyards
And vindicate the state’s humanity.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)