Irish saudade...

A couple of months ago after an idle conversation with good friend Chris my mind wandered to EMD export units. A lazy morning on YouTube I enjoyed films of units in Mexico, and then, Ireland...

Mixed train at Dunsandle. Usual passenger accomodation on the train was one coach warmed by electric storage heaters which were plugged into the station overnight! John McKegney photo: (https://flic.kr/p/6raSrz)

In my childhood Ireland was this mystical place where the trains didn't have yellow ends. I remember really liking the Lima Class 33 that was issued in a pseudo Irish Rail scheme with 'toothpaste' logo and matching Mk2 carriages. Later I saw photographs of the strange EMD locomotives that looked like a North American GP38 had a child with a British Class 24 - ugly to my young eyes - but somehow alluring too and 'parked' away in the back of my mind as 'interesting'. On and off in the years that followed I continued to see Irish trains - even the first time around of the Murphy Models 141s from Bachmann and how wonderful these looked - but the whole system was all a great unknown and remained so - until that morning a few weeks ago...

You see, as well as videos of Irish EMD locomotives I stumbled upon, quite by accident, this wonderfully and sympathetically edited collection of footage of the Loughrea branch...

Oh my. Oh my word. I was in love - transported to another world, another time. Simpler, greener and wonderfully modellable - a scale that was truly accessible and the personal touches in that video, the older gentleman leaning on the crossing gates, the well dressed lady at Dunsandle doing the gates, signals and what not - the woman walking off to 'town' at Loughrea... moments of real lives, caught forever in cellulose and now digital for us all to enjoy. That joyful feeling of discovery tempered with a melancholic nostalgia...

Talking of that - a recent conversation with good friend James and he reflected:

"A complete tangent now, but I find it interesting that you frequently mention melancholy in the same breath as nostalgia. It seems like the two are integrally linked for you, whereas nostalgia in our society has more of a warm fuzzy feeling to it most of the time. However, the Portuguese have a concept called 'saudade' - a melancholic nostalgia for an absent, treasured something or someone, that one knows in one's core may never be recoverable or able to see or experience ever again. Your version of nostalgia seems to have much in common with saudade".

Perhaps I should consider a re-brand? I do like the sound of 'melancholic nostalgia' though, but for now, reader I shall continue. Those videos led almost inevitably towards books, books to more books and then to OO gauge models - both ready to run and some gentle kit bashing. 

Evenings spent in front of the fire with this new subject and I found my muse - not Loughrea but the North Kerry - a meandering concoction of several smaller railways that meant a number of reversals at 'terminal' stations on a through route to get from the mainline at Mallow to Limerick via Tralee. The line between Tralee and Limerick in was incredibly beautiful and the photos in those pages stirred my heart. Pen began to trace paper and ideas brewed of ways to distill this character into the space I have available, the usual 1m or so by 25cm.

Initial doodling took inspiration from Loughrea as well as a few stations on the North Kerry - a bitsa station with well kept garden and a tired crossing keepers cottage framing the view.

Further thinking considered a more distinctively North Kerry setting with a single track alongside the platform and a goods shed kicked back either from a loop or just trailing siding. This got as far as some more detailed 'operational' calculations - not often the way I do things but its a while since I worked in OO and I felt like I needed to make sure it was workable. 

Whilst these drawings appear neatly in PAPER (an app on my iPad) they were all drawn calmly and kindly infront of that same fire - the fire than accompanies so many of my modelling diversions. The dog curled up beside me on the sofa, open books on the floor and a brain wrestling with the complexities and challenges of modern life, almost desperately looking for solace. Calmness comes slowly and gently but it's soothing nature adding a further emotional depth to the work.

That is to say that whilst more Irish models are arriving - the Murphy Models 141 and some Irish Railway Models Bulleid opens to kick things off, I'm still not certain which path to take. The last time I enjoyed time on the sofa with an Irish book before half term I kept returning to the Fenit branch - perhaps it's even quieter story is one that could be told in miniature - especially with the mountains across the water... I'm also very aware of the problems with trying to cram a quart into a pint pot - I want this layout to exude space and calm, much as Kinross did previously - in fact, I have in mind that this project will sit in that space, when the time comes because wheres KBBW sits happily self contained below, I can re-use the fiddle stick supports for Kinross when operating this new layout. For now though, the day dreaming continues and the gentleness that the subject seems to evoke a balm for today's noisy world.

Model railways are the result of our art, formed from craft but created from ourselves. Sharing some of the thoughts and feelings that sit alongside those skills is something that Chris and I are keen to continue, and whilst our styles are so very different, our hearts both beat a little faster for the weed strewn down at heel underdog. Until next time, more soon...

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