The Blue Thunderer railtour

5th April 2008

Connolly depot
Rowan and I were up at 01:00 to catch the 02:40 cruise ferry to Dublin in connection with the Blue Thunderer railtour. Such tours are currently banned in the republic but Ian Walsh agreed an itinerary with Northern Ireland Railways and Iarnrod Eireann. Loco haulage is very rare in the north, there is no freight and in recent years the only passenger haulage has been the periodic use of the under-utilised ex-Gatwick Express set on a short morning commuter run from Portadown to Belfast.

Dublin Bus don't provide an early service to connect with this arrival, so having plenty of time, we walked from the ferryport and called in to see if anything was visible at the depot. One of the two main line certified steam locomotives was hidden behind 29128 and 187 so we couldn't tell whether it was 4 or 186.

206 on the Enterprise
At Connolly station, 206 was in charge of the first Enterprise service of the day, the 07:35

The railtour had left Belfast before the Ulysses docked. While waiting for it to arrive we had a coffee in the cafe and chatted to a Limerick railfan who'd also had an early start, though later than us.

29129

The set arrived in sunshine, the locomotive had to wait for 29129 to pass before it could run round

8113 at Connolly

Locomotive 8113 Belfast & Co Down was used throughout. NIR have three of the 071 class, numbered 111, 112 and 8113. Curiously, NIR applied a prefix 8 to only some of their locomotives (they also own a small number of the 201 class for use on the Belfast to Dublin Enterprise). We boarded for the 08:50 departure.

Interior of one of the former Gatwick Express coaches

A number of passengers alighted to grab some breakfast, among them were the two Grahams whom we'd met on our previous visit. They'd flown into Belfast the previous evening and were staying there two nights.

To the other Bangor