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 Early Locomotives
In fact earlier records show that the company once operated 340 diesel
locomotives, with 5,300
Mr Jim Martin, a retired civil engineer and former Manager of Lullymore
Briquette factory who
Sir John Purser Griffith also employed a loco at Turraun works in 1924, which, to quote a later advertisement from the Turf Development Board, was used "to haul raw material and finished fuel over five miles of track to the factory, and to points of dispatch by canal and road". Jim Martin also relates that from 1936 onward three locomotives operated at Lullymore Briquette Factory. Two were German Hatz locomotives, and the third, a 50 H.P. 4 Cylinder Italian Montania, worked successfully there until 1952. These locos had initially been purchased by the Peat Fuel Company and transferred to the Turf Development Board in 1939. An amateur photograph taken of a Peat Fuel Company locomotive hauling milled peat to Lullymore Briquette Factory in 1936.
The earliest locomotive on Bord na Móna‘s extant list was a O-4-0 diesel
Ruhrthaler (Serial No.
Bord na Móna then entered into a lengthy relationship with Ruston & Hornsby,
Ltd., of Lincoln in the
"These new methods have enormously increased the production of peat and have raised its quality and calorific value. In this Ruston‘s have played their part. Most of the haulage locomotives came from Lincoln: so did the engines for pumps and generating sets: and many Ruston-Bucyrus excavators are also in use in the Irish Peat Bogs". Illustration of a Ruston locomotive from an instruction card used in an early Railway Safety campaign. They were indeed, and still are, a notable recent acquisition being five Ruston-Bucyrus Variable Counterbalance excavators that are dedicated solely to silt removal and environmental control. Between 1946 and 1957, between LM 13 and LM 175, practically all of Bord na Móna‘s locomotives were Ruston‘s. There was a notable exception in the three 0-4-01 well tank peat burning locomotives (LM 43, 44, & 45) which were built in 1949 by Andrew Barclay of Kilmarnock for use by Bord na Móna at Clonsast. Although earlier locomotives had burned peat, these are recorded as being the first specifically designed to do so. They weighed 101/4 tons in working order, and had 2ft driving wheels and Walschaerts valve gear with boiler pressure at 180psi. Perhaps learning from an earlier experience when a peat burning locomotive on the Waterford and Limerick Railway set fire to a poor woman‘s cabin with the "flakes of fire" that issued from its chimney, the Barclay locos have spark arresting chimneys and battery-powered electric lights. Such precautions would of course have been necessary on bogland. Despite their attractive appearance these locomotives were retired from service after three years because of "high maintenance costs and general unsuitability". Two have been preserved, one (Serial No 2264 - LM 44) at Stradbally Steam Preservation Society in Co. Laois; and the other (Serial No 2265 - LM 45 - now called "Shane") at Shane‘s Castle Railway, Randalstown Road, in Antrim. The third turf-burning Barclay (Serial No 2263 - LM 43) was sold to the Talylln Railway Company in Gwynedd in Wales, where in 1991 it was stripped to add parts to another locomotive. According to Richard Mullins, the first locomotive to operate at Clonsast was a Windhoff, but I found no reference to it in the extant list |
specially
developed wagons which ranged in size from 4 to 32 cubic metre capacity; a
fleet of specially built service and maintenance wagons; and 30 rail cars for
carrying staff and visitors around the various rail networks. When these
records were compiled, locomotives that were not in use at the time may have
been omitted, since the Locomotives Handbook of the Industrial Railway Society
shows that the company has operated 388 diesel locomotives - and all were
given the standard "LM" serial number. The highest serial number reached then,
LM 388, was on a Hunslet Locomotive purchased in 1986 for Littleton Bog in Co.
Tipperary, but between 1994 and 1998 newly built Bord na Móna locos LM 389 to
LM 411 were added to the list.
worked
on the production of briquettes from papyrus reed in Rwanda in 1983, informs
me that Charles Hodgson, who is often credited with inventing the peat
briquette, was also possibly the very first industrialist to utilize a
locomotive in the transportation of peat. Jim has an 1870 sales advertisement
for Hodgson‘s Derrylea Works equipment which states that Hodgson‘s narrow
gauge loco was a 10 H.P. Roby, manufactured by Roby and Co. of Lincoln in
England.
1082
- Bord na Móna Serial No. LM 11) with mechanical transmission which was
manufactured by Ruhrthaler Maschinenfabrik Schwarz & Dyckerhoff of Mulheim in
Germany in about 1936. This loco still exists in a much altered state at the
Narrow Gauge Railway [Preservation] Centre in Gloddfa Ganol Slate Mine,
Blaneau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd, Wales. The Ruhrthaler was followed by LM 12, a
Whitcomb Class 5DM25A 4 wheel petrol/diesel locomotive, Serial Number 40331,
manufactured in 1945 by the Whitcomb Locomotive Company of Rochell, Illinois,
USA, which worked at Lyracrompane and Barna in Co. Kerry.
U.K.
This is reflected by the presence of a special section on Bord na Móna in that
company‘s centenary publication of 1957 by Bernard Newman, entitled One
Hundred Years of Good Company. Newman describes the various then modern
mechanical processes employed by Bord na Móna and states proudly that...
