In a first for railway preservation anywhere in Ireland, we successfully operated an authentic ‘modern’ ballast train at Downpatrick in glorious weather on Saturday 10th May.
While a bit shorter than a mainline ballast train, GM loco 146, two Irish Rail hoppers and a plough van are still a genuine combination for this sort of work. We decided to do a ballast drop on the siding in Downpatrick station, known as the Cathedral Siding, as a test run for this.
The siding itself was never properly ballasted, and we decided to do something about this. A major ballast drop was needed and this would have taken too many runs back and forth with the road-rail dumper to be possible, along with loads of manual labour.
This was therefore a perfect trial. We decided on just two hoppers due to the short length of the siding, and did two passes with the train to drop around 40 tonnes of ballast. This track will be jacked and packed over the coming weeks, during which the dropped ballast will probably ‘vanish’ and need topped up again.
Enjoy the video – we’re very proud!
