Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, CIÉ embarked on a wide-scale replacement project of the ageing, non-standard fleet of goods wagons it had inherited from Great Southern Railways. One of the types of wagon introduced as part of this scheme was the 20ft container flat (or ConFlat for short). No.27756 is one of these conflats, which were used for transporting standardised ISO containers and the famous Guinness keg cages (and thus, they were known by many as a Guinness flat).
CIÉ constructed the wagon in 1970 at Inchicore Works. These wagons found their way all across the CIÉ/Iarnród Éireann network, sometimes in block trains, sometimes mixed in with other freight wagons such as those carrying cement (such as our own No.25199), containers and fertilizer. Indeed, they would have been a common sight behind diesels such as our 001, 121, 141 and 181 class locomotives. They also regularly ran on the Northern Ireland Railways network, carrying stout from Dublin to the former Adelaide freight yard in Belfast.
IÉ took 27756 out of service when the Guinness traffic ended in 2006. However, it managed to escape the scrapman. In July 2017, one of our volunteers purchased and moved to the DCDR. Its use is quite an important one – it carries our spare English Electric 4SRKT engine, which would otherwise be hopelessly impractical, if not logistically impossible, to store. A quite different load from products of St James’ Gate which this Guinness flat once carried.