No.25199 is one of 150 bulk cement wagons constructed at CIÉ’s Inchicore Works, Dublin, between 1964 and 1972, incorporating a ‘bubble’ shaped tank body imported from Sweden. These carried cement from the Irish Cement factories in Platin, near Drogheda, and Castlemungret, in Limerick. Cement traffic travelled all over the CIÉ network and indeed parts of the Northern Ireland Railways system, such as Derry-Londonderry and Belfast. They ran both in block trains (i.e. just cement wagons) and also as part of mixed freight trains. They were withdrawn from traffic in 2009 and all but No.25199 were scrapped. No.25199, which was actually the last wagon to be built, was preserved by an private individual and stored in a secret location near Killbarragh for over a decade before being donated to our railway museum in 2025, arriving at Downpatrick on 4th October of that year.

The transport costs to get the wagon to Downpatrick were covered thanks to a generous response to a fundraising appeal, including a very generous sponsorship arrangement with Accurascale/Irish Railway Models, who produced this very wagon in model form a number of years ago.