While all the attention is lavished on the Downpatrick operations, who get the glory of starting locos and acting the hero, the volunteers in our Carrick-on-Suir team really are heroes of Irish diesel preservation – handsome, rugged, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
While most of the past decade and more was spent beavering away at 226 in Carrick, the past year or so has seen the team mobilise to make Operation Moyasta Exit (aka ‘Moyexit’) happen.
The project started in summer 2024, with several site visits to inspect the locos, bar over engines, check traction motor resistance and generally assess the condition of them as movements were planned.
The final push started in May this year, working to get the locos ready for the hauliers to load. This fearless gang battled brambles, nettles, seized brake rigging, gricers from Cork, broken down lurries, having to sleep in their cars overnight, and all sorts of other problems that occur when you start to move locos that have been sleeping at a remote seaside resort for so long.
Aidan B, Bob, Fiachna, Mike M, Jonathan and everyone else in our Carrick-on-Suir volunteer team – take a bow. There’s no glory, no preening selfies, just hard graft from the determined few. Again, our thanks must go to the Whelan family for storing the locos for us and being so helpful when it came to the moves, especially Stephen who deployed his excavator and his own brute force to get things moving.
Three cheers for them, now please send some money – Aidan’s dry-cleaning bill needs all the help it can get, and they don’t even get Tunnocks bars bought for them like the soft-handed layabouts in Downpatrick. You can donate online here.
