IRISH NEWS
Film star 0-6-0 is back on display to the public in new Whitehead Railway Museum.
Asteam locomotive which starred in a movie 40 years ago is back in the limelight at Whitehead Railway Museum. Great Southern & Western Railway ‘J15’ 0-6-0 No. 184 has been pulled out of storage to take pride of place in the new museum’s locomotive gallery. Along with sister engine No. 186, it appeared in the film The First Great Train Robbery, shot on location at Mullingar, Cork and Dublin in 1978 and starring Sean Connery, Lesley-Anne Down and Donald Sutherland. It is 30 years since No. 184 last ran on the main line, as it is too small and slow for the demands of the current Railway Preservation Society of Ireland programme. Constructed at Inchicore Works in 1880, it is the sole surviving Irish-built steam locomotive and, with its saturated boiler, makes for an interesting comparison with superheated No. 186, built by Sharp Stewart in Manchester in 1879. On the same road as No. 184 is another locomotive that has been hidden away for many years – Sligo, Leitrim & Northern Counties Railway 0-6-4T No. 27 Lough Erne. This was the last steam engine delivered to an Irish railway, having been built in 1949 by Beyer Peacock in Manchester to a traditional design dating back to 1882. Passing to the Ulster Transport Authority when the SLNCR closed in 1957, it was acquired for the RPSI by former chairman Roy Grayson. Siobhan Dillon, the RPSI’s acting general manager, said: “One of the advantages of Whitehead Railway Museum is that we can rotate the exhibits and bring locomotives such as No. 184
out of their hiding places.” “It means that visitors can always count on seeing something new, which keeps the attraction fresh.”