101 'Eagle' NIR Blue, with Red Arc

101 'Eagle' NIR Blue, with Red ArcHaving undertaken a programme of station refurbishment, improved its ticketing arrangements and introduced new on track plant and shunting locomotives, in 1969 the still embryonic Northern Ireland Railways set out to improve the Dublin Belfast Enterprise service, by replacing the existing diesel railcar sets with a locomotive hauled service. Intended to reduce the time for the 180 km journey to just two hours, the NIR Class 101 (DL) locomotives were

to take advantage of the full lighting suite and PowerPack

It could also be found on a wide variety of freight and even Railtrack/Network Rail test trains and was variously allocated to Crewe Diesel

55005 – ‘The Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment of Yorkshire’

Iron-Oil S2 (9

of three coaches as follows:

the locomotive represents a standard pannier from this early period

It was withdrawn in 1962

One of these was No

2 Preservation Group project

and most retained their original livery until they were finally retired several years later

as part of the ill-fated Mk

and the company was one of the few that fitted their ex-NER P1 Chaldrons with additional ‘greedy boards’