Obituaries 152

Irish Railway Record Society

Obituary

MR. THOMAS TIGHE

The death occurred in February, at the age of 86, of Tommy Tighe - best known for his work on the model railway at Malahide Castle. Son of a locomotive driver, Tommy was born at St. Patrick’s Terrace, Inchicore. He joined the railway at Inchicore Works where he spent his entire career.

At Inchicore Tommy was involved for many years in sourcing carriage parts and was responsible in the early 1970s in procuring two steam cranes from British Railways and having one of them converted to 5ft 3in gauge. When the sleeper plant was built at Portlaoise Tommy manufactured many of the specialised machines required at Inchicore. Model railway construction was a speciality of his and at Inchicore he built an ‘O’ gauge model railway with full signalling and block instruments for use in the training of signalmen and drivers.

Tommy’s masterpiece is undoubtedly the Malahide Castle model railway. Originally the project was the preparation for display of the Fry Collection, but the project expanded into a superb operating model railway with most Irish locomotives, railcars, carriages and wagons represented. Further a field, he provided the railway model infrastructure for the Clonakilty Model Railway Village, and also fine scale replicas for Iarnrod Eireann, many of which are now in the possession of the Heritage Office.

Over a long career spanning more than half a century at Inchicore, he was a true technical professional and was involved in the major changes which swept through Inchicore Works and the whole system across the country in the 1950s and the decades that followed. Tommy saw retrenchment, radical changes in motive power and engineering practices, a scaling down of employment at Inchicore, and the new dawn for the railway, which came in his final years. A suitable memorial to Tommy’s life and work is to be provided at Inchicore in the future.

Up to a few weeks before his death he was working on projects on his bench inthe pattern shop which he shared with pattern maker Conor Murphy.

Tommy had a solid and lifelong commitment to his church at Clontarf. A strong faith sustained him and his family through the tragedies, which claimed the lives of two children, Paul and Catherine, through cystic fibrosis in their early teens. More recent he suffered the loss of his son Brendan, an engineer with IE’s Technical Services in Inchicore, following a traffic accident in the Philippines.

To his wife Mary and daughter Miriam we extend our sincere sympathy.