Obituaries 162

Irish Railway Record Society

Obituary

DAVID MURRAY (1931 – 2006)

The SOCIETY has lost another early and distinguished member with the death of David Murray, long-serving Committee Member and sometime Hon. Treasurer and Hon. Secretary of the IRRS. "Dave", as he was always known to his SOCIETY friends, passed away peacefully on 21 October 2006 at Orwell Lodge Nursing Home where he had been resident for some five years, just five days before what would have been his 75th birthday.

Dave was born in Dublin on 26 October 1931 and grew up in Terenure, the family home being in "Lavarna Grove", an address familiar to members paying their subs and booking for outings in the 1950s and 60s. His early schooling included a period in Synge St , where he became friends with other subsequent SOCIETY members Sean Kennedy and Christy Quinn. Dave completed his education at Terenure College and took up employment with the North British Insurance Co. in Dawson St , Dublin , in 1949. Dave’s entire working life was spent in the insurance industry, his particular expertise being in the field of consequential loss, where he was an acknowledged expert. From the North British, he moved in 1958 to the Phoenix , later Commercial Union. He then spent a period in the West of Ireland from 1960, following which he moved to the U.K. for some years, this fortuitously coinciding with the final years of steam on the British rail system. While working in Britain , he changed companies yet again, this time to the Northern, before returning to Ireland in 1966. The Northern in Ireland was later amalgamated into the Hibernian, from which Dave retired early, following an extended period of ill health, in 1987. Happily, Dave's health during the first years of his retirement allowed him and his wife Breda several good years, but Breda then sadly became ill and it fell to Dave to care for her up to her death in November 2000. Just two months later, Dave himself suffered a stroke, on 4 January 2001, necessitating his moving into care at Orwell Lodge.

Dave joined the SOCIETY in first half of 1948 as a Junior Member, his recruitment being reported twice in the early Journals, No. 3 of July 1948 and No. 4 of January 1949! Leslie Hyland, whose joining is listed in Journal No. 5 of July 1949, recalls being introduced to Dave by the late Donal Kelly in the CIÉ Club, Earl Place , during 1948. Dave was already a leading light in the recently formed Junior Branch, of which he became Secretary in 1950, Denis Morris being Junior Branch Chairman. The Junior members were then most active and even produced a Junior Branch Journal, highlighting any unusual happenings on the Irish Railways during that era.

Leslie Hyland had started work in 1948 with the well-remembered Hewett's Travel Agency in D'Olier St , but was fortunate enough to enjoy a fair deal of access to his father's Ford Prefect. Dave and Leslie made visits together to the enthusiasts' Mecca of the time - Hazelhatch Signal Cabin. For Dave, this became almost a "home-from-home", and thanks to the late J.P. O'Dea, who also had a car, Dave and others became very frequent visitors to the "box". During the long light of the summer months, Dave deployed his camera - the make alas forgotten, but it was a "good" camera - on the procession of trains on the down main. He always had a great interest in railway photography and became an excellent practitioner of that art, which resulted in the incomparable legacy of main line steam images now in the IRRS collection.

When Leslie Hyland became Hon. Secretary of the SOCIETY in September 1959, Dave gave unstinting assistance in dealing with the demands of the secretarial role at a time when the Hon. Secretary did everything from addressing Journal envelopes to answering members' queries! It was in this latter sphere that Dave shone especially, as he had an excellent memory for dates, useful for responding to even the most obscure queries.

Dave was second only to the late Bob Clements in his knowledge of the locomotives of the GSR. His talent for writing resulted in many contributions to the Journal, of which his article on "Irish Eight-Coupled Locomotives", and his pieces on the "321 and 333 Class locomotives" and the "850 and 670 Class locomotives" come particularly to mind. His evocative paper of 1969 recording the story of "Post-War Steam on CIÉ" traced the eclipse of steam by the A & C Class diesel locomotives. From 1973, Dave provided the Journal with a review of each timetable change on the CIÉ network; a feature kept up by him for over twenty years and now continued by others.

Dave was our longest-serving Hon. Secretary by far, being in office from at least September 1968 and handing over to Eugene Field only in September 1992. He had already served as Hon. Treasurer from 1957 to 1960 and had been a Committee Member throughout. Dave showed a rare dedication to the SOCIETY over a long period of time and only relinquished Committee office when overtaken by ill-health. He nonetheless continued to maintain an active interest in the SOCIETY and in the doings of the Irish railways, even after the sad loss of his wife Breda and his confinement to Orwell Lodge.

Dave was however blessed in his family and friends, and many old colleagues, both from his insurance days and from the SOCIETY, were regular visitors to Orwell Lodge. Sean Kennedy and the late Norman McAdams were particularly generous with their time during these years. Despite his infirmity, Dave was also able, through the good offices of former workmates, to enjoy a trip on the LUAS during this period.

In 2005, the SOCIETY launched the Dave Murray photographic collection, now collated and indexed and accessible in electronic form for ease of inspection and consultation. While Dave was not in sufficiently good health to join members at the launch, the SOCIETY was privileged to be able to honour him in this way during his lifetime. This unique and valuable material will constitute an enduring and worthy memorial to one of our most generous members, and also to Norman McAdams, who put much work into the collating and indexing of the collection.

Dave was laid to rest beside his wife Breda in Shanganagh Cemetery on 24 October 2006, following removal to the Church of St. John the Baptist, Blackrock the previous evening and Funeral Mass on the day of interment. Many SOCIETY members were in attendance to pay their respects to our esteemed colleague and to sympathise with Dave's daughter Therese, sons Paul and David, and Dave's grandchildren, his sister-in-law, and his extended family. Dave remained in full possession of his faculties to the end of his life, and by happy circumstance, Leslie Hyland, who had moved to Australia in 1974, spent the Summer of 2006 in Europe and had the opportunity to visit Dave once again at Orwell Lodge and talk together of days gone by. In Leslie's words, surely the SOCIETY has had few members who served it so diligently over such a long period.

VAL HORAN (1927 - 2006)

Val Horan, whose three papers in the Society's JOURNAL provide such an eloquent depiction of the latter days of steam on Irish railways, was born into a railway family in 1927. His father was an engineman, originally with the Midland , firing since 1919, but only appointed driver in 1939. In his "Memories", JOURNALS 87 and 88, Val described joining the railway in 1943, aged 16, as a cleaner, and being passed as a fireman just a year later at the age of 17, subsequent to which he regularly fired for his father. Despite being under age for road firing, (he should have been 18), no one curtailed his ventures out on the line, and since he could do the job, under the difficult conditions prevailing at that time, competition for this work was not intense. "Memories" records not only Val's experiences working with his father and the bond built up through this shared effort, but also contains much lost lore from the steam age – down to the peculiarities of individual locomotives.

The ephemeral experiment with burning oil in steam locomotives designed for coal firing was described by Val in JOURNALS 96 and 97, under the title "1947 and Oilburners". The attempt to convert to oil was short-lived. The first conversions appeared in the Spring of 1947, but the experiment lasted only a year. Val's account is almost certainly the definitive record of this technical dead-end, embarked on only because of the acute shortage of coal during the severe Winter of 1946/47.

The final paper of Val's trilogy for the Society appeared in JOURNALS 138 and 139. "Athlone Fireman" is probably his finest effort and brings the story forward through Val's years of firing, to 1957 when he was passed as a driver, just as dieselisation resulted in there being an excess of locomotive staff, to such extent than a number of drivers were made redundant, cleaners were paid off, and many firemen transferred to the Traffic Department as porters. But Val stuck it out, was sent for diesel training in 1961, and in due course worked on the A and C class, as well as the then new single cab GMs and the AEC railcars, of which he speaks well.

Val's three papers provide one of the most evocative depictions of the late steam era ever set down in the JOURNAL. He had finished his formal education at 16, but the immediacy of his words and his powers of recollection reveal him as a man of observation and sensitivity, whose contributions to our JOURNAL well deserve re-visitation.

Val was also an active trade unionist, initially in the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) and subsequently in its successor NATE, serving as Secretary of the Athlone Branch.

The Society's sympathy is extended to Val's wife and family, as is our gratitude for his generosity to the Society and its members during his lifetime. The Society was represented among the extensive attendance at his funeral in Athlone on 26 October 2006.

MJW/PR