Visiting some Irish Rustons

We had a quick 2 day visit to Ireland this week to look at some Irish Lights engine houses. Catching the early morning sailing from Fishguard, we went up to the Irish Lights head office at Dun Laoghaire and met Nigel Teggin who took us first to St John's Point in County Down.

St John's Point Lighthouse - apologies for the bad pic it was getting dark!

The engine house at St John's houses three Ruston & Hornsby 3HR diesels driving compressors for the foghorn. The caretaker ran all three up for us and they ran very sweetly, we even had a demo of the foghorn! Stuart Cooper met us on site and has some video which will follow.

After much appreciated tea and cakes from Mary we headed off for Donaghadee and stayed the night at a hotel on the quay to be ready for an early start.

At 9am we set sail for Mew Island, about 30 minutes from Donaghadee. We were going to take Dan Howden but he "doesn't do boats" :-)

Mew is only a small island but the lighthouse complex was surprisingly large. For us, the main point of interest was the engine house containing three 5YHR Ruston horixontals driving Reavell comptressors. In excellent order, these have not been run for a number of years but are barred over regularly by the attendant.

The original engines for the lighthouse were gas and in the pic below, the ponds for the two gas holders can be seen.

The hope is that the Commissioners of Irish Lights will allow the removal of the complete contents of the engine room. These would then be installed in a replica room at the museum along with a display covering the history of Irish Lights.

Back off the island and into Donaghadee by just after 2, it was then a mad dash back to Dublin to meet Hazel and get back down to the Rosslare Ferry for 9 arriving back at the museum at 02:30 on Thursday morning. A bit of a rush to get it all in but wll worth the trip.

Our thanks to Nigel Teggin for organising everything and for showing us around the site at Dun Laoghaire.