Steam Train in County Wicklow - IRELAND 

Steam Train in County Wicklow - IRELAND
Steam Train No.85 "MERLIN" on the Dublin to Wicklow Railway line on Fathers Day in Ireland - 19 June 2022.
No.85 was built for express passenger trains on the Dublin - Belfast line, the main line which links Ireland's two biggest cities. She is on long term loan to the Society from the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum at Cultra, Co Down, although her tender belongs to the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland.
This locomotive survived the break up of the Great Northern Railway in 1958, ending her days on secondary duties in 1963 after diesel railcars had taken over express services. After a period in the former Belfast Transport Museum in Witham Street, Belfast (now part of the UFTM collection), she was loaned to the RPSI and underwent extensive renovation in Harland & Wolff's shipyard in Belfast between 1977 and 1982. Since 1986, the RPSI has used her on tours all over Ireland, and she is one of only two surviving operational main line compound locomotives in the British Isles. As built, No.85 and her four sisters (all now scrapped) were unlined black, but the famous GNR(I) sky blue livery presently carried was applied from the mid 1930's.
"Merlin" Still Weaving its Irish Magic (Steam Railway Issue 283, Spring 2003)
There's something very special about Merlin, the last remaining full-sized compound locomotive at work anywhere in the British Isles. There always was!
Merlin dates from 1932, and is one of the Great Northern Railway (Ireland)'s famous V class 4-4-0s. The V Class were the most celebrated engines designed by George T. Glover, who before he became Chief Locomotive Designer for the GNR(I) in 1912 (a position he held until 1933) had worked for England's North Eastern Railway. Glover built all of his locomotives with superheaters and he also superheated all of the earlier GNR(I) 4-4-0s (apart from the Js) which he inherited. It gave the railway the largest proportion of superheated locomotives in Ireland at the time.