You may look at that fellow to the right and immediately think that it looks like a genetically primitive version of Ryan Oakley. And you’d be correct. That is my great grandfather, Henry Forbes of County Donegal.

Aside from being a cultivator of a striking mustache, he was also the general manager of The Donegal Rail, which operated two narrow gauge tracks from 1863 to 1959 and is the subject of much nostalgia, including a Shane MacGowan song: “The Donegal Express.” Under Forbes’ watch the Donegal Rail introduced the first diesel trains into Britain.

Now, a good deal of what I know about the man is not available online. [This is something that I will, one day correct but, for the moment, it is a lot of paper to get through.] He was, by all accounts a stern but fair fellow who was kindly thought of by his workers, many of whom blamed the rail’s eventual bankruptcy upon his absence. “Henry Forbes was a railway man first and last and made no secret of his preference for trains he was also a man of great perception.” His management philosophy seemed to be that you gave the hard workers more work and basically ignored the lazy ones. And he had balls the size of boulders.

During one period of “The Troubles” in Ireland –there’s been a few; in this particular batch my Nan’s house was burned down– two fellows hijacked one of Henry Forbes’s trains. Unknown to them, he was on the train. He climbed out the window, made his away along the roof and paid them a visit in the engine room. A running gunfight ensued and he captured one of the men in a field. Although running gunfights –as well as lunacy and murder– are something I’ve come to expect from my family history, especially the English side, this particular one stands out as one of my favorites. For once we weren’t the crooks!

When the rail finally closed down, two of the staff, “Joe Thompson and Guard Tommy McCafferty, who operated the services between Donegal and Ballyshannon simply refused to accept the company edict that all rail services cease as from the night of December 30, 1959. They continued to use the rail car laid up in Donegal to carry on a regular goods service between the two railheads. They submitted their journals regularly and it was a month before the powers-that-be realized that they had a two-man Railway operating their goods service out of Donegal.” That’s the Irish for you. Stubborn.