>>1210084I'm serious about this.
NI Railways owns no shunting locomotives. Irish Rail only uses diesel electric locomotives to shunt freight trains, but no dedicated shunting locos.
But, NI Railways and Irish Rail has nothing that has the power to haul a heavy ballast laying train, and because ballast laying is such a rare thing to do as well as hauling heavy construction trains, neither NIR nor IÉ has anything to do it. They have ballast laying cars from like the 1980s which they never got rid of, but no shunting locomotives, mosltly because the last one was scrapped in the 1990s.
The have to, as such, rent a steam locomotive from the RPSI when they need a shunter. Rare, yes, but it has happened.
