A fascinating item -- thank you. The Tralee & Dingle has always greatly appealed to me, though I was "born too late", and / or not in the only relevantly right place -- I was aged a little under five, when its last monthly cattle trains ran. As I understand it, the line's declining last decade-and-a-half, encompassed: first, passenger service withdrawal (including total closure of Castlegregory branch, as per that which posted by you) in spring 1939. A daily goods continued to run -- while World War II on, pace fuel problems (Free State and then Republic, depended on coal from Great Britain for their locos) -- which problems one gathers were bad, but not always totally crippling) -- presumably, monthly cattle fair specials ran, over and above the standard "daily". Further retrenchment early in 1947 -- a time of suspensions / closures re many CIE branches -- this owing once again, to fuel difficulties: the atrociously cold and long winter of 1946/47 meant that GB couldn't access enough of its coal even for its own needs. From that time, until abandonment in summer 1953, it was the monthly "fair trains" only.
It was of course those, which became a great draw for enthusiasts. As per your quoting of the Lightmoor Press's "blurb" for the book -- [Many railway enthusiasts]... "flocked to the railway, but most only just in time. They saw the last rites of the monthly cattle train serving the Dingle fair in the early 1950s and experienced the thrill..."
I have as it happens, a very-definitely-second-hand connection to the T & D at the end of its "normal" days, way pre-the 1947 -- 53 wonderfully crazy "monthly" scene. Have posted about this more than once before, on the Forums -- feel a bit apprehensive about becoming a rightfully dreaded bore about same... Two uncles of mine (born in the World War I era, and no longer with us, although they both lived into extreme old age), took a cycling holiday in Ireland in summer 1938: essentially a clockwise circuit of the southern half of the island, starting and finishing Dublin. They weren't railway enthusiasts; nonetheless, in West Cork they happened by chance on the Schull & Skibbereen 3ft. gauge line, of whose existence they had been unaware. They found it most charming -- were caught up with on their ride, by a train; which on their push-bikes, they raced the rest of the way to Schull (and won). Later on, they cycled to the end of the Dingle peninsula and back. When, decades later, I asked them about experiences in this part of their journey, of the Tralee & Dingle line; it rang no bell with them at all. Had they had any strong interest in this stuff, they'd have been entitled to feel highly privileged / smug, about having seen the T & D in its last months with a passenger service. In the light of "passenger" then still running -- I feel that in their ride down the peninsula and back again, they would have to have had at least an encounter or two, with the n/g trains. Still, as above, they were not railfans -- the S & S, a novelty for them, delighted them; I rather suspect that when a few days later they saw the T & D, their sentiments would have been along the lines of "these daft little roadside railways seem to be everywhere in Ireland -- when you've seen one, you've seen 'em all"; the T & D totally did not lodge itself in their memory-banks.
rogerfarnworth.com