The first of the two mainline diesel locomotives built by CIE at Inchicore Works, each with a Sulzer engine built by Vickers Armstrong, Class 113, entered service in April 1950, following completion of trials.
However, this venture was unfulfilled and the locomotive (partially stripped down and with the boiler and firebox out of the frames) was moved to Inchicore Railway Works in the late 1990s while the running frames were moved to Whitehead, County Antrim in May 2003.
The second-eldest in a family of nine, Coughlin lived with his parents in the family home in Inchicore, Dublin.
Following crew training trials between Inchicore and Monasterevin (passenger trains), Kildare (goods trains), and Hazelhatch (light engines), the class appeared on main line trials from Amiens Street (Connolly) to Drogheda, and Westland Row (Pearse) to Arklow on 4 December 1962, entering traffic on the Dublin to Cork main line four days later.
After graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, he began an apprenticeship at the Inchicore works of the Great Southern and Western Railway (GSWR) under H. A. Ivatt in 1886, completing his training at Horwich Works on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (as Nigel Gresley had done before him).