One of the many things on my to do list is to learn how to fly a drone, given the enormous possibilities it offers in the arena of IH recording.
In advance of that happening (no scheduled date unfortunately), I link to this Youtube channel, by the name of DroneHawk, (I don’t know who the owner/content creator of the site is) which has excellent footage of both recent engineering works, such as the Dunkettle interchange/Foynes railway relaying and footage of historic railway alignments.
The Connacht Tribune reports on the absence of public facilities at or near the Meelick Weir walkway.
Whilst complimentary about Waterways Ireland’s part in restoring the walkway along the weir, they note that WI have not provided any facilities for those caught short.
When I was in Clones recently, looking at the new addition to the waterways of Ireland, I did notice the toilet block in Clones which was built as part of this. I am at a loss to understand why similar could not be provided at or near the Meelick Weir, especially as there does appear to be a control building at Meelick Lock:
No, there was never a railway to Glendalough, Co. Wicklow. However, as with most places in Ireland of any significance, proposals to build such a line were made in the 19th Century.
The Greystones Guide has an article by Gary Paine about this.
Proponents of the Ulster Canal Thon Sheugh like to tell us that this is a wonderful tourist attraction that will revitalise Clones and all other areas that the canal served.
Not only do I beg to differ (even the Cost Benefit Analysis of the “restoration” – which calculated a negative return – accepted that traffic on any restored navigation would be displaced from elsewhere in Ireland and not generate additional business overall), but it appears that boating activity on the one navigation in Ireland that should work for tourism (the River Shannon) is in decline.
Certain Leitrim county councillors are trying to blame this on fees charged by Waterways Ireland and are calling for the proposed fee increases that WI are seeking to be deferred.
From the Leitrim Observer (linked to above):
“The numbers have fallen from about 100,000 in the mid 1990s to 76,000 in 2004 and down to 36,000 in 2023. It looks like it’s going to dip under 30,000 this year,” explained Cllr Flynn.
https://www.leitrimobserver.ie/news/home/1557625/councillors-advocate-for-study-on-declining-traffic-on-river-shannon.html
If the premier boating resource in Ireland is seeing a natural decline in usage, what makes anyone think that a dead end canal to Clones will see sufficient activity to justify its restoration?
The Slugger O Toole website has an interesting post about York Street Station in Belfast, asking a question that I also have, being why exactly did Translink feel the need to upgrade the station building?
I was up in South Ulster yesterday and the day before, doing a quick photographic update of the bridges/locks of the Ulster Canal. I didn’t manage to complete this as getting beyond Caledon on 12th July wasn’t possible, due to a 12th day demonstration in Killylea. A shout out to the PSNI officers manning the road block at Caledon who were bemused by this Dubliner telling them he didn’t know where he was going but was following instructions from Google!*
I plan to add the photos of the Ulster Canal to the site shortly. In advance of having this update to the site ready, below is a photo I took near to the end of the canal at Wattlebridge, of a boat on a trailer adjacent to the canalbed. I genuinely hope that this is the closest to the Ulster Canal this boat gets.
* The process I use in cases like this is I identify all sites I need to visit on a given day and download the latitude/longitude co-ordinates of these, in the right order, into a spreadsheet and copy/paste the co-ordinates in sequence into Googlemaps on my phone, to navigate from one to the other.
The Southern Star reports on Cork TD Michael Collins calling for an upcoming internal Irish Lights celebration of 120 years of Fastnet Lighthouse to be held in Cork and not Dublin, given that Cork is where Fastnet Lighthouse is.
Whilst I can see his argument (and as a Dubliner, I can see that this event does look like them up in Dublin not considering anything beyond the Pale), given that this is an internal Irish Lights event, staff would need to be compensated for travel to/from Cork. I would not consider such expenditure to be appropriate.
Of course, there is nothing to stop Cork County Council sponsoring an event to commemorate this milestone.
Heritage Week 2024 takes place from 17th to 25th August 2024 inclusive.
I have created a page with all IH related events loaded to the Heritage Week website as of today, which can be accessed here (and also at the top of the page).
The Irish Independent reports that the National Asset Management Agency, the Sate body setup in the aftermath of the property price crash at the end of the Celtic Tiger, has disposed of its last Dublin Docklands interest – a leasehold interest on a property adjacent to the Grand Canal Dock. The buyer of this property is none other than the freehold owner – Waterways Ireland.
I fear that WI may be trying to follow the CIE model of being a property development company with the inconvenience of a linear transport network attached. Having said that, there is a fine site for house boats in Clones – I could see WI getting into the international protection accommodation market by setting up something similar to these on the marina in Clones.
The spending by the occupants would bring economic development to Clones – after all, wasn’t that the plan?
I am happy to link to this site, which is an effort to establish an online archive of historic material relating to the erstwhile McArdle’s brewery in Dundalk, Co. Louth.