The BBC have an article examining the possibility of using the heat of groundwater in abandoned coalmines to heat homes/businesses. This looks at both the possibilities and the potential drawbacks.
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Author: ewan.duffy
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Technically a monorail
I have seen videos on YouTube of systems in Europe involving a motorised chair on a single rail, which takes its user around a closed loop system at speed, as a form of entertainment.
I have never been on one, but with such a system now appearing on the island of Ireland (outside Belfast per the Irish Independent), I might get a chance.
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Waterways Ireland Archive
WI have launched their online, digital archive, containing many historical documents from their archive collection.
The site can be accessed here.
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Irish Distillers employee records
What looks like a good news story at first, turns out to be a bit of a damp squib.
Irish Distillers makes its pre-1937 employee records available to search online – so far so good. However, to do this, they have gotten into bed with Ancestry.com who have carried out the digitisation and as such, expect a return on their investment.
Access to the resource is available for free in July 2021, but will be commercialised after that.
The Irish Independent reports on the reopening of the greenway along the former North Kerry line in Limerick, referring to it as previously being known as the “Great Southern Greenway” (sic).
This doesn’t do justice to those behind the former Great Southern Trail, who championed (and delivered) the idea of what we now call greenways long before anyone in Ireland knew what that term meant.
Further south, there appears to be little movement on the section of line in Kerry nor on the Fenit branch.
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Plastic sleepers
The BBC has an article about the use of railway sleepers made from discarded household plastic waste, this being a novel use of such material.
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Mini High Line for Manchester
The BBC reports on a re-activated proposal (first floated in 2012) to turn 400m of disused railway viaduct in Manchester into a High Line style park on a temporary basis.
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Scotland’s industrial past
The BBC have an article about John Hume (not he of Northern Ireland’s SDLP fame) and his contribution to the recording of Scotland’s industrial heritage.
In an era when we are told that we have to be green, Dublin Port decides to do its bit and stop railfreight services from Ballina into the port, using the excuse of ‘the bad man (Brexit) made me do it’.
It is quite clear that the “Green” Minister for Transport is nothing more than a damp squib and should go back to organising cycling holidays.
If there was the straw that broke the camel’s back that showed that Dublin Port’s days need to be numbered (build a new, rail served port in North Dublin and give statutory redundancy to Dublin Port employees), it is this.
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Cable nation
RTE have an article looking at the establishment of the trans-Atlantic cable from Ireland to North America, which came ashore in Kerry (Valentia Island and later cables at Ballinskelligs and Waterville).