Castleward, Co. Down, is a country house and estate under the ownership of the National Trust. There are a few industrial heritage features on the estate, including a mill and sawmill as well as a harbour.
Added to this, the NT have restored an ornamental canal which was used to provide water to the mill.
The CorkBeo website reports that former mill workers housing associated with the erstwhile Sunbeam Wosley operation in Cork, are to be restored for use as social housing, in preference to their demolition.
Finally, something other than railways, but it is still about greenways, which appear to be the new thing for local authorities all over the Republic of Ireland.
The Irish Times reports that Dublin City Council are to seek Part 8 planning permission to widen the towpaths of sections of the Royal Canal in their administrative area.
Public consultation on this is supposed to be available but I cannot see any reference to it on Dublin City Council’s website, nor on Waterways Ireland’s.
Per the Irish Times, the sections to be widened (which means narrowing of the canal) are:
600m west of Lock 6, 345m west of Broomebridge and 85m west of Lock 8.
I wish there was some non railway IH news to report, but there isn’t so it is another railway post!
Wicklow County Council are apparently carrying out surveys for a greenway along the entire Woodenbridge to Shillelagh trackbed – a very small part of which near Tinahely is a walkway (co-incidentally, I was there yesterday).
It will be interesting to see how the home owners at Tinahely will take this – one of these (the old goods store) won an award for the conversion of the building to a house a few years ago but such was their concern for privacy, the location of the house was unstated (I was able to figure it out). The station building is also now a private residence.
Separately, I see the car dealership that was in the goods store at Aughrim (another former station on this route) is now closed. As it is not generating rates income for Wicklow County Council, maybe they should see about buying the site/building, using the trackbed for the greenway and granting themselves planning permission for conversion of the goods store to a house, a la Tinahely. This would enhance the value of the building to be sold on to a third party.
As a follow up to Friday’s post about this line, I managed to drive the route of the rural end of the line today – covering from Embankment to Poulaphoca (and damaging the phone I was using as a camera in the process).
It was interesting to see that all of the former station locations up to Blessington have a Dublin Bus stop for the 65 route (the replacement bus service) at their locations. There are also many intermediate bus stops not at former tram station locations so the presence of a bus stop is not automatically indicative of there having being a tram stop there.
The road (N81) is largely unchanged in curvature/route since the days of the tramway, which is great from an historical perspective, but does mean that driving it poses difficulties, especially around parking at or near the former stations. In addition, finding somewhere to do a u-turn if you overshoot a station location is fraught with difficulty.
I stopped the drive after Embankment as roadworks at Jobstown meant I couldn’t find somewhere to park safely and likewise in Tallaght village, the road layout didn’t facilitate this. I may survey this section by bike or bus.
Euronews have an article about greenways in Ireland. One of the routes mentioned is the Great Western Greenway in Mayo and how the landowners generally allowed permissive access to the land at no charge.
What is not mentioned is that this is not a long term, sustainable solution as such permission can be revoked (as has happened on occasions) if an issue arises – even if this is nothing to do with the greenway.
It also establishes a bad principle which is that individuals should give access to their property for free, in order to allow others to profit from the provision of services to those who turn up to use it. Just as the principle that the polluter pays is now accepted, the principle that those who benefit from a public good should pay for it, needs to become established.
Closed in 1932, the D&BST and associated extension to Poulaphoca (closed in 1927) were one of the early casualties of railway closures in Ireland.
I have finally gotten around to checking the online OS Maps for this line and station pages have now been added to the Gazetteer (the stations were already on the maps).
Another post about railways – just the way the news is flowing!
I missed this when it happened in March but it is worth noting. Wexford County Council apparently had plans to seek to convert the closed South Wexford line to a greenway but have now abandoned these and are instead considering a possible greenway along the abandoned Macmine Junction to New Ross route, where it would continue into the already approved New Ross to Waterford greenway.
IndustrialHeritageIreland welcomes both decisions.
I was processing the photos I took last weekend and when doing those of Arva Road, I reckoned something was wrong and it was this photo that caused me concern:
My narrative of the station is that there was a single platform at the station on the Up side (right hand side). Clearly this photo shows two platforms. In addition, the station building, the roof of which can be seen left of centre, doesn’t really fit with the station building being on the right (it is clearly on the left).
Nowadays with the OS 25 inch maps online and available to view from the comfort of your home and without gatekeepers (it is unlikely I would have been able to produce the Gazetteer 15 years ago as the online resources did not exist), I was able to go back to map.geohive.ie to check out what the story was.
The image above is of the goods area at Arva Road, which was on the Up (right hand) side before the station. The single platform was beyond this (in the photo above, it would have been to the left of the station building).
Absent this map information, I would have assumed that Arva Road was a standard 2 platform station, as this is what it looks like on the ground.
There was also a goods store here, which would have been on the loading bank on the right. It has obviously been demolished.
One likes to keep an eye on Irish Rail and noticed that they have tweeted that Pelletstown Station is to open on Sunday 26th September 2021.
I have updated the gazetteer to reflect this (12 days early) and there follows a link to Pelletstown Station.