Author: ewan.duffy

Located at the southern end of Co. Antrim, close to the Lagan Navigation, the station at Moira was an attractive one, with the original station building on the Up side (the oldest original railway building on the island of Ireland), the former signal cabin preserved at the Belfast end of the station (albeit not on its original site) and an original GNR(I) style waiting shelter on the Down side.

Separately, the DOE(NI) had a storage base on the Dublin side of the station. This makes you wonder how this monstrosity slipped through the planning process:

This one passed me by when first announced – possibly because I reckoned it would come to nothing.

However, per the Irish Independent, it looks like a Velorail project (basically a bike on rails) may come into existence on the disused railways around Claremorris.

Google gave me a link to this page on the Government of Ireland website, in connection with the preparation of a new World Heritage Tentative List for Ireland.

I noted that one of the suggested sites for inclusion is “Trans-Atlantic Cable Ensemble: Valentia, County Kerry-Heart’s Content, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada”.

What drew my attention and is the genesis of this post, was the list of experts consulted by the civil service Irish Government. These include:

“Ms Jane Jackson, Industrial Architectural Expert”.

Never heard of her.

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.

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.

WI have launched their online, digital archive, containing many historical documents from their archive collection.

The site can be accessed here.

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 BBC has an article about the use of railway sleepers made from discarded household plastic waste, this being a novel use of such material.