For once, a railway property that I might have been interested in has come for sale, but as it is an auction (a method of selling I refuse to partake in) I won’t be getting involved.
The former level crossing cottage at Bishopswood on the Dublin – Cork railway is going up for auction at the end of the month with an AMV of €62k.
Note to CIE (who I know monitor this site) – if you don’t manage to sell at auction, get in touch. I’d be a cash buyer at that price.
along with the pesky BusConnects proposal, both in Dublin.
Of course, what they haven’t stated is that as the Metro will be driverless and BusConnects is predicted to need 40% less drivers than present, these two projects would decimate their membership numbers and therefore, their revenue base.
Methinks it is time for a change in the law regarding trade unions, specifically, requiring a split into dedicated public sector unions* and dedicated private sector unions and never the twain shall meet. In addition, the concept of the State being required to favour all equally or not at all needs to be extended to the former – i.e. public sector unions would be required to be honest in their pronouncements to the effect that they were lobbying solely against reduced public sector number/trade union membership.
* Personally, I would favour banning all public sector trade unions, considering them to be part of the problem and not any part of a solution in a 21st century, 1st world constitutional republic. However, as a defender of the Constitution, I do understand and appreciate the right to associate (and dis-associate) freely. Whilst I am a former public servant (I was an Administrative Officer for 7 years), I did not join the relevant trade union during my employment.
or, in other words (that TPTB would prefer you didn’t say), killing the same number of people over a longer period of time and then some, due to increased domestic abuse, suicides, drug abuse and increased poverty from the economic collapse caused by the civil service decision to shut down the private sector economy whilst keeping their own salaries and pensions intact.
If this offends you, you need to go away and learn how to think.
H/T to my brother for bringing to my attention the existence online of the Irish Travel journal – a series produced in the early years of the Free State.
One such snippet that is relevant to this site is the use of the filled in Broadstone branch of the Royal Canal as a designated car parking lot during the Eucharist Congress held in 1932.
The journals can be downloaded at https://arrow.tudublin.ie/irtourjap/10/. The information in question is in the June 1932 edition.
Located on the Carlingford peninusla in Co. Louth, the station at Bellurgan was last used as such in 1951 when the Dundalk, Newry & Greenore Railway closed. The former station building is for sale at a price of €230,000.
With COVID19 restrictions leading to reduced economic activity and the possibility of a hard Brexit still present (Bellurgan is border territory), I think this is overpriced.
As part of the mass hysteria around COVID19, a number of lightly used railways in Ireland (e.g. the Ballybrophy to Limerick Line) have been closed “temporarily” (one wonders how temporary these closures will be – CIE has never been one to waste a crisis to close railway lines).
As an alternative method of transport on these lines going forward, I give you this idea from Romania.
This is not quite IH, but close enough to merit a mention.
As I am recovering old electrical wires whilst gradually doing up my (1950s) house, I wondered how is the copper recovered from these wires (and those inside WEEE separated electrical equipment).
I searched on Youtube (the home of just about anything!) and, among others, found this video, where an individual recovers the copper from old wire as a one man project, making ingots out of same.
I’m not sure of the economics of it, but judging by his collection (at the end of the video), it is an interesting way to pass the time and retain some metals at the end of it.
a coup, or something else, or so one engineer (train driver) in the US thought.
To react to this “coup”, he ran his locomotive off the end of the line in some sort of attempt to attack the USNS Mercy in the Port of Los Angeles.
But he is not in Ireland, before the mob forms.
The Guardian reports that a former Supreme Court judge in the UK has criticised the actions of Derbyshire police in using drones to enforce social distancing and has also gone so far as to describe placing the nation under effective house arrest as hysteria, stating:
“Yes, this is serious, and, yes, it’s understandable that people cry out to the government, but the real question is, is this serious enough to warrant putting most of our population into house imprisonment, wrecking our economy for an indefinite period, destroying businesses that honest and hardworking people have taken years to build up, saddling future generations with debt?”
No, I haven’t lost it, nor has Willy Wonka materialised in real life (although given the strange environment we are in currently, all bets are off!).
If, at some point in the future, our overlords deign to allow us out of our prisons, sorry, houses, and to travel overseas again, there is, in Genoa, Italy, an innovative combination of railway and lift in use for passengers, details of which can be found here.
The concept is not exactly rocket science – mine shafts would have used a similar concept to load coal/ore in railway wagons into a lift with rails therein, hoisted them to surface and run the wagons off onto another railway.