Following on from the €50m IT fiasco, Irish Rail is embroiled in another scandal. The Journal reports that fuel storage facilities owned by Irish Rail at Connolly Station are believed to be leaking into the River Liffey with all the negative consequences that this entails.
This has shades of the problem uncovered in 2019 where ESB power cables were leaking oil into the Grand Canal in Dublin.
I spotted this notice on the side of the ticket machine at Kilcock station last week.
In a rare outbreak of common sense in Ireland, Irish Rail is encouraging those who are not feeling well to alight from the train and await assistance at the nearest station, which (cue all the haters), IMHO, is a better outcome than holding a train at a station waiting for assistance to arrive for 1 passenger.
The London Underground has had similar signs at their stations for years and I am pleased to see Irish Rail is starting to follow suit.
I normally work on the basis of not believing anything government related until it has been officially denied by RTE or the BBC.
Having said that, in a rare act of explaining something in simple English, RTE has a very good article explaining why electricity costs in Ireland are the highest in Europe.
TLDR, electricity is more expensive in Ireland due to:
I was pleasantly surprised to see this last one mentioned as normally, anything that implies that the proliferation of one off housing in rural Ireland comes with a price tag is deemed to be the elephant in the corner of the room and is not talked about or, worse still, its existence is denied.
RTE reports that Irish Rail have written off €50m spent on a failed IT train management system. Maybe if IR were to show the same zero tolerance towards its own behaviours as it does towards the public, there would be a better result.
In 1994, in his capacity as Minister for Enterprise & Employment, Ruairi Quinn introduced the May bank holiday in the Republic of Ireland, to take place on the 1st Monday in May each year.
As a result of this, I was able to spend yesterday and today photographing the railway lines from Collooney to Claremorris (yesterday) and Claremorris to Athenry today.
In the case of latter, in addition to re-photographing the stations, I also visited most publicly accessible bridges and level crossings, the reason being that the noise around the potential restoration of all (Athenry to Claremorris) or part of this line (Athenry to Tuam) is getting louder.
As such, these photographs will form a record of the line before any such restoration takes place.
With 200 images taken over the 2 days, it will take me a while to process and upload these to the site.
One of the many things that annoys me about life in Ireland is the level of ignorance around responsibilities as in what Government body should be doing what, which gives rise to wasted effort on the part of campaigners who spend time barking up the wrong tree as they either demand something from a State body that has no responsibility in that regard or protest to the wrong level of authority about a law they don’t agree with (e.g. complaining to their local authority about EU derived legislation).
In this regard, the Department of Child indoctrination Education and Youth has a role to play, in requiring mandatory religion classes in schools and not some form of Civics class, which would explain how society (should) work.
When Joe Normie engages in such behaviour, I do give them the benefit of the doubt, due to the lack of such education in the school system. When this level of ignorance comes from an elected representative, I get very worried.
And so it is with this story from Kilmallock in Co. Limerick. The Dublin – Cork railway runs through Kilmallock (the station is, unfortunately, closed). This includes a road bridge over the railway line.
As is common in the 21st century, the level of road traffic in the area is far in excess of what these 19th century bridges were built for and there are calls for an adjacent footbridge to be built over the railway to accommodate pedestrians.
In relation to the funding of this, the rules in this regard are quite clear. Where the original bridge exists, CIE (Irish Rail), as successors to the original railway company, are responsible for the bridge. However, if a new bridge over the railway on a new/expanded footprint is required, the railway company is not responsible for the cost, this falling to the entity requiring the bridge (in most cases, this will be the local authority or TII).
This has not stopped Cllr. Eddie Ryan calling for Irish Rail to pay for a footbridge – the Limerick Leader reporting:
Meanwhile, independent councillor Eddie Ryan said that Irish Rail should be the ones funding the bridge, given the bridge crosses over railway tracks.
Limerick Leader https://www.limerickleader.ie/news/local-news/2018621/calls-for-pedestrian-bridge-in-busy-limerick-town-amid-highly-dangerous-road.html
IMHO, not only should a civics course be mandatory in secondary schools, it needs to be mandatory to pass such a course before election to public office.
A few weeks ago, I noted that I had visited about half of the CVR route to photograph the remains of the stations/halts on this line that closed in 1941, expressing the view that it would be 2026 before I’d do the other half.
The Indian summer I conditionally tied this to never came, however, opportunity knocked and I spent Sunday and today in Northern Ireland, knocking off a fair few locations from my list of un-visited stations.
Sunday started in Newry where I got to all 5 former station sites in the city itself. I then availed of the NIR £10 Sunday day tracker ticket to travel to Whitehead in Co. Antrim, where there had been two different station locations south of the now disused tunnel.
On my return from Whitehead, I alighted at Lanyon Place station and walked to the site of Central Junction, taking in the restored Belfast Corporation Tramways location case on Linenhall Street en route. After returning to Newry, I drove to Ballygawley in Co. Tyrone, via Glaslough, Co. Monaghan and overnighted there.
Today saw me visit the western end of the CVR (all stops except Maguiresbridge, which I had already covered) as well as Enniskillen (nothing left) and a re-visit to the SL&NCR line from Enniskillen to Collooney, last visited by me in 2009.
This is probably the last trip in 2025 as the short days and autumn/winter weather sets in.
Before you run to Googlemaps and tell me that Kells is inland and doesn’t have a lighthouse, you are correct.
What is located just outside of Kells is the Spire of Lloyd, a folly constructed in the late 18th century in the form of a doric column with a glazed balcony at its head, giving the appearance of a lighthouse.
Meath County Council have been running tours on Friday mornings over the last few months (ending this month) and as I was heading north last Friday to take part in Heritage Open Days in Northern Ireland (spent the full weekend there), I took the opportunity to pay a visit.
There exist service providers that provide access to the records maintained by the Companies Registration Office for a fee (that this data is not available free to the end user is a disgrace, but not surprising in this kakistocracy).
I came upon this entry on the record for Irish Rail:
From my limited legal knowledge, I understand that the Plantiff is the person/entity initiating legal action (the person/entity on the receiving end of a legal action is the defendant).
As with most Government entities, Irish Rail tends towards fascism when enforcing laws in their favour whilst not applying a similar standard to rules that apply to them (I’d cite the closure of Dunleer station in 1985 without the requisite 2 months notice required by law, but on a technicality, that would fail as it was CIE that did that – Irish Rail only came into existence in 1987).
I recently commented on the report by the RAIU on track access by passengers at Navan Road Parkway. One of the points raised in this report was that information posters which could have allowed imprisoned passengers to contact Irish Rail, contained a phone number which was no longer in use.
I spotted the information poster below on a train recently and checked out what EC Regulation 1371 states. According to the eur.lex.europa.eu site, this regulation was repealed in 2023, stating:
“No longer in force, Date of end of validity: 06/06/2023; Repealed by 32021R0782“
Makes you wonder what other misinformation about the law is put out.