Posts of an historical nature
No, there was never a railway to Glendalough, Co. Wicklow. However, as with most places in Ireland of any significance, proposals to build such a line were made in the 19th Century.
The Greystones Guide has an article by Gary Paine about this.
I am happy to link to this site, which is an effort to establish an online archive of historic material relating to the erstwhile McArdle’s brewery in Dundalk, Co. Louth.
The Commissioners of Irish Lights, the statutory body responsible for lighthouses on the island of Ireland, has a page on their website about the Fastnet Lighthouse, noting thereon that the current light was first exhibited on 27 June 1904.
The infamous Keady Tunnel in Co. Armagh never saw a train run through it, being built under the short lived Keady to Castleblayney railway line (1910-1923).
The reason for its existence was the Ulster and Connaught Light Railway – a madcap scheme to build a narrow gauge railway from Greenore, Co. Louth, to Clifden Co. Galway, via Newry, Bessbrook, Keady, Tynan, Maguiresbridge, Bawnboy Road, Dromod, Rooskey, Tuam and Cong to Clifden.
Some of this network would use existing railways but the most significant section from Dromod to Clifden would be entirely new. As this line was authorised around the same time as the line from Castleblayney to Armagh, the builders of the latter had to accommodate the proposal with a bridge under their line at Keady.
As the U&CLR plans never came to fruition, the tunnel has never had a train run through it.
I have created a webpage in the Gazetteer for Keady Tunnel and this (and other tunnels) will feature in the next map upgrade.
The coming of railways to Ireland (and elsewhere globally) was a game changing event, both economically and socially, as the opportunities that the railway brought for economic expansion and social diversification were enormous.
A throwaway line in this property puff piece gives a hint of how the coming of a railway to a local area had an effect at the macro level.
The property in question is a former gate lodge of Rokeby Hall, Grangebellew, Co. Louth. The article notes:
Marlay was the gate lodge to Rokeby Hall, designed by Francis Johnson. It was single storey initially, but they added a floor when the railway came through and the road was raised.
Irish independent 31 May 2024
This got me thinking – why would the arrival of the railway lead to the road being raised?
I checked the usual map sources and this property is immediately west of the railway line between Drogheda and Dundalk with an overbridge carrying the former access road to Rokeby Hall over the railway. This is the road raising referred to.
I would assume that with the road raised, the original single storey property was below the new road level and the gatekeeper would not have a line of sight to the road to control access to the estate. Adding a second storey in this case would make sense.
The only question I have remaining is whether or not Sir John Stephen Robinson, owner of the estate at the time, received additional compensation from the Dublin & Belfast Junction Railway for the cost of extending the gate lodge.
I found this video on YouTube which is a concise history of the tramways/railway serving the Guinness Brewery in Dublin.
I found this video on YouTube today, which explains what a Cornish design mine engine house is.
Whilst this uses examples from Cornwall, the man engine house in Allihies, Co. Cork, which was successfully conserved by the Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland, is a Cornish design engine house and is the only example of its kind in Ireland.
Of what relevance to IH is car registrations, in Limerick or anywhere?
There is no direct relevance, however, as newfangled and expensive inventions, the first motor cars were, unsurprisingly, owned by people with money and familiarity with machinery.
Per this Limerick Post article, in Limerick, this happened to be members of the Goodbody family, the Quakers from Clara of milling fame. Another early entry on the list of Limerick motor registrations was Cleeve’s Condensed Milk Factory in Limerick.
This is a link to a brief history of the railway from Ballina to Killala.
In 1888, a standard gauge tram line opened between Dublin (Terenure) and Blessington in Co. Wicklow. At the Dublin end of the line, this connected physically to the Dublin tram network.
Realising the tourist potential of Poulaphoca, the line was extended (by a separate legal entity) from Blessington to Poulaphoca in 1895, with a station building and depot at the Poulaphoca station (as this was north of the River Liffey, it is in Co. Kildare). The extension closed in 1927 and the full line in 1932, having been excluded from the GSR merger in 1924/5.
The station building at Poulaphoca is currently for sale – however, as it has been on the market for some time, I would suggest that the asking price is too high.