I found this video on YouTube which is a concise history of the tramways/railway serving the Guinness Brewery in Dublin.
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Category: History
Posts of an historical nature
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Cornish design engine houses
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.
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Limerick’s first car registrations
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.
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The Killala Branch
This is a link to a brief history of the railway from Ballina to Killala.
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Poulaphoca Tram Station
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.
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The Grand Canal in Co. Offaly
The Offaly History Blog has announced that they will be publishing a series of 50 articles in 2024 about the Grand Canal in Co. Offaly.
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Clones Railway Map
Whilst searching the ‘net last night for something else, I came upon this site, which is a brief history of the railway in Clones.
Interestingly, the page includes a very well designed diagrammatic map of the former station, which can be downloaded at no charge.
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How many railway stations?
As I continue to update the Gazetteer, the question came to mind – which county had the most railway stations (current and former) and which had the least.
The county with the most stations (current and former) is Antrim at 128 and the least number of stations fell to Longford, with only 4. The full list is below:
| County | Stations |
| Antrim | 128 |
| Cork | 124 |
| Donegal | 101 |
| Dublin | 96 |
| Down | 83 |
| Kerry | 59 |
| Derry | 52 |
| Tyrone | 40 |
| Armagh | 37 |
| Meath | 32 |
| Clare | 31 |
| Wexford | 30 |
| Limerick | 29 |
| Wicklow | 29 |
| Tipperary | 28 |
| Galway | 25 |
| Leitrim | 24 |
| Mayo | 23 |
| Fermanagh | 22 |
| Kilkenny | 22 |
| Louth | 22 |
| Kildare | 21 |
| Cavan | 17 |
| Roscommon | 17 |
| Monaghan | 16 |
| Sligo | 15 |
| Waterford | 15 |
| Westmeath | 15 |
| Offaly | 12 |
| Carlow | 8 |
| Laois | 8 |
| Longford | 4 |
A port cochere is defined as a covered entrance large enough for vehicles to pass through. They were a regular enough feature for public buildings of scale in the 19th century, allowing horse drawn traffic to enter a covered area for unloading.
There is one at Heuston Station, which is a rather squat affair:
compared to that at the train station in Palermo, Sicily. The Italians must have had higher carriages.
I was recently in Rome for the first time (a stopover before getting the train from Rome to Sicily) and noticed that many of the manhole covers in the streets had the initials SPQR cast into them.
For the uninitiated, this stands for “Senatus PopulusQue Romanus” in Latin, or “the Senate and the People of Rome” in English.
It is interesting to see the use of Latin in modern era infrastructure.