I have (finally) started to process the photos I took over the last few months and one of these was taken at Essexford in Co. Monaghan, which was the intermediate station on the Carrickmacross branch.
The Google Streetview image of the station master’s residence is below (dates from 2018):
The photo I took is below:
I think the house looked better before the new owners went at it (the house was on the market in recent years).
RTE has a review of the Titanic Hotel and Titanic Museum in Belfast on their site.
The former encompasses the former Harland and Wolff office building.
Located on the Clonsilla to Navan line between Dunboyne and Drumree stations, the halt at Fairyhouse was used for race day traffic for the racecourse of the same name.
When checking online aerial photos of the area today (both Googlemaps and Geohive.ie), I figured that I had the location wrong, in that I had assumed that the M3 motorway occupied the site of the line here. This is wrong – for a short section of line north of Fairyhouse, the M3 does occupy the former trackbed, but not at Fairyhouse.
The road overbridge at the halt was removed during motorway construction – however, the trackbed remains adjacent to the M3, including the halt site, which is now occupied by a garden attached to a private residence.
I have updated the Gazetteer page for Fairyhouse Halt and will add the photo of the site (a garden) in the near future.
Opened in 1886 as part of the narrow gauge Schull and Skibbereen Light Railway which ran, unsurprisingly, between Schull and Skibbereen in Co. Cork, the 12 arch viaduct over Roaringwater Bay is in excellent condition with a walkway along the top, where trains ran until 1947.
St. Judes Anglican Church in Inchicore, Dublin, was built between 1862 and 1864, primarily for the use of railway workers employed at the nearby Inchicore railway works.
The main building was dismantled and relocated to Straffan many decades ago, where it now acts as the Steam Museum, thanks to the actions of Robert Guinness.* I understand that Robert would have taken the spire as well, but local objections led to this being left, with dreams of some sort of taxpayer funded community centre being built around it.
The latter never happened and the spire and adjacent ground is now up for sale. The Spire is a protected structure and therefore, any planning permission granted for development would need to factor this in.
* Declaration of interest – I know Robert Guinness personally.
The locomotive shed at Connolly Station in Dublin is closed and out of use – ceasing to be used as a locomotive shed on 31st December 2010. The photo below shows the shed in 1992 – Irish Rail had been in existence for 5 years at this stage, but the CIE logo is still in situ.
Passing by the shed today on board a train departing from Platform 2, Connolly Station, I noticed what looked like an historic coat of arms in the space where the CIE logo is in the photo above. Not having had a good look at it, I am wondering is it the GNR(I) coat of arms?
Another possibility is that the shed is being used as a film location and another railway company coat of arms was placed therein for that.
The RTE online series of webpages covering 100 buildings in Ireland continues to feature some IH related structures.
The latest such structure is the Rank Mills silo in Limerick.
Located on the Dublin – Sligo railway line between Multyfarnham and Edgeworthstown, Inny Junction was a passenger transfer point only – i.e. you couldn’t buy a ticket to Inny Junction – to allow for transfer to the Cavan branch of the MGWR. Opened in 1856, it closed in 1931, when the transfer point moved to Mullingar.
Below is the Googlemaps aerial view for the junction:
The junction point can be seen below mid centre in the image. However, what is interesting is the double line of trees just above this, now with a roadway immediately to the north. Such a feature is usually a dead give away of a former railway – however, clearly this is not the route of the railway.
Looking at the 25″ ordnance survey map online (not possible to embed), I note that the field boundaries are marked separately for the areas occupied by this feature, which would suggest a formal separation of this land area and not an accidental development.
Was the track at Inny Junction re-routed and if so, why?
Officially known as Daly’s Bridge, the “Shakey Bridge” is located over the River Lee in Cork and the indefatigable YouTuber Tom Scott has published a short video about the bridge.
Portlaw, Co. Waterford, was an industrial town, built by the Malcomson family, local industrialists who developed a cotton mill in the town and were also active in other businesses including shipping and local railways.
Mayfield House was built for the family and later became the offices for Irish Tanners, who had operations in the town and elsewhere (co-incidentally, the father of an uncle by marriage of mine was a senior manager in the company).
The building has been empty since 1994 and has fallen into dereliction. The Irish Examiner reports that it has just been sold at auction for €300,000, with plans to restore it to use as a luxury hotel.