Category: Site Updates

I have started to update the photos from my recent trips around Ireland. As a result of this:

Horse & Jockey

Farranalean

Laffansbridge

Mitchelstown

Glanworth

Ballindangan

stations have had a primary photo added as well as a photo gallery.

No, I’m not selling shares or looking for money (I develop and maintain this site as a labour of love).

Many years ago, I purchased half a dozen cancelled share certificates of old Irish companies (5 railway and 1 mining) and I have added a section to the site to display these, which can be found here.

I have also made a few small administrative changes, such as automating the copyright date at the foot of each page, which I have updated a few pages with and will be rolling out to all pages as time progresses.

The IH Venues page has also had a refresh, with the links to such locations now in 2 columns, giving a better look. I took the opportunity to check all links were valid and removed a couple that are no longer present.

I hadn’t planned on providing running updates of my progress in creating/uploading photo gallery pages. However, as one of the pages so loaded is that of Clondalkin (demolished as part of the Kildare Route Project), I felt that a blogpost linking to this and noting that counties Carlow, Cavan, Cork and Dublin are now also online was appropriate.

I have finally created and loaded web images for all of my photos of railway stations in Ireland, dating back to the start of the millennium. The next stage, which I have started, is to load a photo gallery page of each station location where I have loaded web images. I am doing this by county and as of today, Antrim, Armagh and Clare are loaded.

However, in some cases, there is no link from a given station page to the photo gallery. The linking of same will be Stage 3 of the process (currently on Stage 2).

Over the next couple of weeks, more photo gallery pages will be added. Those station pages with a pre-existing link to a gallery page will automatically link to the updated page and will give access to more photos of that location, assuming I had taken photos of same previously.

Based on my recent trip to West Cork, where a substantial number of stations have disappeared completely, to the extent that I was not able to get near to where they were, I have added a new default image for those stations where I have not yet had a chance to take a photograph.

The existing image has been replaced with one stating “PHOTO NOT TAKEN YET” and going forward, I will use an image stating “NO PHOTO AVAILABLE” for sites where access is not possible.

Regular viewers of the site may have noticed the lack of updates (apart from blog postings) in recent months. This is because I have been doing work behind the scenes – in particular, creating web images for my older digital photos to add to the gazetteer.

The plan is to complete the processing of this (some 2,700 odd as of today) and wait until all are loaded onto the site before creating photo gallery pages for each location, which will link to the photos.

I have also been visiting some of the railway stations that I have not photographed – these last few days saw me in West Cork, where I visited most of the former stations west of Bandon, as well as the Kinsale branch, the Cork and Macroom line and parts of the Cork and Muskerry Tram. These station photos will be added to the relevant station pages shortly.

Bellarena in Derry is a station on the railway line between Coleraine and Derry.

In 2016, as part of an upgrade of the railway to Derry, a new station slightly to the east of the original station was built, along with a passing loop, to more evenly split the 33½ mile single track section between Coleraine and Derry. Prior to this, the crossing point had been at Castlerock, making it two single line sections of 5 ¾ miles and 27 ¾. This change made the sections 13 miles and 20 miles.

I have now updated the station page for the original station to note its closure and created a new page for the new 2016 station.

I have added a page to the site, which is a WIP, being a list of industrial heritage monuments in Ireland.

I have defined these as memorials, plaques, graves and bridges named after a specific person.

Longer term, each of these will be added to the Gazetteer and linked off the relevant map.

Closed in 1932, the D&BST and associated extension to Poulaphoca (closed in 1927) were one of the early casualties of railway closures in Ireland.

I have finally gotten around to checking the online OS Maps for this line and station pages have now been added to the Gazetteer (the stations were already on the maps).