Categories
IH News 2021

Dublin and Blessington Steam Tramway

As a follow up to Friday’s post about this line, I managed to drive the route of the rural end of the line today – covering from Embankment to Poulaphoca (and damaging the phone I was using as a camera in the process).

It was interesting to see that all of the former station locations up to Blessington have a Dublin Bus stop for the 65 route (the replacement bus service) at their locations. There are also many intermediate bus stops not at former tram station locations so the presence of a bus stop is not automatically indicative of there having being a tram stop there.

The road (N81) is largely unchanged in curvature/route since the days of the tramway, which is great from an historical perspective, but does mean that driving it poses difficulties, especially around parking at or near the former stations. In addition, finding somewhere to do a u-turn if you overshoot a station location is fraught with difficulty.

I stopped the drive after Embankment as roadworks at Jobstown meant I couldn’t find somewhere to park safely and likewise in Tallaght village, the road layout didn’t facilitate this. I may survey this section by bike or bus.

Categories
Greenways IH News 2021

Greenways in Ireland

Euronews have an article about greenways in Ireland. One of the routes mentioned is the Great Western Greenway in Mayo and how the landowners generally allowed permissive access to the land at no charge.

What is not mentioned is that this is not a long term, sustainable solution as such permission can be revoked (as has happened on occasions) if an issue arises – even if this is nothing to do with the greenway.

It also establishes a bad principle which is that individuals should give access to their property for free, in order to allow others to profit from the provision of services to those who turn up to use it. Just as the principle that the polluter pays is now accepted, the principle that those who benefit from a public good should pay for it, needs to become established.

Categories
Site Updates

Dublin and Blessington Steam Tramway

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).

Categories
Greenways IH News 2021

South Wexford Greenways

Another post about railways – just the way the news is flowing!

I missed this when it happened in March but it is worth noting. Wexford County Council apparently had plans to seek to convert the closed South Wexford line to a greenway but have now abandoned these and are instead considering a possible greenway along the abandoned Macmine Junction to New Ross route, where it would continue into the already approved New Ross to Waterford greenway.

IndustrialHeritageIreland welcomes both decisions.

Categories
History

Arva Road Station

I was processing the photos I took last weekend and when doing those of Arva Road, I reckoned something was wrong and it was this photo that caused me concern:

Arva Road Goods area
Arva Road, Co. Cavan. Copyright Ewan Duffy 2021

My narrative of the station is that there was a single platform at the station on the Up side (right hand side). Clearly this photo shows two platforms. In addition, the station building, the roof of which can be seen left of centre, doesn’t really fit with the station building being on the right (it is clearly on the left).

Nowadays with the OS 25 inch maps online and available to view from the comfort of your home and without gatekeepers (it is unlikely I would have been able to produce the Gazetteer 15 years ago as the online resources did not exist), I was able to go back to map.geohive.ie to check out what the story was.

The image above is of the goods area at Arva Road, which was on the Up (right hand) side before the station. The single platform was beyond this (in the photo above, it would have been to the left of the station building).

Absent this map information, I would have assumed that Arva Road was a standard 2 platform station, as this is what it looks like on the ground.

There was also a goods store here, which would have been on the loading bank on the right. It has obviously been demolished.

Categories
IH News 2021 Site Updates

Pelletstown Station, Dublin

One likes to keep an eye on Irish Rail and noticed that they have tweeted that Pelletstown Station is to open on Sunday 26th September 2021.

I have updated the gazetteer to reflect this (12 days early) and there follows a link to Pelletstown Station.

Categories
Site Updates

Update to the Gazetteer

In advance of a journey to Cavan/Leitrim on Saturday*, I was checking my list of railway stations that I don’t have a photo for and found that I had missed including Redhills Station entirely.

A page for this has now been created and the map updated to reflect this.

* In normal circumstances, I would be attending the IHAI AGM, however, as someone who will not take the current “vaccination” unless the State decides to hold me down and forcibly inject same into me, I have been barred from attending the AGM by the IHAI Council. I just hope that the rumours about ADE are untrue.

Categories
Greenways IH News 2021

Burtonport Railway Walk

DonegalDaily.com report that Donegal County Council have tarred a 2km section of the railway walk from Burtonport to Meenbannad, greatly improving this amenity.

Categories
General

Drogheda Traincare Depot

I was out and about today taking photographs for the Gazetteer (small number of short lived stations sites on the line between Howth and Drogheda via Howth Junction).

I finished up in Drogheda, taking a photograph of the approach to the original D&DR station in Drogheda, which was to the east of the present station and the site of which is now occupied by the Drogheda Traincare Depot.


View Larger Map

Looking at the photos I took and at the track layout on openstreetmap.org, there is effectively only one access point to the depot (technically there are two but they are side by side). This is not best engineering practice as if a train were to fail along the section of track covering the two access points, the depot (and potentially all trains therein) are stranded in the depot.

This is not an unrealistic prospect as this did happen in the Traincare Depot in Portlaoise.

Categories
Site Updates

Update to Gazetteer

I have gotten around to checking and doing a minor update to the gazetteer – at the moment, railway stations only, but I plan on expanding this to other IH features.

As this latter will take time, it is important to have the current gazetteer working correctly. In addition, I have made some minor updates to the maps (changed the Derry map to reflect the re-opening of Waterside station in 2019, added Pelletstown in Dublin and Bilberry on the Waterford and Suir Valley Railway).

I have also gone through my personal photo collection and added a photo for each station where I have one in my possession. Recent photo additions include stations on the Macmine Junction to Bagenalstown line with those on the Tullow branch and Kilkenny to Portlaoise to be added this week.

There are still 680 sites with no photo out of 1,227. Of these, 312 are in Northern Ireland (issues with driving a Republic of Ireland car down country lanes and taking photos of random buildings). I hope to reduce the number of these over time.