Finally, something other than railways, but it is still about greenways, which appear to be the new thing for local authorities all over the Republic of Ireland.
The Irish Times reports that Dublin City Council are to seek Part 8 planning permission to widen the towpaths of sections of the Royal Canal in their administrative area.
Public consultation on this is supposed to be available but I cannot see any reference to it on Dublin City Council’s website, nor on Waterways Ireland’s.
Per the Irish Times, the sections to be widened (which means narrowing of the canal) are:
600m west of Lock 6, 345m west of Broomebridge and 85m west of Lock 8.
It will be interesting to see how the home owners at Tinahely will take this – one of these (the old goods store) won an award for the conversion of the building to a house a few years ago but such was their concern for privacy, the location of the house was unstated (I was able to figure it out). The station building is also now a private residence.
Separately, I see the car dealership that was in the goods store at Aughrim (another former station on this route) is now closed. As it is not generating rates income for Wicklow County Council, maybe they should see about buying the site/building, using the trackbed for the greenway and granting themselves planning permission for conversion of the goods store to a house, a la Tinahely. This would enhance the value of the building to be sold on to a third party.
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.
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.
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).
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, 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.
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.
DonegalDaily.com report that Donegal County Council have tarred a 2km section of the railway walk from Burtonport to Meenbannad, greatly improving this amenity.
