Dublin Port

STACKED CONTAINERS AT MTL CONTAINER DEPOT

August 25, 2023 by infomatique

DUBLIN PORT AUGUST 2023

Marine Terminals Ltd. was founded in 1992. The Company’s line of business includes the transportation of freight on all inland waterways.

Ireland’s leading container terminal is operated by Peel Ports Dublin. Marine Terminals Ltd (MTL) produces a throughput of 250,000 TEU’s per year, with direct LoLo connections to the UK, the Netherlands, France, Iberia and onwards worldwide.

Peel Ports is the second largest port group in the UK, they operate the Port of Liverpool, the Manchester Ship Canal, the River Medway, parts of the area along and around the River Clyde, Ardrossan Harbour, Twelve Quays at Birkenhead Docks and Heysham Port.

GANTRY CRANES IN THE DOCKLANDS

August 25, 2023 by infomatique

PIGEON HOUSE ROAD – SEAN MOORE ROAD

I was in the area today as I was trying to find the USS Mesa Verde only to discover that it had docked in a restricted area.

The Poolbeg power station is situated adjacent to the now-decommissioned Pigeon House generating station, where electricity was first generated in 1903 (with the distinction of being the first in the world to generate three phase power).

The name “Pigeon House” comes from a caretaker’s lodge built there in 1760. At the time the site was a wooden platform known pragmatically as “The Piles”, at the seaward end of the Ballast Office Wall embankment. The lodge was intended to provide rest and storage facilities for workers as they built the Great South Wall, a massive sea wall project that began in 1761 and would take three decades to complete.

The first caretaker, John Pidgeon, was appointed in 1761. Pidgeon opened an eatery to provide refreshments for the workers and the growing number of travellers arriving into Dublin Bay. “Pigeon’s House” as it was known became one of the most popular restaurants in Dublin.

Around 1793, as the Great South Wall was nearing completion, a hotel opened at the site, the Pigeon House Hotel.

The hotel did not last long for after the 1798 Rebellion, the area was transformed into a military fort, the Pigeon House Fort. The hotel building was converted into the officers’ accommodation within the fort, which then grew over the next hundred years to include an armoury, a hospital, and trenches crossed by drawbridges.

Between 1878 and 1881, a sewage pipe was installed along the former Ballast Office Wall (now the landward half of the Great South Wall). In 1897, the military complex was sold to the Dublin Corporation and developed into a sewage processing facility, as well as the city’s first major electrical power generating station. It was used for power generation until it was decommissioned in 1976, and the Poolbeg plant is still known locally as the Pigeon House.

The modern Poolbeg station was named after the Poolbeg lighthouse which formed the outer end of the Great South Wall. The lighthouse, completed in 1767 when construction of the Great South Wall was just beginning, stood originally at the edge of a natural tidal pool at the entrance to Dublin Harbor known as “Poole Begge”, which was surrounded at low tide with sand bars.

The Poolbeg power station was constructed in two separate phases, beginning in the 1960s. The ESB decided to construct the station in 1965 and the initial development was completed in 1971 with the construction of Units 1 and 2 at a cost of 20 million Irish pounds. The original Pigeon House generators remained on standby duty until 1976. Unit 3 was completed in 1978 at a cost of 40 million pounds.

The combined cycle station was constructed in the 1990s. CG14 was commissioned in 1994, CG15 in 1998 and ST16 in 2001.

THE EXO BUILDING

August 16, 2023 by infomatique

CORNER OF THE NORTH WALL QUAY AND EAST WALL ROAD

The Exo Building is a 17-storey office building located at the corner of North Wall Quay and East Wall Road in Dublin 1, Ireland. The building is adjacent to the Point Depot (now the 3Arena) fronting on to the river Liffey and Dublin port. As of 2021, it is the tallest office building in the Republic of Ireland at 73 metres tall. The name Exo is in reference to its exoskeleton which reflects the traditional industrial crane and gantry landscape of the port area.

State owned postal services and delivery company An Post have signed a lease in 2021 to become the anchor tenant of the building. As of 2023, An Post intended to occupy 6 floors of the building with around 900 of its staff.

The building was constructed on a site which was previously earmarked for a Harry Crosbie Celtic Tiger era 40-storey residential skyscraper named The Watchtower. The building was later revised down to 32 stories before planning was granted by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority in 2006. While construction began on the building soon after with excavations being completed in full and foundations and a 3-storey underground basement nearing completion, following the collapse of the Irish property market, the scheme was ultimately mothballed.

A succession of one off amusements and instalments including the underground Harry’s bar and the Wheel of Dublin operated in and over the filled-in space for a period owing to its location adjacent to the 3 Arena. Crosbie’s loans ultimately transferred to NAMA in 2013 and soon after Grant Thornton were appointed receivers with the development officially ceasing.

THE CORTEN STEEL SIGN LOOKS LIKE A SHIP

April 30, 2023 by infomatique

DUBLIN PORT COMPANY

In some of my photographs you may notice a large pool of water at the side of the road. As I was photographing this sign a middle aged woman redirected her car to pass through the water in order to splash me and that is what happened … I had to return home to change as a result.

Weathering steel, often referred to by the genericised trademark COR-TEN steel and sometimes written without the hyphen as corten steel, is a group of steel alloys which were developed to eliminate the need for painting, and form a stable rust-like appearance after several years’ exposure to weather.

Dublin Port is the seaport of Dublin, Ireland, of both historical and contemporary economic importance. Approximatively two-thirds of Ireland’s port traffic travels via the port, which is by far the busiest on the island of Ireland.

The port is operated by the semi-state Dublin Port Company (DPC), incorporated on 28 February 1997 (formerly the Dublin Port and Docks Board, and successor to the Ballast Board founded in 1707), the headquarters of which are located just beyond the main port entrance on the northern side of the Liffey. In 2017 the area around the headquarters was rebuilt with the installation of a heritage crane and creation of a maritime-themed garden. The company is responsible for infrastructure of the port, with individual operations run by tenants such as State authorities, notably the customs service, ferry, freight and oil companies, terminal operators, and stevedores.

The port company is responsible for pilotage services within Dublin Bay, and manages the three port lighthouses (but not those of Howth or Kish Bank). It also formerly operated two drydocks, which were closed in 2016.

According to DPC, the port handled 23.5 million tonnes of cargo in 2003, as well as 1,426,000 passengers. That year 7,917 ships docked in the port, including 54 cruise liners carrying 54,000 visitors. In April 2010, the company announced its “busiest week ever”, following restrictions placed on European airspace because of the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland. Some 72,118 passengers were reported to have travelled through the ferry terminals during the week of 15–21 April that year, and that week saw the culmination of increased trade in Dublin Port, as the company’s figures for the first quarter of 2010 would eventually reveal. March 2010 saw a 13.5% trade increase when compared with March 2009, and that month was declared by the company as the fourth consecutive month of trade increase[6] since the economic downturn. The figures of imports and exports declined during the depression of 2010 but then increased during the decade and in 2019, 38.1 million tonnes of cargo was handled and there were 7,898 ship movements of which 158 were cruise ships.