CAPTURED USING THE KINO APP ON AN iPHONE 12 PRO MAX
Green Line
SANDYMOUNT LUAS TRAM STOP
25 SEPTEMBER 2023
When I was young I had a few friends who lived in Sandyford which was in the country rather than the city. It was often the case that they could not come to school because of snow.
Sandyford is a suburb of Dublin, located in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Ireland.
Sandyford Business District makes up much of the suburb and encompasses 4 business parks: Sandyford Business Park, Stillorgan Business Park, Central Park and South County Business Park. Some of the multinational companies based in the area include Google, Facebook, Microsoft and AIB.
The Luas Green Line was built through the Business District and the Kilmacud, Stillorgan, Sandyford and Central Park stops serve the area, the middle two lying along the eastern edge of the original district. All four of these stops are in the Sandyford Business District. Sandyford was the Green Line terminus until the extension to Cherrywood opened in October 2010. The depot for the Green Line is located on the eastern edge of the Business District.
Sandyford House, a pub in the centre of the village, has been an inn and coach house since the 1690s. For 200 years it was a stopping place for travellers en route to Enniskerry. From 1803 onwards, the Chatham Street to Enniskerry mail coach (a two-hour journey) stopped and deposited the region’s mail at the inn, which acted as the local post office.
Sandyford Business District spans one of the biggest business parks in Ireland, consisting of over 1,000 companies employing approximately 26,000 people. It was officially opened in June 1967 on a site of 120 acres and for 50 years was known as the “Sandyford Industrial Estate”; 85 acres allocated to light industry and the rest to offices.
The area includes several separate business parks and sites, including Sandyford Business Park, Stillorgan Business Park, Central Park, and South County Business Park.
A proposal to establish a Sandyford Business District area, to include the core Sandyford Business Park as well as the other areas, resulted in the establishment of the Sandyford Business Improvement District Company (SBID) in January 2017. The area has capacity for 17,500 more employees, 350,000 sq m of commercial floor space and 1,000 residential units.
Companies in the business district include American Airlines, Barclaycard, Canon, Microsoft, Novell, and Vodafone Ireland. The Irish Management Institute also has its headquarters in northern Sandyford. The Irish Mint, a division of the Central Bank of Ireland, is located in Sandyford, west of the M50 and north of the village.
TRAM CROSSING THE WILLIAM DARGAN BRIDGE
DUNDRUM 24 AUGUST 2023
William Dargan MRDS (28 February 1799 – 7 February 1867) was arguably the most important Irish engineer of the 19th century and certainly the most important figure in railway construction. Dargan designed and built Ireland’s first railway line from Dublin to Dún Laoghaire in 1833. In total he constructed over 1,300 km (800 miles) of railway to important urban centres of Ireland. He was a member of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) and also helped establish the National Gallery of Ireland.
He was also responsible for the Great Dublin Exhibition held at Leinster lawn in 1853. His achievements were honoured in 1995, when the Dargan Railway Bridge in Belfast was opened, and again in 2004 when the Dargan Bridge, Dublin a new cable stayed bridge for Dublin’s Light Railway Luas were both named after him.
LUAS TRAM STOP AT BROADSTONE AND THE ENTRANCE TO GRANGEGORMAN UNIVERSITY CAMPUS
I USED AN OLD SIGMA CAMERA
I am still experimenting with my old Sigma DP1 Quattro and today, 24 April 2023, I photographed in manual mode and underexposed as the camera was inclined to over expose despite any settings that I make.
In the “Lotus-Eaters” episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses Bloom imagines that the couple leaving the Grosvenor Hotel are “Off to the country: Broadstone probably,” and in Wandering Rocks Mr. Dudley White stands on Array Quay “undecided whether he should arrive at Phibsborough more quickly by a triple change of tram or by hailing a car or on foot through Smithfield, Constitution hill and Broadstone terminus.” Both passages refer to a railway station in the northwest part of inner Dublin, at the top of Constitution Hill between Smithfield and Phibsborough. In 1904 it served as the terminus of the Midland Great Western Railway Company, whose trains went to the west of Ireland.
Broadstone railway station was the Dublin terminus of the Midland Great Western Railway (MGWR), located in the Dublin suburb of Broadstone. The site also contained the MGWR railway works and a steam locomotive motive power depot. The Luas tram station opened at the front of the station in 2017.
It is currently the headquarters of Bus Éireann, housing most of their administration and one of their main garages.[2] Nearby on the same property is a Dublin Bus Depot.
In June 2013, Luas Cross City – a construction project which extended the Luas Green Line North from St. Stephen’s Green to Broombridge – commenced. The line, which opened to passengers on 9 December 2017, traverses the city centre on street-running track and arrives at Broadstone. It then enters into the Broadstone cutting where it continues on its own right of way. Broadstone – DIT is a Luas stop on the line. Its name refers to the fact that it was intended to be the closest stop to Dublin Institute of Technology Grangegorman campus. However, the plans were changed at a late stage, adding Grangegorman stop, which is closer to the campus. Construction of the stop involved excavating a large amount of earth from the land in front of the station, and building a road bridge over the tracks which buses can use to access the depot. The Luas stop has two lateral platforms and is in front of the station building. It was built several metres below the station in order to make it level with Constitution Hill; and a curved, white wall separates the southbound platform from the garden in front of the building. Trams approach the stop from Dominick Street Upper and continues by passing under the new bridge and turning sharply to the right, where they traverse the edge of the bus depot and enter the cutting.
A few years ago i was offered a Sigma DP1 Quattro at a very good price and while I had a bad experience with all my previous Sigma cameras I decided to accept the offer especially as the camera could produce .dng images but, as you may have guessed, there were many problems that can be really annoying. The DP1 Quattro is a fixed lens camera aimed at enthusiasts who demand the best image quality in a reasonably portable form factor. Announced in September 2014, it’s a unique camera in many respects, employing an unusually-shaped body, a fixed focal length lens and a sensor unlike any outside of Sigma’s range. It also eschews modern features we take for granted on other new cameras such as Wifi or even a movie mode. The DP1 Quattro is all about still photo quality.
I GOT A TRAIN FROM BROOMBRIDGE TO MAYNOOTH
7 APRIL 2023
The train station at Broombridge is at best unattractive.
Broombridge is a railway station beside a Luas Tram stop serving Cabra, Dublin 7, Ireland. It lies on the southern bank of the Royal Canal at the western end of what had been Liffey Junction station on the erstwhile Midland Great Western Railway (MGWR). It takes its name from Broome Bridge, which crosses the canal, where William Rowan Hamilton developed the mathematical notion of quaternions. A plaque on the adjacent canal bridge and the name of the Luas Maintenance depot on site, Hamilton Depot, commemorates this.
Years ago I would have avoided this station because it was not safe at any time of the day. The station is unmanned and had been subject to significant and sustained vandalism, enough for Iarnród Éireann to be concerned and questions asked about it in the Dáil.The lack of shelter for passengers or seating facilities was similarly questioned. In 2012, additional security measures were added along with seating and decoration in advance of the station’s redesign as part of the Luas Cross City project. Leap card validators, previously not provided due to vandalism concerns, have been installed and Iarnród Éireann ticket machines were installed towards the end of 2019.
Broombridge is the northern terminus of the Green Line of the Luas, Dublin’s Light rail tram system. The tram platforms were constructed in 2017, at the same time as the nearby Hamilton Depot, the forecourt which provides space for buses to access the station, a staff car park, and a footbridge over the main line tracks to allow easier interchange. The two platforms lie adjacent to the eastern end of the main line platforms, and interchange between the two systems is possible via steps and a ramp.
On average, trams depart every 10 to 15 minutes and head south towards Bride’s Glen, a journey which takes approximately one hour. Immediately after leaving Broombridge, they go through a double crossover point which allows them to make use of both platforms. The line runs parallel to the heavy rail line for 350m, before turning south into the Broadstone railway cutting, which takes it into central Dublin.
In 2020, a 4 km (2.5 mi) extension of the green line from Broombridge to Charlestown Shopping Centre was announced. According to the current plan for the project, Broombridge will become a through stop, and trams will leave the stop before taking a sharp turn to the right, crossing the heavy rail line and the Royal Canal on a specially constructed bridge which will run parallel to Broome Bridge itself, and then continue northwards.
“Luas Finglas is the extension of the Luas Green Line from Broombridge to Charlestown via Finglas. It will add four new stops to the line and create a key public transport connection between the communities of Charlestown, Finglas Village, Finglas west, St Helena’s and Tolka Valley and the city centre. The National Transport Authority and Transport Infrastructure Ireland have developed an Emerging Preferred Route for Luas Finglas and are inviting comments from all stakeholders and members of the public on the proposed route. Luas Finglas will be constructed mostly in grass track, an attractive innovation in Ireland, while a cycle and pedestrian path will be constructed along much of the line, providing family-friendly, sustainable, convenient access between northside communities and the city centre.”
https://www.luasfinglas.ie/#/home
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