Railway Station

BOOTERSTOWN MARSH AND TRAIN STATION

May 29, 2023 by infomatique

I USED A SIGMA DP3 QUATTRO

Today I got the DART [Dublin Area Rapid Transit] to Booterstown and I then walked to Blackrock. The trains were packed and there were many visitors from the UK because it is a major holiday in the UK. I had intended to get a train from Blackrock to Dun Laoghaire but changed my mind as the last of my four batteries was at 20% [this is one of the major problems with the Sigma DP3 Quattro].

The area is home to Booterstown marsh, a bird sanctuary which has been leased for many years by An Taisce, who have worked to protect it. Species seen regularly include mallard, Eurasian teal, common moorhen, water rail, grey heron, little egret, common redshank, greenshank, Eurasian curlew, common snipe, Eurasian oystercatcher, bar-tailed godwit, common kingfisher, sedge warbler and dunlin.

The Catholic Church of the Assumption is a focal point of the area along Booterstown Avenue.

Booterstown has a dedicated Circus Field located along the Rock Road, where both Tom Duffy’s Circus (June/July) and Fossett’s Circus (October) are set up once a year.

The Old Punch Bowl pub, which stands at the bottom of Booterstown Avenue, was established in 1779.

Merrion Cemetery is an old cemetery that was used from the 13th century to 1866 and is located at Bellevue between Booterstown and Merrion off the Rock Road.

Booterstown was recorded in 1488 as one of the locations for the boundary of The Pale … “He’s out there … totally beyond the Pale of any acceptable human conduct.” That’s how the U.S. Army describes Marlon Brando’s rogue colonel, Kurtz, in the movie Apocalypse Now.

COBH TRAIN STATION

May 21, 2023 by infomatique

PHOTOGRAPHED IN MAY 2023

RUSHBROOKE RAILWAY STATION

When I arrived in Cobh the weather was beautiful but about twenty minutes later I had to return to the station in order to shelter from an intense thunder storm. I decided to get the next train towards Cork city centre but as the weather had improved I got off the train at Rushbrook but after about twenty minutes more rain arrived.

Cobh railway station serves the town of Cobh, County Cork. It is located in a red brick building adjacent to the town’s Cobh Heritage Centre.

It is the terminus of the on Cork-Cobh section of the Cork Suburban Rail line. Travel to Glounthaune station to transfer to Midleton.

The station opened 10 March 1862 and was closed for goods traffic on 3 November 1975.

It began life as the terminus of the Cobh (then Queenstown) section of the Cork, Youghal & Queenstown Railway.

The present station occupies only a small part of the old station building. The original station was expanded greatly during the latter part of the 19th century as it served what was then Ireland’s largest emigration port which was also an important way-point as the last port between Western Europe and North America. The station was also the main receiving centre for mail for Ireland and Britain from the United States and Canada. Mail would be brought by ship to Cobh, processed and forwarded by mail express trains to Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) on the outskirts of Dublin and on to Holyhead. This was faster than conveying by ship directly to Liverpool.

It is famous for being the station where hundreds of survivors of the RMS Lusitania disaster left the town of Cobh after surviving the sinking.

With the development and growth of transatlantic air traffic Cobh lost its importance as a mail and passenger centre. A significant part of the train station remained largely unused until the opening of the Cobh Heritage Centre in the front part of the station in the 1980s. At that time the station was also reduced to a single platform. The freight yard of the station has now become a public carpark while another part of the station has become a covered carpark for Cobh Garda Station.

THE DOCKLANDS TRAIN STATION

May 1, 2023 by infomatique

UPPER SHERIFF STREET

Services run to M3 Parkway during peak times, Monday to Friday. The station is closed on Saturday and Sunday. Passengers need to change at Clonsilla for connection with the Maynooth service.

Docklands Station is a terminus railway station serving the Dublin Docklands area in Ireland. It is owned and operated by Iarnród Éireann and was part of the Irish Government’s Transport 21 initiative.

The station is one of three termini for the Western Commuter service run by Iarnród Éireann, the others being Dublin Connolly and Dublin Pearse.

The station was officially opened for commuter services by then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern at a temporary location on Sheriff Street in the North Wall area of Dublin’s Northside on 12 March 2007, construction groundbreaking having taken place on 9 March 2006 with Transport Minister Martin Cullen. It is the first new heavy rail station in Dublin city centre since Grand Canal Dock opened in 2001. It was required because the nearby Connolly Station had reached capacity and could not support additional commuter services to County Meath.

However, in March 2008, it was reported that the transport minister, Noel Dempsey, would allow CIÉ to seek new planning permission to keep the station on a permanent basis as a terminus for services from Maynooth and Navan following his decision to allow the Railway Procurement Agency to use Broadstone Station for extensions to the Luas.

MAYNOOTH RAILWAY STATION APRIL 2023

April 10, 2023 by infomatique

A BEAUTIFUL SETTING

The station is situated on the south side of the Royal Canal, opposite Dukes’ Harbour. Access to Maynooth is by either the footbridge to the west, which leads to the Main Street of Maynooth; west along the canal walk to residential areas of the town, or via the road bridges to the east, which lead north to the older part of Maynooth, or south to the newer areas.

The station has two staffed ticket desks and four automated ticket machines, one inside and three outside the station building. The ticket office is open from 06:00 AM to 23:15 PM, Monday to Sunday.

The footbridge crossing the tracks and connecting the two platforms was originally situated at Lansdowne Road railway station.

From Maynooth onwards to Sligo, the line is a single-track railway, the line being a double-track railway from Maynooth to Bray.

The 2018 NTA Heavy Rail Census showed 6,625 passengers using the station on the day of the survey, up from 6,228 in 2017 and 5,262 in 2016.

PEARSE STATION WAITING FOR A TRAIN TO DALKEY

April 8, 2023 by infomatique

EASTER WEEKEND 2023

Easter weekend did not start well for me. I arrived at Pearse Station after discovering that there was no general public access to Trinity College only to discover that trains terminated at Dun Laoghaire [Good Friday – Easter Monday]. The limited service will be a problem for me on Easter Sunday as I had been invited to Sunday lunch in Dalkey.

Pearse railway station or Dublin Pearse is a railway station on Westland Row on the Southside of Dublin, Ireland. It is Ireland’s busiest commuter station and second busiest station overall (behind Dublin Connolly railway station) with 9 million passenger journeys through the station in 2016.

Major renovation commenced in 2007 with publicity erected in the station for this in March 2008. As part of phase 1, automatic ticket validation machines were installed on platforms 1 and 2. The front entrance of the station was changed. The former Spar shop was completely taken out of the station and the old ticket barriers were removed. Platforms 3, 4 and 5 were removed. New signage and CCTV cameras were added on both active platforms and, on Platform 2, a larger waiting area for passengers was provided.

An additional Southbound entrance (Pearse Street and Trinity Bio Science) was opened 9 April 2013. At the official opening of the entrance by Minister Leo Varadkar the National Transport Authority used the term Pearse Street Station[c] in the title of a page on its website although there was no evidence of any official renaming. with other examples of that usage in media elsewhere.

The roof structure comprises two main sections – the main station area roof has 40 barrelled roof trusses, each spanning 28 metres, over 38 bays, with additional gable end structures at both ends. Adjacent to the main station roof there is a second similar roof, which covers a car park and station infrastructure area. This is smaller and comprises 19 trusses over 18 bays. A €10m roof replacement project started in August 2018 and was completed in June 2020. Pearse Station was closed for 13 weekends over the two years to facilitate the replacement project. During these weekends, northside DART, Maynooth and Drogheda services operated to and from Connolly Station, with southside DART and Rosslare services operating from Grand Canal Dock.