PUBLIC TRANSPORT

All Photographs Supplied By William Murphy

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LEVEL CROSSING OR RAILWAY CROSSING

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SERPENTINE AVENUE

A level crossing is an intersection where a railway line crosses a road, path, or (in rare situations) airport runway, at the same level, as opposed to the railway line crossing over or under using an overpass or tunnel. The term also applies when a light rail line with separate right-of-way or reserved track crosses a road in the same fashion. Other names include railway level crossing, railway crossing (chiefly international), grade crossing or railroad crossing (chiefly American), road through railroad, criss-cross, train crossing, and RXR (abbreviated).

There are more than 100,000 level crossings in Europe and more than 200,000 in North America.

There are currently 909 level crossings on the Irish Rail network, a number which has reduced from over 2,000 since the turn of the century. These are a combination of automated CCTV crossings, manned crossing and unmanned user operated accommodation crossings, including on farmlands.

In June of last year Irish Rail announced that they had seen a surge in incidents at level crossings across the State and urged the public to be vigilant when crossing railways, particularly in Dublin.

There had been 54 incidents at level crossing in the first six months of 2022, up from 31 for the same period in 2021. Irish Rail said that some of these incidents had been “particularly worrying” and have been shared on social media.

The majority of incidents at level crossings in 2022 were in Dublin. These included incidents at crossings on Lansdowne Road, Serpentine Ave, Sandymount Ave, Sutton, Bray, Merrion Gates and Baldoyle Road. In Cork, the Banteer level crossing also had incidents.

LUAS TRAM STOP AT MAYOR SQUARE

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30 APRIL 2023

Mayor Square is in Dublin, in the Docklands area. The National College of Ireland is based there.

Since December 2009, the Mayor Square – NCI Luas stop has been served by the Luas Red Line tram which runs from Tallaght or Saggart to Connolly and the Docklands branch line from Busáras to The Point (3Arena). Dublin Bus serves nearby North Wall Quay with the 33d, 33x, 53a, 90, 142 and 151 bus services, as well as Guild Street with the 757 Airlink service to Dublin Airport.

On Saturday (29 April) it took me hours to get home as the Luas tram service between Beechwood and St Stephen’s Green was suspended. Passengers were advised that buses were available to transport them from Beechwood to the City Center … this was not true. I went to Ranelagh and was unable to get a bus as all that arrived at the bus stop were already full. After an hour I decided to walk to Leeson Street and had to wait for about thirty minutes for a bus to arrive and then about six arrived at the same time.

THE DOCKLANDS TRAIN STATION

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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.

DUBLINBIKES DOCKING STATION 01 PLUS A WATER-BOTTLE REFILL STATION

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CLARENDON ROW

In December 2021 Dublin City Council announced that the first water-bottle refill station would be installed on Clarendon Row and at the DublinBikes docking station would return to the street. I was aware that the Docking Station had been installed but I did not notice the water refill station until today.
The scheme was progressed as part of the Grafton Street Quarter Public Realm Plan, which was developed to meet the objectives of the overarching Dublin City Council Public Realm Strategy ‘Your City Your Space’ document. A high quality design was utilised to improve ambiance of the street, with increased greening and wider footpaths creating a quality space to be enjoyed by all.

I was advised that Clarendon Row was named after Frederick Villiers Clarendon but as he died as recently as 1904 I knew that this was unlikely and recently learned that it is named after the Earl Of Clarendon.

George William Frederick (1800–70), 4th earl of Clarendon , lord lieutenant of Ireland (1847–52), was born 26 January 1800 in London, eldest son of George Villiers and his wife Theresa, daughter of John Parker, 1st Baron Boringdon.

Frederick Villiers Clarendon (c.1820 – 17 October 1904) was an Irish architect noted for his design work on a number of large public buildings in Dublin, including the Natural History Museum and Arbour Hill Prison.

Frederick Clarendon was born in Dublin around 1820 and received a Bachelor of Arts at Dublin University in 1839. Directly after graduation he was employed by the Office of Public Works, where he would remain until his retirement in 1887. Clarendon died in Mountjoy Square, Dublin in 1904.

Clarendon’s earliest major works focussed on Dublin’s prison system. Arbour Hill Prison was redesigned in 1845 by Sir. Joshua Jebb with Clarendon acting as executive architect, and Clarendon was also co-designer of the “Criminal Lunatic Asylum” in Dundrum two years later. Clarendon oversaw the renovation and extension of the Royal Irish Academy’s premises on Dawson Street between 1852 and 1854, as their existing Grafton Street location had become overcrowded. Clarendon’s most remembered work is Ireland’s Natural History Museum on Merrion Street adjacent to Leinster House, known as the “Dead Zoo”. The Royal Dublin Society had been obliged to use a public architect in order to obtain treasury funding, and the building was taken over by the State in 1877. Today the Museum forms part of the National Museum of Ireland. Clarendon provided his services free of charge to design the Mariners Hall, Howth in 1867. This then served as a Presbyterian Meeting House for over thirty years, services being conducted through the medium of Scottish Gaelic, the language of the immigrant seasonal fishermen of the village.

LUAS TRAM STOP AT BROADSTONE AND THE ENTRANCE TO GRANGEGORMAN UNIVERSITY CAMPUS

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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.