PUBLIC TRANSPORT

All Photographs Supplied By William Murphy

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William Murphy

SANDYMOUNT LUAS TRAM STOP

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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.

ALL BIKES HAVE BEEN CHECKED OUT

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DUBLINBIKES DOCKING STATION 28 AT MOUNTJOY SQUARE

There are usually plenty of bicycles available at this popular docking station at Mountjoy Square but today there was not one available … maybe they were being used by the students at the nearby schools.

Mountjoy Square is a Georgian garden square in Dublin, Ireland, on the north side of the city just under a kilometre from the River Liffey. One of five Georgian squares in Dublin, it was planned and developed in the late 18th century by Luke Gardiner, 1st Viscount Mountjoy. It was surrounded on all sides by terraced, red-brick Georgian houses. Construction began in the early 1790s and the work was completed in 1818.

Over the centuries, the square has been home to many of Dublin’s most prominent people: lawyers, churchmen, politicians, writers and visual artists. The writer James Joyce lived around the square during some of his formative years, playwright Seán O’Casey wrote and set some of his most famous plays on the square while living there, W.B. Yeats stayed there with his friend John O’Leary, and more recently, much of the Oscar-winning film Once was made in the square. Historic meetings have taken place there, including planning for the Easter Rising and some of the earliest Dáil meetings. Prominent Irish Unionists and Republicans have shared the square.

Mountjoy can boast being Dublin’s only true Georgian square, each of its sides being exactly 140 metres in length. While the North, East and West sides each have 18 houses, the South has 19, reflecting some variation in plot sizes.Though each side was originally numbered individually,the houses are now numbered continuously clockwise from no. 1 in the north-west corner. While its North and South sides are continuous from corner to corner, the East and West sides are in three terraces, interrupted by two side streets, Grenville Street and Gardiner Place to the West and Fitzgibbon and North Great Charles Street to the East. Gardiner Street passes through the West side of the square, while Belvedere Place and Gardiner Lane run off the North- and South-East corners.

Although some of the original buildings fell to ruin over the 20th century and were eventually demolished, the new infill buildings were fronted with reproduction façades, so each side of the square maintains its appearance as a consistent Georgian terrace.

DUBLINBIKES DOCKING STATIONS AT GRANGEGORMAN – THERE ARE IN FACT THREE

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DOCKING STATIONS 103 104 AND 105

It is unusual to see a cluster of three docking stations such as this collection of three on the street passing through the TU university campus.

DublinBikes is a public bicycle sharing scheme in Dublin, Ireland. It is operated by JCDecaux and has been in operation since 2009. The scheme has over 115 stations and 42,000 annual subscribers.

I WANTED TO PHOTOGRAPH THE CHURCH AT TULLY

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BUT WAS SURPRISED TO DISCOVER A NEW TOWN

Today I got a tram to Laughanstown and on my arrival discovered a new complex of not fully completed roads and much to my surprise there many people waiting at the stop for the tram back to the city centre. Also, I was disappointed when I realised that the DP3 Quattro was not the most suitable camera and it did not have GPS so I have no option but to visit again within the next few days.

Laughanstown is a stop on the Luas light-rail tram system in Dún Laoghaire – Rathdown, south of Dublin, Ireland. It opened in 2010 as a stop on the extension of the Green Line south from Sandyford to Brides Glen. The stop provides access to the nearby suburb of Cabinteely.

The stop was intended to serve a new suburb being developed during the Celtic Tiger. A lack of subsequent development in the vicinity resulted in Laughanstown being the least used stop on the Luas Network. As of 2023, the land around the stop is again under development and new roads have been constructed close to the stop.

Some time ago a lady contacted me to advise me that is is Loughlinstown not Laughanstown she was incorrect as they are two different places. Laughanstown: The spelling of this name has varied considerably over time, and in some periods was almost indistinguishable from Loughlinstown, the name of which also varied. The spelling Laughanstown was adopted and fixed at the time of the original Ordnance Survey in the 1830s. However, the evidence suggests that the name used locally was Lehaunstown, and this was noted by the Boundary Survey in the 1820s. Local usage did not change as a result of the Ordnance Survey’s attempt to impose a new spelling.

ASHTOWN COMMUTER RAILWAY STATION

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4 SEPTEMBER 2023

Navan Road Parkway (formerly Phoenix Park) opened nearby in 2008 but does not replace Ashtown. A major grade-separated junction was built on the R147 to provide access to Navan Road Parkway.

The ticket office is open from 06:30 to 16:00, Monday to Friday. It is closed on Saturday and Sunday.

The station was opened by the Midland Great Western Railway in 1847 for race specials at the now-demolished Phoenix Park Racecourse. It opened fully on 1 August 1902. Absorbed into the Great Southern Railways by way of the Railways (Great Southern) Preliminary Amalgamation Scheme of 12 November 1924 (SI no. 31 of that year), the station closed in 1934.

The line through the station was then nationalised, passing on to Córas Iompair Éireann as a result of the Transport Act 1944 which took effect from 1 January 1945. Under this management, it reopened briefly in 1979 for the visit of Pope John Paul II to Ireland in order to facilitate the large numbers who attended the open-air mass in the Phoenix Park and reopened permanently on 11 January 1982. It passed on to Iarnród Éireann in 1987.