European Railroad Discussion > Dublin

Had another day in Dublin yesterday, being Ireland we had all four seasons in one day (slight exaggeration - there wasn't any snow, but we got almost everything else). Early morning start to catch the 06:30 flight from Stansted, returning on the 18:50 in the evening.

1: A pair of Iarnrod Eireann's Intercity Railcars resting outside Dublin's Connolly station
2: EMD 071 class 076 leaving North Wall Yard on a train of MoW wagons. On the right is a rake of container carrying pocket wagons.
3: In the opposite direction the first of the day's two Tara Mine trains from Navan

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4: From North Wall the train accesses Alexandra Road, the ore train makes it's way towards the Boliden terminal. The member of the ground staff is operating the switch
5: As last time after pulling the cars in through the gate the loco runs round and pushes the train off the street
6: Back at The Point, a LUAS red line tram arrives

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After the morning the weather deteriorated for a time, I headed to Howth Junction in the North Dublin suburbs
7: One of IE's Japanese built (Tokyu Car Co) 1500v DC EMUs in DART service
8: An IE four aspect LED signal, Irish signalling is both very familiar to anyone from Britain but also quite exotic.
9: The returning Tara empties, by now it was pouring and blowing a gale

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10: It got darker, this is the afternoon Tara train at Clontarf Road at about 14:15, just north of Dublin city centre, near the Fairview Railcar Maintenance facility
11: Judging by the morning train I knew I had about two hours for the unloading to be complete and the empties to start their return journey, and so, given the weather, I rode the DART across Dublin to Booterstown in the southern suburbs on the shore of Dublin Bay, a Howth bound train, made up of three of the class 8100 LHB / GEC EMUs. It was starting to brighten.
12: The road frontage of Dublin Connolly station, formerly Amiens Street, the location of the HQ of Ireland's premier railway, the GNRI

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So as the weather started to brighten I headed back to Alexandra Road to see what was going on
13: 078 was propelling the last loaded car into the rotary dumper
14: After the car had been unloaded it was shunted onto the rest of the train
15: And 078, preceded by the flagman made its way back down Alexandra Road and returned to Navan for another load. Boliden has just announced that they have received an extension to their mining licence which means they will be extracting ore from the Navan mine well in to the 2020s.

So back to the airport and home, a most enjoyable day out. Again all public transport - airport bus, LUAS light rail and DART - was courtesy of a €10 Leap card bought at the Dublin Bus kiosk in Terminal 1 at Dublin Airport. Really good value.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/17 04:52 by 86235.

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Neat stuff.  The street neats are very cool.

KG

Interesting report, thanks for posting!

Thomas Eckhardt

All are very interesting. Thanks for posting.
ALLEN

Great stuff - wonderful collection of freight for Ireland. Amazing what you can do in a day! chris uk

Interesting photos, thank you for posting them. What kind of ore is being carried? Sadly I see the Emerald Island is not immune to graffiti taggers.

From someone across the pond, could explain the four light signal? Great photos.

The ore is predominantly zinc, Boliden's Tara mine is Europe's biggest zinc mine.

As in Britain the sequence of signal aspects are red, yellow, double yellow and green. So on a signal like this the top aspect is yellow, the second aspect is green, the third yellow and the bottom red.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/17 13:44 by 86235.

Hi. As usual very interesting ! Thank you for posting... :):):)

1019X Wrote:
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> Interesting photos, thank you for posting them.
> What kind of ore is being carried? Sadly I see the
> Emerald Island is not immune to graffiti taggers.

Graffiti seems to be a world wide problem.

PHall Wrote:
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> Graffiti seems to be a world wide problem.

Unfortunately it is, I also noticed that one of the DART EMUs I rode had been tagged too.

Cool pix, thanks for posting.

Can anybody help me with the Gaelic here? Is the   "Iarnrod" in " Iarnrod Eirean"  a Gaelic spelling/pronunciation of the English "Iron Road"?  Just reasnong that a lot of European languages translate "railway" as something that translates as "iron road:"  eisenbahn, ferrocarril, ferroviare, chemin de fer, etc.

It does indeed mean iron road.

You mention the Howth area north of Dublin.
Was this name any connection with the Hill of Howth Tramway?
One of their cars has been preserved at the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perrris, CA.
It has a unique form of braking, one is rheostatic, the other is a charged air tank under the longitudnal seats that had to be frequenty recharged.
The car is in running condition, but is very picky on what track it is running on
It had to be re-gauged from meter to 3 foot -six inches to match our Los Angeles Railway gauge track at the museum.

James R.(Jim) Baker
Whittier, CA