Talk:History of rail transport in Ireland

Category:Timeline of rail transport

A timeline of rail transport series of documents has been created, currently with little content. Please help out (not least since all but 3 "events" are US based). You know the drill: births & deaths, dates of key bits of infrastructure & acts / openings / amalgamations / closures / accidents &c. --Tagishsimon (talk)

The root category is now Category:Rail transport timelines. Slambo (Speak) 18:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

This article

I am starting to rewrite parts of this article, since it leaves out many of the main railway lines operating in Ireland at the time specified. I am using the Railway Year Book for 1912 as my guide. I also feel that the paragraph discussing the overall picture of transport prior to the railways is a far too sketchy:

• canal transport had made big inroads in the carrying of freight long before the railways: two big canal projects were underway in the late 18th century
• mail coaches run by the General Post Office and others far preceded (by well over 100 years!) those "horse-car" services of Charles Bianconi (who himself was only one of many, and operated mostly in the south)
• I don't believe that the Irish hoi poloi were sedentary (= doing things sitting down): they worked liked mad in agriculture. The roads created by the mail coaches had already got people travelling between centres of population
• the article itself says that the Dublin and Kingstown railway was opened in 1834, so what's this about the Waterford line?
• all railways are "held up by legislation" - you can't open one without an Act of Parliament

Peter Shearan 09:55, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• My first addition is to summarise the railways as at the beginning of the 19th century: there were many more than is shown at present. I shall (eventually) put the paragraph on the first railway before that list. I think that, since the information I have on each of the main lines is fairly extensive (ie listing most of the constituents of each one) it will be better to then write an article for every one of the main lines, thus avoiding turning this article into too much of a jumbo!

Please be patient!!! Peter Shearan 11:00, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• List of all railways now completed. A separate (brief) chapter is now needed for each of the main railways, even if they do not have a separate article, like the existing ones

Peter Shearan 06:27, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Gauges

Else where is says that the Dublin and Drogheda Railway used 5 ft. 2 in. not 5 ft. 3 in !

Please explain!

Tabletop 23:58, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, the D&DR was initially laid using a track gauge of 5 ft 2 in. Have amended the article. -- Picapica 12:39, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

GNR(I)

Great Northern of Ireland Railway

Ought this not to be Great Northern Railway of Ireland? -- Picapica 12:11, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

I have checked a extensive list of railway companies of Ireland and cannot find this abbreviation, assume that it is a abbreviation with a foreign twist "Great Northern Railway (Ireland)", for instance [1]. Djegan 18:34, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Djegan, a chara:

It appears my message was excessively cryptic! It was not the abbreviation GNR(I) I was wanting to call attention to. I'd thought that that was too well known to need any elaboration (no "foreign twists" involved!). Have a look at these images: [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18]

No, it was about this Great Northern of Ireland Railway (sic) mentioned in the article. The doubt I was attempting to cast was on the very existence of any railway thus called. The references in the article actually relate to the Great Northern Railway (Ireland), established by the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) Act of 1877 -- hence the abbreviation GNR(I). There was never, to my knowledge, any railway called the "Great Northern of Ireland". -- Picapica 22:50, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

See further discussion of this matter at User_talk:Picapica. I propose to make relevant changes to "Great Northern of Ireland Railway" references shortly. -- Picapica 20:42, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

This article is hardly impartial, to quote - "The population of Donegal is expanding rapidly and deserves to have a rail service"

Tralee and Dingle Light Railway

There is a discrepancy in the lines distance on this page (37.5 miles) and the main Tralee and Dingle Light Railway page (31 miles). Does anyone have the correct distance? ww2censor 16:57, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

• Both articles are correct. The main page quotes the distance of the main line between Tralee & Dingle as 31.65 miles plus the 6-mile branch to Castlegregory. This page gives the total for both main & branch lines. To quote from a BOT accident report:[19]

INQUIRY INTO THE ACCIDENT AT CAMP ON MAY 22, 1893,

The line is single, except at stations, and the gauge is 3 ft. The main line from Tralee to Dingle, on which the accident happened, is 31 miles 52 chains in length, of which 27 miles 61 chains are laid along the side of the public road, and may be considered as a tramway, the remaining 3 miles 71 chains being a light railway through fields and mountain land.

Suckindiesel (talk) 10:22, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Gauge of Dublin tramway

Does anybody know wether the Dublin tramway (Luas) has the broad gauge og Irish railways (1600 mm) or normal gauge (1435 mm). I was there and saw it but opposite to what I had expected I didn't think it looked broader than normal gauge. 85.8.0.197 21:56, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

The original Dublin tram (DUTC) was 5-ft 3-in (1600-mm), same as Irish railway, the Luas is 4-ft 8.5-in (1435-mm) The reason for using standard gauge for the Luas was, supposedly, to enable the purchase of "off the shelf" i.e. cheaper rolling stock. Suckindiesel 23:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

No - it was to enable tighter turns and a narrower loading gauge to use less road space. Rolling stock for Irish broad gauge railways is not really much more than for standard gauge, as it's the same stock used (e.g the late 1980s carriages are British Mark IIIs), but with different bogies (the bits under the front and back of the carriages that have the wheels). zoney ♣ talk 12:47, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

All very compelling reasons undoubtably, however I still think the choice of gauge was to allow the purchase of a standard product, i.e. the Citadis tram Suckindiesel 19:37, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality disputed - Too many POV's

Although very informative, this article has way to many POV (points of view). The sections Rationalisation, Steady as she goes, Rail revival and The future are full of unnecessary opinions and remarks and no references. These sections risk being removed in the near future unless they are significantly upgraded to a neutral point of view NPOV with references. Ga2re2t 15:58, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Due to a lack of movement in this area, the above mentioned sections have been removed. To allow for further discussion, they have been copied to the following page:

Talk:History of rail transport in Ireland/Deleted sections

For more information on Wikipedia's neutral point of view and no original research policies, please visit the following:

• Wikipedia:Neutral point of view
• Wikipedia:No original research

Ga2re2t (talk) 13:51, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Most of those sections you claim as being POV and NOR are full of facts. While perhaps not well written in a neutral tone and not well referenced, the essence is all true. Most people marking sections as POV are not a hasty as you to delete as you seem to be. ww2censor (talk) 15:01, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that there are quite a number of facts, but none of them are referenced. None, not a single one. The essence being true is, I'm afraid, not acceptable policy and adding "essentially true" passages to Wikipedia should be discouraged, in my opinion. The passages are a rambling selection of chatter about rail in Ireland with what I feel to be a generally bitter tone. Add to that stupid remarks such as "The Ulster Transport Authority is particularly reviled in railway circles", the sections had to go. If you want, feel free to re-integrate trimmed down versions with undeniable facts backed up with references where possible. But I stand by my position that the entire text should not be re-integrated. I might be nice and do the trimming myself sometime. Ga2re2t (talk) 16:34, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

If you are going to start being quite this aggressive in implementing deletion of uncited text as opposed to POV, which is what you tagged this article, then you will have to start removing a lot of content. Why not try to fix some of the POV problems you see in the article instead? The two reasons are quite different and should be treated as such. Unfortunately I don't have any of my older Irish railway books here so can't do it myself. You could also notify the WikiProject Trains and see if someone there could help out. Cheers ww2censor (talk) 05:13, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Quote: The two reasons are quite different and should be treated as such. Hmmm, agree and disagree. I agree that if we were all to go about removing all uncited text and data then we would end up removing a ridiculous amount of content. But, and this is a big but, without citations articles may as well just be fiction and so neutrality cannot be guaranteed. You and I know that most of us mean well when we add uncited text and I don't deny doing it often. I suppose I just got carried away with the notion of being able to wield some editing power, but I also wanted to bring home the point that there is a line that shouldn't be crossed when it comes to adding unverified text to Wikipedia. The text I removed was almost two pages of uncited text, which, in my not so modest opinion, was abuse of Wikipedia. Ga2re2t (talk) 03:34, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I've gone back and made a preliminary pass over the problem sections to remove the most glaring POV issues. I've ignored the need to cite material, keeping stuff that appears to be citable but not checking it. I've left the POV tags in for the moment but would appreciate someone who knows the area to review it. If there's no response by Sunday I'll be removing the tags anyway. Note that I do not know anything about Irish raliroading so there's certainly the possibility that I've made some stupid error or another. Mangoe (talk) 14:52, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, that's fine by me. My aim was to get the issue moving by some of the people who are dedicated to rail on Wikipedia (which I am not). Acting on what ww2censor said above, I'll change the tags to indicate a lack of sources. In fact, the entire article needs a clean-up on sources so I'll just put a general tag at the top of the page. Some of the sources appear to be linked in the External Links section at the bottom, so I imagine this is where one should start looking if they wish to begin the clean-up. I accept that it'll take time though so I won't be aggressive with deletion in the near future ;-) Ga2re2t (talk) 07:33, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Former stations?

I'd have mentioned this under the former stations talk section but nobody checks that. Does anyone know if this is a former station? You might have to click back to the 2009 satellite image. 54.604976°N 5.831997°W --76.115.67.114 (talk) 05:58, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Seems to be co-ords of Stormont? Suckindiesel (talk) 11:33, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Could be Knock, 06/05/1850-24/04/1950, also called Knock & Belmont 01/06/1866-01/10/1888. Suckindiesel (talk) 14:10, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

SL&NC

I've changed the gauge to Irish gauge as I can't see any reason for it being Stephenson gauge. The Sligo, Leitrim and Northern Counties Railway article states Irish gauge. If anyone can prove otherwise, please change both places... Peridon (talk) 12:53, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

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