permanentway

Flickr is sometimes amazing! In August 1965 via Alistair Ness. That is seven year old Alistair ... 1 September 1959 was a Tuesday ...

An ideal place for a bird to build its nest without fear of disturbance. So more so in 1959 than 31 years previously. Londonderry Sentinel - Tuesday 10 July 1928:

A wagtail has built her nest underneath boards covering the points the Clogher Valley Bailway line at Maguiresbridge Station. Although the points are moved each time a train passes over the nest, the bird sits calmly hatching her four eggs.

At wikipedia we learn it opened in 1859, closed in 1957, just a couple of years before this shot.

Barbara Griggs mourned the passing of the Clogher Valley line in her column in Ireland's Saturday Night on Saturday 04 May 1968

I was with friends in a car coming from Enniskillen via the Clogher Valley. a region I once had a weaknoss for. I knew it when the old Clogher Valley Railway meandered through woods, on the roadside, and along streets of wee towns. Romantic, charming, and out of this world. It ran from Maguiresbridge to Tynan. There was Augher, Clogher, FivemiletwAm, Baliygawley, Caledon: all delightful wee villages. except for big Aughnacloy with its wide square. its markets, and all that, and the railway workshops down the hill. It was, so to speak. a diadem of a valley, the towns and villages strung on it like jewels. To-day? Mere unimpressive items on a wide trunk road. They'd lost their characteristic background.

The 1906 railway map shows how it is the terminus of the Clogher Valley railway as well as a stop on the Dundalk to Enniskillen route. The Clogher Valley narrow gauge closed in 1942.

By 1981 the roof was in disrepair


(Sligo Champion - Friday 30 October 1981)

Is this what's left of it? Streetview PS I think the old station house is a bit further than the building on the left, better seen in this streetview from a viewpoint slightly to the right, with a vestige of the platform still visible.

That is some change over the years.

MIND THE GAP! Miss J B Dodwell, a nurse, had a nasty accident at the station in 1904

When leaving it [the train] at Balysodare she found (it is alleged) that the platform was lower than the floor of the carriage, and that there was a large space between carriage and platform. While trying to reach the latter she slipped and fell between it and the carriage. She had a narrow escape. "Fortunately the train was not in motion," said her counsel, but she was very much injured, and had to be taken on to Enniskillen.

Miss Dodwell was off work for a month and was awarded £150* damages at Derry City Assizes. (Irish Independent - Thursday 23 March 1905) *£14,000 - £24,000 depending on which inflation calculator you use.

From eiretrains: Ballysadare, Co.Sligo, is located on the Midland Great Western Railway's Dublin to Sligo line, and is the last station before Sligo itself. The station opened with the line in 1862, but closed to passengers in 1963 and to goods in 1975. The station had two platforms, but the up platform and signal cabin have been demolished since the track upgrading. The derelict station buildings and goods shed are on the down side. Until the late 1950s, Ballysadare Station was shared between CIE and the Sligo Leitrim and Northern Counties Railway, who operated trains to and from Sligo and Enniskillen. The line from Ballysadare to Sligo was worked as double track until 1959 when the SLNCR line closed, and was lifted soon after. At the north end of the station there as a long siding which diverged through a short rocky cutting into Ballysadare Flour Mill, but was lifted in the late 1960s.

Mr. O'Dea is always the prophet of doom.

So here's where it was: bit.ly/2RWYGPV

And bizarrely, here's where it still is: goo.gl/maps/3BGQ2mVuAvyxTvtg6

The railway is gone, admittedly, but still, a bit of a half-hearted effort by O'Dea today.

quietly hums the blues classic "hear my train a comin'" a NLI classic for Hendrix week ( yes, like many it is believed that there was a lost Irish greatgrandparent).