Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 28 November 2013
“Technical Memories (Part 62) –Engineering Success”
Following on from my recent column on Cork in 1945 and promoting the new book West Cork Through Time book, the announcement of the re-opening of the branch railway lines in the winter of 1945, which were closed during the war was received with positivity. Providing access between West Cork and Cork City for the general public including visitors and farmers was the Cork Bandon and South Coast Railway line. The Cork-Bandon line opened to the public on 6 December 1851. The Cork terminus was on Albert Quay, which had three passenger platforms, a carriage storage area, and sidings into the Cork Corporation’s stone yard and into the corn market. The Cork-Bandon Railway Project was an enormous undertaking. The main parts included; the longest railway tunnel in Ireland at Goggins Hill; the Chetwynd Viaduct; a short tunnel bridge under old Blackrock Road near the Albert Quay Terminus; 21 cuttings, 19 embankments and 15 road bridges. The Bandon terminus is now the offices of the Bandon Urban District Council.
Between 1852 and 1894, a further 25 engines were acquired by the railway company. Between 1851 and 1893, the mileage of the West Cork line, extended from 25 to 94 miles. Many West Cork towns attained their own railway stations; Kinsale (1863), Clonakilty (1866), Dunmanway (1866), Drimoleague (1877), Skibbereen (1877), Bantry (1881), Timoleague and Courtmacsherry (1890), Bantry Bay (1892), and Baltimore (1893). Several of the stations and platforms such as those in Drimoleague have survived since the closure of the line in 1961 (due to faster modes of travel such as buses and cars). Opened in 1886, the Skibbereen to Schull line had numerous problems from geological to mechanical issues. The terrain was a constant problem. The gradients and rough land meant that locomotives could only pull three of four times their own weight. This meant that engines like the “Gabriel” named after a mountain to the north of Schull, which started work in 1906 could only attain a maximum speed of 15 miles an hour.
An article on 1 December 1945 in the Evening Echo describes the re-start of the Schull and Skibbereen Light Railway whose re-opening was welcomed by many local people and visitors to the region. The journalist remarked of the scenery; “It is a charming country, which retains a quality of remoteness that is not due to its distances. Off the track of arterial traffic, it by no means suffers from isolation, but at the same time, gives an impression of being self-contained and self-reliant. This quiet distinctiveness and air of placid content constitute a good deal of the charm which visitors find there”.
The journalist writes about an efficient service but “unhurried, free of all business and very sociable”. He recalls his first trip over the line on a crowded summer’s day when an excursion ran the whole length of the line from Skibbereen to Schull, where a regatta was being held. The town of Skibbereen contributed its hundred passengers, and the small stations along the route added their own numbers. Beside the expanding Ilen river, the train went slowly and with “much gentle puffings”, enabled the passengers to have a fine panoramic view of the waters that host ‘Carbery’s Hundred Isles’. As the train gathered more passengers along the way, the little engine “panted more heavily, but made a brave, carefree, vigorous sprint wherever the line offered freewheel facilities”. At Ballydehob, the wide expanse of Schull harbour, Dunmanus Bay and the farther waters of Bantry and Berehaven could be viewed. On this heavy excursion train, every available unit of the passenger carrying rolling stock was pressed into service. Even the guard’s van was filled to overflowing and scores of passengers carried scores more, in terms of children, on their knees. Gallantly the train tried and gallantly it failed.
Determined to take a steep gradient after Ballydehob, the crowd on this day cheered and then a tense silence followed as the “heavily labouring locomotive, ground its way upwards, its puff-puffs becoming slower and more sobbing in tone”. “She’ll do it!” some of the passengers noted hopefully; others shook their heads. Heaving nearly reached the crest of the gradient, there came to the strained ears of the crowded coaches “one mighty sobbing puff that failed to double itself into a puff-puff, and with a hissing of futile steam the train came to a standstill. There were no bitter comments, no reproaches, and if there was disappointment, it was softened by a sympathy for the engine that had tried and failed”. It was agreed that the gradient and the trainload created a position that was unreasonable and unfair to any engine. The train reversed back into the station. A couple of coaches at the rear were swiftly uncoupled and left behind, while the rest of the train went off, taking the gradient “without one faltering breath”. Later the locomotive retraced its journey, gathered up the rest of the train, and after warning blasts of the whistle proceeded with any lingering and remaining patrons to Schull.
West Cork Through Time by Kieran McCarthy and Dan Breen is available in any good Cork book shop and on Amazon. It is published by Amberley Publishing, UK.
Caption:
719a. The Viaduct, Ballydehob (source: Cork Museum)