The new well publicised Strategic Rail Review we briefly mentioned recently, amounts to an all-island overview and one which, if implemented as is now recommended, would see Mullingar regain lost ground. Obviously, it is realised that the downgrading of travel and transport by rail, and the switch to the use and development of the roads system, and closure and removal of key railway links was not a good idea.
Restoring them will be complicated and very costly. However, even fifteen or twenty years ago, when restoring the Mullingar-Athlone rail link was strongly advocated, and would have been much less costly, the value of doing so wasn’t appreciated or visualised.
Today’s commentators will probably be aware that the railway link between Mullingar and Athlone was in use for well over a century, but it is often forgotten that a rail link from Mullingar to Belfast via Cavan also existed previously.
The late Micheál O Conlain of Mullingar and Castlepollard, not only a great local historian but also a keen railway historian and enthusiast, knew all the details of the Cavan line via Inny Junction, when wagonloads of cattle – the “fair specials” on the first Tuesdays of each month – were sent on this line, and linked into the Great Northern Rail system at Cavan, en route to Belfast for shipment to Scotland.
He could also detail when upwards of 300 employees were working at Mullingar Station, and the town was a key rail centre in the midlands in times when steam trains were the norm, as were fairs rather than cattle marts.
The new Rail Review recommends a double track between Mullingar and Maynooth as a priority, and it is needed now, but the records show that many decades ago, the original system was a double line from Dublin via Mullingar to Ballinasloe, and the Sligo line was a double one to Longford. Unfortunately, by the late 1920s, many rail lines across the country were already being closed and lifted, and it was in 1959 that the line to Cavan was finally removed.
The railway gantry at Clonmore, Mullingar built in 1924, was a source of great employment for decades, but sadly, while intended and built for assembling track laying sections, the scenario changed. The special train based there began to be used instead in scrapping rail lines, and after the diesel engines appeared in the late 1950s and steam trains were abandoned, the gantry was a major depot for the scrapping of outdated steam engines.
Mullingar railway station has survived, but is only a shadow of what it once was – even though the Sligo-Dublin system is busier than ever. The major question is, will the proposals contained in the Strategic Rail Review be implemented? Will the Mullingar – Athlone line be restored, and a proper link-up onwards to Galway and the western stations re-established?
The 2050 target date given for the overall project, together with a current estimate of €37 billion don’t inspire confidence. If the national children’s hospital, costed at €790 million in 2013, is now going to cost triple that amount (€2.24bn and counting) a decade later, could the rail restoration plans end up costing €150 billion by 2050?
Is that why economist David McWilliams suggests that maybe we should outsource the task of building the needed railway infrastructure to others? And that since we buy almost everything else we’re using daily, including cars and electronics from China, we might as well ask them to build our railways, do it faster, and at less cost. Maybe if only economics mattered, but what about the totalitarian political system, and the terms and conditions applying?
And how they deal with human rights and people whose religious beliefs they reject? As an alternative, he suggested the Italians, describing them as the most efficient and cost effective infrastructure builders in Europe. What he’s saying is that we have an abysmal track record on big infrastructural projects and if we want acceptable travel infrastructure, we need to bypass Irish bureauracy and get some outsider to do it. Is it that bad?
All we’re expecting is maybe seeing a double rail link to Maynooth and (we’d hope) a faster trains system stopping at Killucan, rather than offering locals buses on slowed-down roads. And hopefully, the rail link to Athlone restored within a dozen years, if the will is there and money is found. After that ….