Rearranging Ireland's route miles

[Darrman]

There are currently 1,698 (per Wikipedia, citation needed) miles of railway in Ireland. A thought exercise: keep the mileage the same (plus or minus a few miles), but rearrange the places served. For example, closing Portarlington-Athlone to reopen Mullingar-Athlone.

I'd close the Nenagh Branch (52 1/2 miles) and in its place reinstate Harcourt Street (10 1/2 miles), the Bandon to Bandon and relevant connections to Kent (21 miles), the Waterford and Tramore (7 1/4 miles, with another half-mile or so to bridge the Suir and flatten half of Waterford in the interest of connecting it to Plunkett), and the County Down to Comber (8 miles).

Then I'd close the GNR Navan line if that counts as open (17 1/4 miles) to replace it with the MGWR Navan line (~19 1/2 miles). That's 69 3/4 miles replaced with 66 3/4 miles. Take a mile and a quarter of Kingscourt to have a northern Navan terminus, another quarter-mile to move Rosslare Harbour back to its original site, 3/4 miles of the Drogheda cement branch for a Dart turn back station, and I can't think of anything else to use the last 3/4 miles on.

[leslie10646]

Pity that all the track isn't Peco Setrack, then you could do all of this.

Pretty good choices1

[Mol_PMB]

Can we do the same with the 3’ gauge and use all the BnM track being lifted to reinstate the more useful narrow gauge lines? As I’m in Cork right now I’ll nominate the CBPR and extend it with a branch to the airport!

[jhb171achill]

2 hours ago, Mol_PMB said:

Can we do the same with the 3’ gauge and use all the BnM track being lifted to reinstate the more useful narrow gauge lines? As I’m in Cork right now I’ll nominate the CBPR and extend it with a branch to the airport!

Derry to Letterkenny & Cork to Passage.