Irish Railfans News 1972 The Great Train Robbery & The Train of Tomorrow

[Mayner]

The 1972 editions of IRN are out http://www.steamtrainsireland.com/IRFN/ probably the most exciting time on the railway doing a lot with the first public run of the MK2ds "The Train of Tomorrow".

 

"The Great Train Robbery" and Ryan Air style pre-booked £1 Dublin-Cork returns for insomniacs and clubbers. Out Friday Night back in the early hours of Monday morning, all that was needed was a cocktail bar & jazz band:o.

 

Change in the wind with the 1st McKinsey Report with odd ideas such as closing the DSE south of Arklow, diverting the Dublin Rosslare trains to run via Waterford with a bus transfer to Wexford.

 

 

[dave182]

I see an interesting piece in the May 1973 edition about the (yet to be built) Tara mines site in Navan. Originally the ore was to be shipped from a new rail-connected port facility at Mornington, south of Laytown. Any ideas as to why this never came to pass? Would be a good fictional layout idea!

[josefstadt]

I see an interesting piece in the May 1973 edition about the (yet to be built) Tara mines site in Navan. Originally the ore was to be shipped from a new rail-connected port facility at Mornington, south of Laytown. Any ideas as to why this never came to pass? Would be a good fictional layout idea!

 

To be pedantic: Mornington is north of Laytown. It is at the mouth of the Boyne. If I remember right the project foundered because of cost. Not only was there to be a new line connecting the port to the Dublin-Belfast line, but also a brand new deep water port would also have to be built. Why go to all that trouble and expense when there was a relatively underused (at that time) rail connection to Dublin Port? Also, I think the transport proposals for the ore from Tara to Mornington at one time considered using road transport. Another proposal involved adapting the Boyne Road site to allow trans-shipment of the ore from rail to ship.