North Wall yards

[iarnrod]

Came across this image online which shows the vastness of the freight yards that used to exist at North Wall. Hard to believe that most of the yards and the stock shown here no longer exist. Estimate photo was taken in mid 1980's.

[Noel]

Thats a fabulous photo. They hey day of containers by ship direct to rail.  Now that's all by road.  There is a serious amount of CIE uniload containers in that yard. They must have had some decent freight traffic back then.

[PJR]

great photo, a lot of container alright

[JasonB]

Brilliant photo, a hive of activity back then.How things have changed.

[ttc0169]

Lovely photo-the yards covered a large area.

I see a B+I 40' container on the bottom right of the photo.

[Mayner]

On 2/17/2018 at 11:59 PM, iarnrod said:

Came across this image online which shows the vastness of the freight yards that used to exist at North Wall. Hard to believe that most of the yards and the stock shown here no longer exist. Estimate photo was taken in mid 1980's.

 

It looks like the was taken in the early-mid 1980s before the Bell Lines terminal was transferred to the Holyhead Yard and the run down of the Transtrack sundries services.

Sundries traffic handled in the Midland Yard included a lot of high value urgent traffic including cigarettes, spirits, lubricating oil and motor parts which became a prime target for the growing logistic industry once road transport was de-regulated during the early 1990s.

The sidings in the Midland Yard south of the Sherriff St bridge were used for loading/unloading general container traffic using large fork lifts, including scrap in open containers for the Galway Metal Company & grain traffic

Up to the introduction of the IWT liners there was little direct wharf to rail container traffic through Dublin Port, the majority of rail borne container traffic through Dublin Port involved a road transfer from the Holyhead Yard to the container wharfs north and south of the Liffey. 

The Transtrack Store was built on the site of the old MGWR goods store which was destroyed by fire during the late 1960s. Most of track south of the Sherriff St bridge was abandoned in 2003 for the National Convention Centre and Treasury Holdings apartment developments and the remaining (Cork, Limerick & Ballina) container services diverted to the former groupage terminal on the north side of the Sherriff St bridge.

The decision to run down freight and develop the North Wall site appears to have been as a result of Government pressure for CIE (Mary Harney as Minister of Transport) to cash in on its (under-utilised) assets to free up money for investment in passenger services.  At the same time the closure of Asahi and failure of Bell Lines severely cut into the traffic base and profitability of rail while dis-functional labour relations within IE played into the hands of management and Merrion Street.

Edited February 19, 2018 by Mayner