The GHCJR

[gph2000]

I was doing a little digging on the fate of the Kings County Chronicle (Taken over by the Midland Tribune in the mid 1940's) and one of the few online pieces caught my eye.

An article from October 29, 1845 mentions the prospectus of the  Great Hibernian Central Junction Railway with capital of 2 million pounds.

I'd never heard of it before and with that much early capital I'm surprised more did not come of it.

Here are some links from Google telling more of the story:

http://www.from-ireland.net/the-great-hibernian-central-junction-railway/

http://www.from-ireland.net/hibernian-central-junction-railway-1845/

 

 

[NIR]

Limerick to Clones via nowhere in particular...

[gph2000]

Not sure how a route like that would ever have amounted to much...

[jhb171achill]

Indeed. It is reminiscent of the even crazier scheme to build the Ulster & Connaught Railway in 1909. This would have had a railway line running from - wait for it - Greenore - to CLIFDEN!!! Over 200 miles of NARROW GAUGE track, serving not one single solitary place of any significance or size along its entire route, except Newry. Tempting though it is to any railway historian, it is a good thing it was never built.

[Mayner]

The Great Hibernian Central Junction looks more like a serious railway scheme than a purely speculative venture to separate gullible shareholders from their money.

Clones-Limerick makes sense in terms of an extension of the Ulster Railways Belfast-Armagh-Clones main line to a port in the South West. In the 1840s Ulster Railway immediate objective was to build a line to the south west of the province rather than link up with the Dublin & Drogheda potentially taking business away from Belfast and the North East.

At the time the Dublin & Drogheda and Ulster Railway built their railways to different gauges to block competitors from invading their territories.

While the provisional committee had the usual list of titled gentry and prominent people, it included directors of connecting railways (in Ulster) and the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, potentially opening up shipping links to the Iberian Peninsula, Egypt, India, the Far East and Australia. Important for opening up export markets for Ulster's manufactured goods and raw materials in return.

Line today  shipping Companies Peninsular and Oriental may have been using the threat of setting up a steam ship route out of Limerick to obtain better terms from English ports rather than  seriously supporting the scheme.

In a way part of the route was completed with the Ulster Railway & Irish North West extending the Portadown-Clones line to Cavan and the Midland building the Inny-Junction Cavan Line. 

 

[gph2000]

And from the other end, it got as far as Birr.

[DiveController]

one of the most interesting things in Birr form the same era

 

[Broithe]

And still the site of one of the, if not the, first suspension bridge in Europe.

The castle grounds are most certainly worth visiting.