Train station is now 140 years old

AS the country celebrated St. Patrick’s Day 2019, the 140th anniversary of the opening of Charleville train station passed by unnoticed.

The first steam train chugged slowly into the new Charleville train station on the 17th March 1849, following completion of the new train line from Thurles to Mallow, which eventually went on to Cork.

The Charleville Historical Journal of 1986 recorded that before the construction work on the laying of the railway could commence the land had to be bought or acquired by law from the owners of the land through which it was to pass. Colonel Harrison of Castle Harrison, Ballyhea was one of the big land owners in the area at the time and he would not allow the line to be cut through his land, hence the line had to bypass his land on the southern perimeter, and so the distance that it is from the town.

The man contracted to build the 78 mile line from Thurles to Cork was William Dargan, and the train covered the 129 mile distance from Dublin to Charleville in under five hours.

The coming of the train to Charleville made travel easier for people and also opened up the town from isolation to a very viable centre for the transport of people and goods to a wide swathe of countryside to the west as far as the banks of the Shannon River.

While some local industries thrived others fell by the wayside as the train also created competition as similar products now had comparatively easy access to Charleville.

For dairy products it meant quicker and cheaper access to the larger towns and sea ports for export, as indeed it did for the live export of cattle from the monthly fairs as buyers were able to get the beasts easier and more quickly to the cattle boats than heretofore.

The line from Mallow to Cork was finally completed some six months later in October 1849, and Charleville’s importance as a railway station was greatly enhanced with the opening of the line from Charleville Junction to Bruree at the end of 1861, and extended to Croom and Patrickswell and eventually to Limerick in 1865.