A railway connected Galway city with the coastal town of Clifden, about 80km away. The sounds of a steam train haven’t echoed off the wild valleys since the mid-1930s, but Jim Deegan, the chief executive officer of Railtours Ireland and a lifelong railway enthusiast with a particular love for the old Clifden line, and a score of volunteers, are changing that.
In recent years, despite the Covid-19 pandemic interruption, the Connemara Railway Maam Cross Heritage Centre has begun to take shape for the first time since the original station closed in 1935. With the support of Failte Ireland, a full-scale working reproduction of the historic signal cabin was built.
The Connemara Express ran from Dublin’s Broadstone station to bring in tourists in the early 1900s. The train was painted in a blue and cream livery, which in the long term Deegan hopes to recreate behind a brand new steam engine.
“The railways were the genesis of tourism in Ireland. Angling was one of the main tourism activities which brought in a very wealthy clientele from the opening of the railway and was really the start of tourism in Connemara,” says Deegan.
Trains are machines of nostalgia. Stepping into a 1955 dining car on the site to serve the first meal in decades, a caterer from Sullivan's Country Grocer immediately conjured memories from a bygone area, remembering traveling by train with her grandmother, and the “scary” passageway between carriages.
They tell less sentimental stories, too, of significant community and cultural heritage.
The railway to Clifden built in 1895 was one means of providing employment and opportunities to local people outside of agriculture. Indeed it did, but it also proved an easy way for countless emigrants to leave Connemara, many never to return.
Deegan's vision for a heritage centre includes these cultural connections as well as rail enthusiasts' penchant for historically accurate details, but it also maintains an agenda for fun. For every historically accurate reproduction, there is a categorically creative element popping up on site.
The spirit of fun is how the dozens of volunteers, who drive from as far as Cork and Dublin to breathe new life into the old rail, are to be applauded for bringing the project well into its next chapter. While not yet open to the public (the site boasts an operable narrow gauge pop-up railway), elements of the project are rapidly coming along.
This includes the dining carriage café, a most unique rest stop in the wilds of Connemara, and the inspiration for our fundraiser. We've teamed with Horby to bring you the classic Christmas, model trains, with proceeds benefiting the opening of the Connemara Railway Café.
