On the old steam train from Tralee
The Tralee & Dingle Steam Railway has become an unlikely tourist attraction — more than a century after the tracks were first laid. HUGH DOUGHERTY took a ride on this reminder of a by-gone age.
As we rattled along between Tralee and Blennerville on the narrow guage Tralee and Dingle Steam Railway, it was hard to imagine that 50 years ago men were ripping up the tracks on what has become one of Ireland’s leading tourist railways.
At the head of our train was engine number 5T, the only survivor of the original line, which opened in 1892 and ran along the roadside and over the mountains to Dingle, until the last train in 1953.
Yet here we were, steaming along from Tralee, heading for the start of the Dingle Peninsula, as thousands of passengers must have done down the years. This is a railway that has distorted space and time as is steams along today.
And there’s a remarkable tale to tell of how the beautifully-restored engine, puffing strongly at the head of our two-coach train, was sent first to the Cavan & Leitrim Railway, where she ran until 1959, before being shipped over the Atlantic to a museum in the United States.
Incredibly, she was rescued from exile there and returned to her native Tralee in 1985, finally taking to the restored two-mile line in 1994, after a great deal of effort involving local businessmen and the council.
If you’re in Tralee, a ride on the railway, which runs from April to October is a must. For you’ll quickly pick up the spirit of the old T&D, a line that played its part in the War of Independence, saw thousands of migrants from the Blaskets and the Dingle Peninsula make their way to new lives, transported tons of fish from Dingle Harbour, and was written about by authors such as Maurice O’Sullivan, who described the Dingle train in his famous book Twenty Years A-growing.
Today, the line stops at Blennerville, where you can, like the 40,000 who ride this train annually, walk across from the platform to visit the Blennerville Windmill, one of just three now in working order in Ireland, and where you can view a superb exhibition on the famine and emigration.
But in days gone by the railway threaded its way up and over Glenagalt and on down to Dingle. Which is why it’s worth jupming in the car to trace its route. For the scenery is magnificent, and there are so many railway relics around that it’s not hard to relive the journeys made on this unique line.
Drive out along the shore to Camp, where you’ll find the site of Castlegregory Junction, where, legend has it, Tralee & Dingle crews spent plenty of time watering themselves, while their engines also took on water to tackle the mountainous trip westwards.
Here you’ll find a water tower still standing, complete with a plaque recalling the old line, while over the road there’s O’Neills Railway Tavern advertising its services by means of a fine painting of the same engine that pulls your train to Blennerville, hauling a wagon load of Beamish Stout instead of tourists!
There’s also a memorial to the Camp train crash of May 22, 1893, when a train ran away, killing several dozen pigs it was carrying, as well as its cre. It’s a sign of how aware local people still are of the heritage and lore of the line, half-a-century after it closed.
You can easily trace the ferocious gradient the trains climbed as they struggled up Glenagalt. The views back down to the sea at Tralee Bay and the Maherees are stunning.
The railway then ran along and across the main road, down to Annascaul, where a water tower still stands as a reminder of the line’s glory days of cattle specials and fair day trains.
If you want to turn railway detective, you can also hunt out the extant Lispole Viaduct, and down at Dingle you’ll find that Danno’s restaurant and bar uses a picture of one of the trains as its trademark, and its entrance is graced with a mural of a train crossing the viaduct.
Back at Blennerville, one of the great rituals to watch is the railway shutting down for the day, as the crew drops the ash from the locomotive, coals her up for the next day’s work, and shunts her gently into the shed for the night — just as generations of Tralee & Dingle crews must have done when the line was in its heyday.
This line is Irish railway heritage and tourist attraction all rolled into one, and the railway does a real job of work by carrying passengers to and from Blennerville Windmill
— as well as providing local jobs.
So, if you want an insight into what it was like to travel on the narrow gauge in the Ireland of yesteryear, a ride on what is Ireland’s most westerly piece of railway and the country’s only steam line running daily during the tourist season, then book your ticket for the Tralee & Dingle.
And make that journey on westwards too, dreaming of the days when your engine battled those gradients and when the Dingle Peninsula was so much more remote than it is today, to see where the trains ran.
It would take millions to relay the track all the way to Dingle, but what a tourist attraction that would be. For now, you have to content yourself with that two-mile clatter behind steam as far as Blennerville, but it’s a journey not to be missed.
And as you sway along with steam billowing past your window, and with the mountains of the Dingle Peninsula ahead, it’s not hard to imagine that you’ve stepped back in time to the days when steam was king on the narrow guage railways of Ireland.
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