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Showing posts from March, 2022

Branching off at Duleek

The branch line from Drogheda to Oldcastle passes through the ancient Boyne Valley landscape of Newgrange toward the Loughcrew Cairns. It was opened to Navan in 1850, first mooted by the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway in 1845, but then managed by the Dublin and Drogheda Railway by the time it opened. Kells was reached by 1853, and then the line extended to Oldcastle in 1863. In 1876 the line was then subsumed into the Great Northern Railway. Duleek is our first stop along this line.  Former Duleek Station and Master's Hosue (Osgood, S.) Along Station Road northward every bungalow is a potential station until the road beneath me bumps over a stone bridge and oop – there’s the former station below on the right hand side. Space for the former cattle-banks lay empty with their access gate still in place. The original iron ‘kissing-gate’ is also in-situ providing access to the platform from the bridge via stone steps. A clever device, it would have prevented precarious slip and tri