Irish Railway Architecture

Danger danger! High voltage! Such is the message I am greeted with when trying to catch a glimpse of the original Raheny station building. Electric Six aside, a fire has not happened here (to my knowledge) although the barbed fencing suggests the risk of one is not far off. Discos on the other hand, have. Danger! Front entrance to original Raheny Station A Georgian two-storey building, the station entrance at street level is interesting in that it drops to the basement at platform level. Rather than placing a single-storey station and having to dig a sloped entrance, passengers could make their way to the train via internal staircases – much cheaper. Original Raheny Station from platform level Residential in appearance, its symmetry and gabled central front doorway reveal its function as a station; key features such as these demonstrate the emerging architectural ‘idea of a railway station’. Opened on 25 May 1844 on the original Dublin and Drogheda Railway (to become Dublin ...

Apologies for the absence – Athens called and archaeology of the Classical kind took over my thoughts (and baklava, yum!). But Monastiraki Metro Station’s (opened 1895) mirroring of the rounded arcade of the opposite Tzistarakis Mosque (built 1759 and now a museum) and the looming Parthenon (started c.447 BC) provided me with the picture-postcard of architectural and engineering metamorphoses from the ancients to the present-day. Monastiraki Station on the right mirroring Tzistarakis Mosque on the left with the Acropolis looming large in the centre. The marblesque magnificence of Greece may seem completely unconnected to Ireland, but key features from Classical architecture crop up in all kinds of places, especially Irish railway buildings. Symmetry, pointed pediments and squared-functionality can be found in workshops, for example. The ‘Parthenons of Practicality’ perhaps? Or perhaps I need to calm down. Parthenons of Practicality? The Athenian temple and the GNRI's eng...