Irish Railway Architecture

Delayed by Covid-19 lockdowns, I finally made a site visit to Gormanston one cloudy afternoon last year when freedom was temporarily restored. What greeted me was enough to elicit social distancing long before any state intervention.  For alone now stands the final cube of the original GNR wooden station which once served Gormanston. Dilapidated, peeling, unsure of its purpose, the remnants seemed to encapsulate the mood of a nation coping with a pandemic.  Gormanston was originally opened as part of the Dublin and Drogheda Railway line in 1845, and had a new station, waiting shelter, station master’s house and signal cabin constructed by the GNR. The design for the wooden station, as it used to stand, was similar to the next stop on our journey, Laytown, which was built in 1899, and so Gormanston was probably built around the same time.  Historic pictures, and those from as recent as 2003, show an intact station, cottagesque in design, but self-contained, functional and fit for purpos