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About me

My name is Siobhan Osgood and I am researching the architecture of the former Great Northern Railway of Ireland for my PhD at Trinity College Dublin. My research is funded by the Irish Research Council. 

I gained a Master’s with Distinction in Art History: Art and Ireland at Trinity College Dublin in 2016. My master's thesis, ‘Railway Architecture: The Great Northern Railway at Dundalk’ was awarded the UK’s Association for Industrial Archaeology’s Dissertation Prize in 2017.

I was awarded the Desmond Guinness Scholarship in 2021 to facilitate research in Spain. 
In 2019 I was awarded the studentship prize for the Society of Industrial Archaeology (USA) conference in Chicago, and have presented my research at the 40th Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference in Chester, and the Irish History Students' Association Conference in Limerick. 
I have given guest lectures for Ulster Architectural Heritage, the Irish Railway Record Society, the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland, Engineers Ireland, and many other history societies. 

Publications include Architecture Ireland, the Association of Industrial Archaeology Journal, Irish Railway Record Society Journal, as well as newspaper articles. 

I am always interested in writing blogs and articles for publications and journals, as well as giving interviews. I love giving presentations, so feel free to contact me if you'd like me to give a lecture or talk. irishrailarch@gmail.com

Follow me on Twitter: @IrishRailArch
Follow me on Instagram: @IrishRailArch

Here are two heritage videos which I filmed with Irish Rail about Dundalk, and Malahide railway stations: 

Dundalk Railway Station

Malahide Railway Station






Popular posts from this blog

Paradise Lost: Howth Junction and Donaghmede

Alighting onto a post-apocalyptic concrete and steel abyss I surveyed the mesh of stairs, like an Escher lithograph, leading everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. “Where am I?” asked a bemused elderly lady I had stepped onto the platform with: “Howth Junction”. “Oh dear”. Relativity, M. C. Escher, Lithograph, 1953. Oh dear indeed. Where is the front of this ‘station’? I refuse to call it one: it is merely a set of stairs and a lift. Following signs to the exit I’m greeted with a dystopian Alice in Wonderland prospect of turning left into a car park and right along an overgrown, dirty footpath. I choose the latter; at least it might lead somewhere. The path to former station master's house, Howth Junction Dodging filth like the mad hatter, the elegant brick gables, stone lintels and terracotta chimney stacks of the former station master’s house can be spied amongst a wilderness of ivy, grass and razored-fencing. Forlornly neglected, the graceful merging of Classical ped
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Sweet Dreams at Navan

Upon my first visit to Navan in 2018 in search of the railway station I was astounded that such a large town could have had its train service removed, when much smaller villages along the Sligo and Maynooth routes were still connected to the capital. Little did I know that two years later I would marry a Navan-native, settle in the area and pass the station every day, miffed and mournful at its wasted potential. The line opened with ambition 172 years ago in 1850, built by the Dublin and Drogheda Railway as a branch line from Drogheda to Oldcastle. Boyne Valley Railtour at Navan, 1977, Railway Preservation Society of Ireland My station safari was rewarded by passing over the extant railway tracks at the station’s level crossing – the line is still in operation for Tara Mines – and the heralding of the former station master’s house. A typical two-storey GNR example, its red brick man has been pebbled-dashed, disguising the polychromatic contrast intended for the, still exposed, yellow b
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Spinning at Balbriggan

Recovered from my rather cranky experience at Skerries , my eyes are rewarded and my heart gladdened on the approach to Balbriggan. Arriving from the south and entering the station over John Macneill’s viaduct, a neat, contained lump of a station reassures me as I alight. Designed by George Papworth for the Dublin and Drogheda Railway (DDR) and built in 1853, Balbriggan railway station is a single-storey H-plan brown brick affair, with flanking Romanesque arches. The current stairway from hell take me across the tracks and provide a sweeping view of the beach and harbour, as well as a stairway to heaven: the former piers for the original footbridge. The beats to Talking Head’s Road to Nowhere start bubbling in the back of my mind. Beside the station building and its adjoining flightless steps stands the hammered stone and red brick base of the former, seemingly unadaptable, water tower. A more sympathetic contemporary alteration in the form of glass sliding doors announce
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