Chugging along: An Irishman’s Diary on Dublin’s vanished railway systems, the Atmospheric and Guinness

Dublin once had two remarkable railway systems, both long vanished. One was the Atmospheric Railway between what is now Dún Laoghaire and Dalkey, while the other was the elaborate railway in the Guinness brewery at St James’s Gate.

The Atmospheric Railway was opened to traffic in 1844, a decade after the Westland Row to Kingstown line had been built. The new railway ran for just under two miles, following the track of the old tramway from Dalkey quarry to the pier in Kingstown.

A pneumatic tube was laid between the rails, and the train was drawn upwards to Dalkey through the suction of a piston connecting with that tube. The train was quite fast, with the average speed around 25 mph, although the maximum speed obtained in test runs was just over 50 mph.

The service was also very regular, every half hour, between 8am and 9.30pm. The journey time was three minutes and trains could carry 200 or more passengers.

The train ran back to Kingstown by gravity, running at a sedate 18 mph, but often, on the last stretch of track, third-class passengers were required to get out and push.

It was the first railway of its kind in the world; this novel means of propulsion had been pioneered by the great English railway engineer, Brunel. But there was intense competition between him and another railway pioneer, Stephenson, who thought that trains needed locomotives to haul them. International newspaper interest in the new Dalkey railway was intense.

But the system had one fatal flaw; it needed leather flaps to keep it airtight. Extra attendants had to ensure the flaps worked properly, but rats did for the railway by gnawing at the leather to eat the grease. In winter, the flaps froze.

So 10 years after it opened, the Atmospheric Railway made way for the new main line from Kingstown to Bray, just as the rival Harcourt Street line to Bray was opening. Today, there’s virtually nothing left to remind people of the old railway, except for Atmospheric Road in Dalkey, an area commonly known as “The Metals” , where the Dalkey station and the engine house for the air pump were once located.

Similar railways operated on the outskirts of Paris, in south Devon and in New York City. Modern versions of the system operate at Porto Alegre in Brazil and in Jakarta in Indonesia.

The other old railway in Dublin was the eight-mile-long narrow gauge system in the Guinness brewery. In 1873, the brewery had been substantially expanded when Guinness bought land between St James’s Gate and the river Liffey. A 22-inch narrow-gauge railway system was constructed to carry materials around the brewery, as well as taking casks of stout to barges moored on the Liffey quays. Guinness even had a safe on wheels that took weekly wages round the brewery.

An ingenious spiral tunnel was built to link the higher and the lower parts of the site; this tunnel was based on the design of tunnels used in the Alps. At the time, Guinness had a highly inventive Dublin-born chief engineer, Samuel Geoghegan, who had gained much experience abroad, including in Turkey and India, before joining Guinness. He did well at Guinness; he lived in Ailesbury Road. Coincidentally, his brother William was the head brewer.

The first new locomotives didn’t work well, because they couldn’t keep out the dirt from the tracks, but the first steam engine designed by Geoghegan, and built in 1882, proved very satisfactory. Many more were built, including 17 at the old Cork Street foundry. They lasted until diesel working started in the 1940s.

The Guinness railway lasted until 1975 and two of its engines are preserved, perfectly restored, in the transport gallery at the Guinness Storehouse. Another of the old locos is at the Stradbally woodland railway in Co Laois. Two Guinness locos, one steam, the other diesel, are in the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum. Further examples are in the Welsh narrow-gauge railway museum and in a railway museum in West Sussex.

Another intriguing feature of railway working at Guinness was the broad gauge railway that ran for about 500 yards, linking the brewery with the goods yard in what is now Heuston station. This section of track was scrapped in 1965 to improve road traffic close to Heuston station.

Fortunately, artefacts and material relating to the Guinness railway are well preserved in the Guinness Storehouse and Archives, which means that the brewery has one of the best railway museums in these islands.