OTD - 1st March 1888 - opening of Listowel and Ballybunion

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From https://www.monorails.org/tMspages/Listowel.html

An eccentric new railway opened in North Kerry 125 years ago, which was inspired by, of all things, a camel train. Opened to the public on March 1st 1888, this unique railway was the brainchild of a French engineer, Charles Lartigue, who had seen camels in Algeria walking tall and comfortably carrying heavy loads balanced in panniers on their backs. This inspired him to design a new type of railway. Instead of two parallel tracks on the ground, it had a single rail sitting out of harm's way above the sand and held at waist height on A-shaped trestles. Specially-made carriages would sit astride the trestles like panniers.

There was never enough traffic to support the route, and after the line was damaged during the Irish Civil War, the railway was closed in 1924. A short section of track was salvaged, but everything else was scrapped.

However, Kerry people do not give up easily, and a short stretch of approximately 500 meters of the Lartigue Railway opened to the public in Listowel in July of 2003. A new double-side locomotive and two carriages with capacity for 40 passengers were constructed by a railway specialist company in the United Kingdom,

Considering the unavailability of any of the original drawings, this has been a tremendous feat of engineering, and once again people can experience this unique mode of transport.

https://rogerfarnworth.com/2018/12/31/the-listowel-and-ballybunion-railway/

[Robin Summerhill]

History tells us that French engineers have some good ideas and some bad ones. The Listowel & Ballybunion was one of those that could be described as the Betamax, if not the Phillips 2000, equivalent of the railway age. It was hardly likely to catch on, although I suppose some monorail systems have worked as self-contained units.

But he was not alone. I can think of another French engineer, who was only here in the first place because his father backed the side that came second in the French revolution, who had a number of good ideas. He had a number of good ideas, but history tells us than some worked or caught on better than others.

So much for the broad gauge and the atmospheric railway...