Kingscourt railway station

Kingscourt railway station is a former passenger and freight station in Kingscourt, County Cavan, Ireland.

The station was built in 1875 by the independent Navan and Kingscourt Railway, as the terminus of its line from Navan. In 1888, the company was purchased by the Midland Great Western Railway. The MGWR envisaged extending the line from Kingscourt to Cookstown via Carrickmacross, Castleblayney, Armagh and Dungannon, but this never materialised.^[1] (A line from Castleblayney to Armagh, via Keady, was eventually built in the early 1900s and operated by the Great Northern Railway (Ireland).)

Following the creation of the Irish Free State, the MGWR became part of the Great Southern Railways in 1925, which in turn became part of Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ) in 1945. In 1947, CIÉ withdrew passenger services between Kingscourt and Navan. Goods services from Kingscourt to Dublin Port via Navan and Clonsilla were re-routed via Drogheda in 1958^[1] and then largely withdrawn in 1963, following which the section to Navan was used almost exclusively for the transport of gypsum from a terminal adjacent to the station, owned and operated by BPB Gypsum Industries.

After a strike by Irish Rail staff in 2001, Gypsum Industries decided to transfer its traffic to road. The last gypsum train departed Kingscourt on 30 October 2001.^[2] The last train of all to operate to and from Kingscourt was a weed-spraying train on 7 June 2002,^[3] after which the line was disconnected at Tara Junction in Navan.

The station building at Kingscourt remains intact today, having been partially restored in the mid-2000s. Also still extant are the station's single platform, the gypsum terminal and a goods shed. The tracks also remain in situ, albeit heavily overgrown.

References

Coordinates: 53°53′9.79″N 6°47′56.72″W / 53.8860528°N 6.7990889°W / 53.8860528; -6.7990889