The Atmospheric railway Kingstown to Dalkey ( 1844 - 1854 )

                            The Atmospheric railway Kingstown to Dalkey ( 1844 - 1854 ) 

The experimental atmospheric railway opened in 1844 , ten years after the first railway was opened from Dublin Westland row ( Pearse station )  to Kingstown station ( Dun Laoghaire ) The inventers of this unique transport were Samuel Clegg and the Samuda brothers they set up a demonstration at Wormwood scrubs , this was attended by the directors of the Kingstown railway . Plans were put in place to extend the land to Dalkey .  James Pim ( Junior ) the treasurer of the railway estimated the line would cost £15,000 .

                                      

illustration of the line near Barnhill road 

The standard gauge line was 9,200 ft in length with an uphill gradient of 1 in 110 , a 15 inch vacuum pipe was used for the ascent to Dalkey generating speeds of up to 40mph the return journey was by means of gravity . The vacuum tube fell 560 yd short of the Dalkey station with train using momentum for the section of the journey . For the return journey the train was pushed by hand until the piston connected with the tube. The contractor was William Dargan and Charles Vignoles was the engineer of the line . Clegg and the Samuda brothers provided the atmospheric equipment , the vacuum was provided by 100 HP single cylinder steam engine at Barnhill road Dalkey . 

The timetable were trains every 30mins between 8am and 6pm and the journey took only 3 minutes reaching speeds of 40mph . the fastest recorded journey took 75 seconds ! The last train ran on April 12th 1854 , and the line was taking over by the Dublin & Wicklow railway converting it to conventional railway with the line opening to the current Dalkey station on October 10th 1855 with the extension to Bray opening on 30th October . 

                Ordnance Survey, 1866. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Annotations by Joseph Brennan

                From the Metals via the atmospheric line to current railway from 1856 

Ordnance Survey, 1843. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Annotations by Joseph Brennan. 

Atmospheric railway at the terminus near Barnhill road Dalkey 

             

Ordnance Survey, 1888. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Annotations by Joseph Brennan.

              illustration of the terminus area of the atmospheric line.

Talk I did at the terminus of the atmospheric line between bridge at castlepark road and barnhill road Dalkey on Tuesday 18th January 2022.