Lazy Irish Railways
Delightfully Regardless Of Time Tables

Source: Montgomery Advertiser, October 9, 1904

Dublin Correspondent in Pall Mall Gazette.

The amusing incident of the angler. who caught a fifteen-pound salmon, while waiting for the repairing of an engine on the Lough Swilly Railway, by no means exhausts our Irish railway stories. Some years ago, while touring in the West with the author of “The Englishman in Paris,” the late Albert Vandam, we were told a few tales which will bear repetition. There is a line which runs between Athenry and Ennis, which at that period was at war with the Midland Great’ Western with the result that all of the trains of the big line were timed just to miss connections with the smaller one. The result was, that as soon as the train for Ennis steamed out of the town of Athenry, the other from Dublin would steam in. As a result, passengers for the capital of County Clare had to wait for hours for the next train in the little Western Galway town. I was one of the victims, and found several passengers for Clare in a similar predicament.

This was my introduction (said my informant) to a remarkable line, and my personal experiences were no less amusing. We left Athenry and stopped at a wayside station so long, that I got out to see what was the matter. The guard sat on a wall, very coolly smoking a small clay pipe, and seeming in no hurry whatever. “What on earth are we waiting for here, guard?” I asked with much curiosity. The guard took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed away to the summit of a small mountain in the distance, observing: “We will be off directly, sir; there is one of our passengers coming.” Looking in the directions indicated, I saw a woman and a girl coming down the mountain side, with a basket of newly-washed clothes, from a laundry. They looked mere specks in the distance, and seemed to me over a couple of miles away. The train waited nearly an hour, and the woman, who seemed in no hurry whatever, got into the train with their burden. Quietly knocking the ashes from his pipe, the guard took a metal mace in his hand, and going down to the engine, he gave it to the driver. “Let us be off,” now ,driver,” said he, “and don’t be delaying the passengers.” I then resumed my seat, and the train steamed on a few miles further.

At the next junction there was a further long wait and again I appealed to the guard as to the cause of the delay. “Oh, sir.” he replied, “there is only a single line from this on and we must wait here to let the train from Ennis pass us.” Being now in a state of resignation I mildly ventured to ask when the train would come through and let us pass to our destination. “”Oh, sir,” replied the guard as he lighted his pipe once more, and again sat on a wall, “she ought to be in here about three-quarters of an hour if she is not late this morning.” Fully forty-five minutes more passed when we heard some tremendous whistling in the distance. “There she comes at last,” observed the guard to me as he calmly knocked the ashes out of his pipe. “Now, driver. get us out of the way.” All the passengers remained on the platform and our train was very slowly and deliberately backed into a siding, when the Ennis train, still whistling, slowly steamed into the junction. There was considerably more delay and after a friendly chat, in which the guards and engine drivers of both trains took part, the newcomer steamed away. We then took our seats and finally reached Ennis without any further incidents worth recording

“You do not seem to be in a hurry in this part of the country,” I observed to a farmer fellow passenger, as we got our baggage out of the luggage van. “Oh, no,” he replied: “I once made a wager with one of the directors of this line that I would beat the train from Athenry to Ennis driving in my donkey cart!” This funny challenge was not accepted, I ventured to suggest with some amusement. “No,” replied the farmer, “because the director knew the speed of my donkey and his own engines and knew that the ass was a dead certainty.’’

My Dutch friend and myself roared with laughter over these anecdotes and asked if there were many other Irish railways of this character. We were informed by another traveller that he knew one line which ran this very close, between Waterford and Limerick. One of the trains, laden with pigs, for a fair, got into the way of a passenger train, which was backed out of the way down the line for an hour and a half, while the pigs were being disposed of. The travellers protested loudly, but were informed that they must wait, as the company always found that pigs paid better than passengers!

Another funny story reached me by the former Dublin correspondent of a Glasgow paper. He said that some years previously he had travelled from Galway to Dublin by an afternoon train which arrived very late. The train stopped suddenly on the line about three miles from the capital, and all the passengers put their heads out of the windows to see what was the matter. Finally my informant and some others got down on the line and walked to the engine, which they found to be deserted by the driver and stoker. Then they went down to the guard’s van, at the end of the train which was also empty. A long discussion took place between the passengers, who were quite at a loss to know what to do, when someone saw a light moving a long way to the rear of the train. After about twenty minutes, the engine driver, the stoker and guard came up with a lantern, slowly walking between the rails. “What is the matter?” asked one of the passengers. “Oh, the driver thought he ran over something on the line, and we went back to see what it was,” said the guard. “No, you did not,” declared an irate traveller, “you knew the train was late, and that all the public houses in Dublin would be closed, so you went back to get a drink at that little house beside the line.” A roar of laughter greeted this sally, all scrambled into their seats, and the train resumed its journey, arriving in Dublin just after midnight.