Carlow County - Ireland Genealogical Projects (IGP ^TM)

 Railway to Carlow

Source: Carloviana 1972

Page 4

Sir John MacNeill and the Railway to Carlow

By Jeanne Sheehy

THE GREAT Southern and Western Railway was not by any means the first to be built in Ireland, but it was one of the most important, opening up, as it did, the southern half of the country. The original Act of Parliament, for a line of railway from Dublin to Cashel, with a branch to Carlow, received the Royal assent on 6th August, 1844. The line was surveyed by John MacNeill, LL.D, FRS, who published the results in his Report on the proposed line of railway from Dublin to Cashel, being the first division of the main trunk to the south and west of Ireland, including a branch there from to Athy and Carlow. (Dublin 1844). The line to Carlow, through the rich valley of the Barrow, he considered "indispensable to the completeness of any plan of Railway accommodation for the South of Ireland."

 In August 1944, Sir John (he was knighted in that year), reached an agreement with the Great Southern and Western Railway Company "for his undertaking the entire of the engineering department of the Dublin and Cashel line, with Branch to Carlow" (Board Minutes, Great Southern and Western Railway, Vol. 2, p.35).

In May 1845 he was instructed to furnish plans and estimates for such station houses as he felt should be erected on the line. The original list allowed for station houses at Adamstown Road, Hazelhatch Road, Sallins, Newbridge, Kildare. the junction with the Carlow Branch, Kilberry Cross Roads. Athy, Magenny Road and Carlow (Minutes, Vol. 3, p.31). In July he attended a meeting of the board, and laid his design on the table. He was instructed to prepare working plans for the Carlow and Sallins station houses, with a view to having them erected as soon as possible (Minutes Vol. 3, p-83).

Stations were eventually built at Clondalkin, Lucan, Hazelhatch, Straffan, Sallins, Newbridge, Kildare, Athy, Mageney and Carlow. The Irish Railway Gazette (July 20th, 1846) in its account of the first experimental trip from Dublin to Carlow considered them "really beautiful structures . . . simple in their details, and most substantially built."

They had been designed, says the Gazette, with a view-to permanence and utility. This is borne out by the fact that many of them survive virtually unaltered. The style chosen was the Elizabethan, and its best expression is at Carlow, which, since it was originally designed as a terminus, is larger than the other stations. It is built of warm brown brick, with stone dressings, and this, together with its pointed gables and oriel window, gives it a cosy, domestic appearance. The central portion is two-storied, and is three bays wide. It is flanked by gabled wings of one storey.

The building is very little altered—it corresponds to the original illustration in the Irish Railway Chart of the Dublin to Carlow line (Dublin circa 1848) except for an extension to one of the wings, and the fact that it has lost its original tall Elizabethian chimneys ,and that its window frames have apparently been modernised. The other stations are similar in detail to Carlow, but smaller. Sallins, for example, is two bays wide, with wings, has pointed gables with finials. and mouldings over the windows, but lacks the oriel window.

Praise for the building was not universal—the Carlow Sentinel (reprinted Irish Railway Gazette, 9th July, 1849), admiring Bagenalstown station "a very handsome structure, very nearly resembling the Tudor style of architecture" (1). dismisses "those gloomy-looking edifices erected in the Elizabethian style adopted along the line from Dublin to Carlow" in which "the taste partook of barbarity."

It was not usual for the engineer to design station houses, although there is an instance of MacNeill doing so elsewhere—on the Ulster Railway at Portadown and probably also at Monaghan, and the engineer George Willoughby Hemans. who was a pupil of MacNeill, designed some buildings on the Galway line. Generally, however." when we find engineers involved in the design of station buildings it is in the huge cast-iron and glass passenger sheds, which were felt to be the province of the Civil Engineer, while architects were brought in for those buildings which required traditional methods and styles.

For their terminus at Kingsbridge the Directors of the Great Southern and Western Railway made this distinction. In July 1845 (Minutes Vol. 3, p. 77) MacNeill was authorised to proceed with preparations for sheds and platforms at the Dublin Terminus "which may be considered independently of architectural arrangements." A competition had been held for a design for the buildings themselves, and in September 1845 (Minutes, Vol. 3, 17th Sept., 1845) the plans of the English architect Sancton Wood (1814-1886) were adopted, John D'alton, in his Memoir of the Great Southern and Western Railway (Dublinl846) has quite a lot of praise for MacNeill's passenger shed; "the area of land under the iron roofing alone, exclusive of that covered by the necessary building, exceeds two acres and a half. This roofing is supported on seventy-two cast iron columns, and is certainly the lightest and most elegant in appearance ever constructed in this country."

MacNeill's work for the Great Southern and Western Railway shows such great versatility that it seems worth while to consider his biography, which is interesting in itself. (2) He was born, probably in 1793, son of Torquil MacNeill, of Mount Pleasant, near Dundalk. He served in the Louth Militia and when it was disbanded went to England and worked under Thomas Telford (1757-1834). He became Telford's chief assistant, and was even remembered in his will. After Telford's death MacNeill set up as a consulting engineer, with offices in London and Glasgow. By this time he had had a great deal of experience in practical engineering, as well as parliamentary work. This last was very important, since each line of railway (and any subsequent extension or deviation) had to have its own Act of Parliament.

In 1836 MacNeill was back in Ireland doing a survey of the north for the Irish Railway Commission. He lived at this time at Mount Pleasant, where he made great improvements to the land. In 1842 the first chair of en­gineering was set up in this country, at Trinity College, Dublin, and MacNeill was made Professor. From the time of his return to work for the Railway Commission­ers in Ireland he was very closely involved with the Irish railway system. He was engineer to the Dublin and Drogheda Railway, the Dublin and Belfast Junction Rail­way (a misleading line, since it touched neither city), the Dundalk and Enniskillen Railway, the extension of the Ulster Railway from Armagh to Clones and Cavan, and, as we have seen, to the Great Southern and Western Railway.

He was probably exceptionally busy in 1845, the year of the "railway mania", when dozens of mushroom companies were appearing, and lines were being survey­ed all over the British Isles. W. R. LeFanu (Seventy Years of Irish Life. London 1904, p.77) tells the story of a farmer who approached an assistant of MacNeill’s work­ing near Thurles, and on learning that he was an en­gineer told him he was the fifth that week,, adding "it's my belief there isn't an idle blackguard in Dublin that has nothing to do that isn't down here to lay out rail­roads."

If the engineer John P. Doyle is to be believed (let­ter Irish Builder, 15th August, 1887) MacNeill’s end was tragic. At the time of his success he was persuaded by the Directors of railway companies to put down his name for railway shares, as an encouragement to in­vestors. It was understood that he would not be ex­pected to meet the call for money on these shares, but the directors went back on their agreement, and this ruined him. The situation was not helped by his child­ren. Two of his daughters married the younger sons of "good" families (one was a son of the Earl of Roden) but these seem to have lost their fortunes. Two sons who went into the Army were forced to leave when the supply of money from their father ran out, and they could not keep up their extravagant and spendthrift habits.

One of these sons at one time kept eleven hor­ses on a lieutenant's pay. Doyle's account of all this, and his description of MacNeill’s last days, are so path­etic as to make one wonder whether he embellished the story—"to see Sir John in his own room, with a deal table without a cloth, his bed in one corner, and his son's (the son that kept the eleven horses of sorts) shake-down in the other, would make the strongest man weep ...". None of his former pupils or assistant en­gineers did anything to help. "When all Sir John's friends had forsaken him, being left destitute, blind, and almost starving, he learnt to make match boxes, which he sold to the Lucifer match manufacturers in London, and thus did he eke out a living during all the latter years of his life, up almost to the day of his death."

He  died in a house in Cromwell Road, London, on 2nd March, 1880.

NOTES

1.    This remark presents a problem, since Bagenalstown station can in no way be described as Tudor — if anything it is Italian.    Is   the   Carlow   Sentinel   mistaken,   or   was   the original station later replaced?   It is a fine building — it would be interesting to discover who designed it.

2.    Information on the life of Sir John MacNeill, unless other­wise credited, is from the Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 12, 1909, pp. 695-6, and from The Irish Builder, August 15th, 1887, p. 235.

Source: Carloviana Dec 1972 Vol .2. No. 21 p42 & 43.

[ Memorial to Richard Newmann ]

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