The railways of Ireland were born in the “Railway Mania” of the 1830s and 1840s, with the first railway opening between Dublin and Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire), a distance of six miles, in 1834, only a decade later than that of Great Britain. The contractor was William Dargan, now known as the founder of railways in Ireland due to his participation in many of the main routes. Fortunately this route is still open to the public, and is part of Dublin’s DART system.
By its peak in 1920, Ireland as a whole had 3,400 route miles of railway. The current status is less than half that amount, with a large unserviced area around the border area between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
