Western Rail Corridor simply isn’t coming down the tracks

Date Published: {J}

There have been countless songs written about trains down through the years with the vast majority of them being of the country and western variety. Indeed the late Boxcar Willie made a career out of mimicking a train whistle while Johnny Cash has quite a number of train songs to his credit during his long career.

Groups campaigning for the reopening of the Western Rail Corridor are still wondering if they are ‘on song’ to have the section between Tuam and Athenry reopened or are they just ‘whistling in the wind’.

Around this time two years ago the section between Athenry and Ennis was opened to much fanfare but that excitement has been relatively short lived with a revelation that the numbers using the route between these two destinations are dire in the extreme.

Over the years it has been a campaign built on hopes, aspirations, rumours and speculation. In fact over the past couple of weeks the word went around that Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Junior Minister Michael Ring were to issue a joint statement that the Tuam to Athenry phase was going to get the green light – another wild rumour with no substance.

There will be no definitive announcement on any further development of the Western Rail Corridor and it is delusional to think that there will be. Okay, so Enda Kenny might come out and say that it is not off the agenda and that they are fully committed to providing rail services all over the shop, but he will not give a commitment to a date . . . and is unlikely to do so anytime in the near future.

This is simply to do with the fact that this current Government believe that the provision of a rail link between Tuam and Claremorris to Galway is a complete and utter waste of money. If the truth be known, the previous Government was of much the same opinion despite giving a timeframe for the overall project.

It would be a very romantic notion to have trains starting out in Tuam and running through Ballyglunin Railway Station as it would conjure up images of the Quiet Man and would probably become something of a tourist attraction – however, this would hardly justify building a new railway line between Tuam and Athenry.

During the Celtic Tiger era when there were 30,000 odd cars travelling through Claregalway and journey times between Tuam and Galway city were of the nightmare variety, the campaign for the reopening of the Western Rail Corridor appeared to be one of the ways to take cars off the road. The Government of the day were under extreme pressure to deliver.

In the current climate, there are not near as many cars passing through Claregalway and on a good morning it can take no more than 35 minutes to get from Tuam to the city. There is no way that a train service could compete with this.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.