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Steam engine revival recalls heyday of West Clare Railway

Irish Times 14th August 2009

Railway immortalised by Percy French is back on track thanks to local steam enthusiasts, writes ÉIBHIR MULQUEEN

JACKIE WHELAN remembers loading turf on a wagon to supply the West Clare Railway as a nine-year-old in 1948. It was an important part of the local economy before it became the last of Ireland's narrow gauge railways to close in 1961.

"A wagon of turf from Shragh where we came from was £5 and that £5 would buy you 10 stone of flour, which was talked about as a half-sack of flour. You'd make 140 griddle cakes out of that. It would do a good household with six or seven in the family for two months. And then, when you had the flour out of the bag you'd have a sheet made for the bed out of the bag or two pillow cases," he said.

Now he is the owner of the revived steam railway, which is based at Moyasta Junction as a tourist venture.

In brilliant sunshine, the last steam locomotive to run on the line between Ennis and Kilrush via Lahinch took delighted passengers in two third-class replica carriages on a short trip at 15mph, before Whelan opened a magnum of champagne to mark the relaunch of the West Clare Railway 124 years after Charles Stewart Parnell turned the sod on the original project in 1885.

The Slieve Callan, named after west Clare's modestly high peak of 391m (1,283ft), has been refurbished and refitted with a new boiler and tanks with a capacity of 1,000 litres. For the moment, it is taking passengers on a 4km trip on narrow gauge track, but Whelan hopes to run the train to Kilrush again over the next few years.

Of the 19 steam locomotives that served the railway, the Slieve Callan is the sole survivor. It was removed under protest from what was to be its final resting place at Ennis station in 1996 when Whelan brought it to Moyasta on condition it would be restored. In between it was diverted to the Alan Keef workshop at Ross-on-Wye, Hertfordshire.

Two of Whelan's sons, Emmet and Stephen, and a local Welshman, Richard Gair, have been trained in the dying art of steam engine driving.

"It's a pleasure to see such a precise piece of engineering working," said Emmet, a mechanical engineer who returned from a six-month trip to Australia to take on the new role. "It's hands-on work. You have a lot of power in your hands."

The locomotive was one of three delivered from Dübs Co of Glasgow for £1,750 each in 1892. It would survive with bits borrowed from a sister locomotive, the Lady Inchiquin, until it was replaced by diesel locomotives for the remaining five years of the line's operation.

Jackie Whelan recalled an era when local farmers set their time by the train. "We went by the last train in the evening or the bell on the church in Doonbeg. Everyone worked either by the bell or the train, both morning and evening."

The railway is famous for being the subject of a Percy French song celebrating its gentle pace, after the entertainer sued the railway company for loss of earnings of £10 after he arrived in Kilkee 4½ hours late after a journey of more than 12 hours from Dublin that day in 1896.

According to a press report, the judge was sympathetic, taking a poor view of the locals' alternative entertainment of whiskey drinking. The more public houses they got in Kilkee, the more they wanted, he noted. French had been trying to "improve them and give them a taste for national amusement".

Apart from some Leader funding in its early days, the revival project has received little official backing. Whelan has had to rely on his own resources and the goodwill and generosity of dozens of local people to bring the project this far.

He and the original group that came up with the revival idea have also put up with a lot of scepticism over the years. The eldest of seven boys, he said it was the attitude of his parents, who took the train to emigrate to the US before returning in 1937, that instilled in him his entrepreneurial attitude.

"They had travelled, they saw the world. They saw bad times in America during the stock market crash. They never stopped any of us doing anything we ever wanted to do. And we are still the same today. We still will go out there and we will tackle jobs that nobody ever dreamt of."