FROM THE ARCHIVES:The last train from the west arrived at the Broadstone railway station in January 1937, which attracted thousands of onlookers and was broadcast on Radio Éireann. The writer of the "Irishman's Diary" thought the commentator spoiled it by talking too much over the sound of the arriving engine, and an anonymous leader writer penned this editorial. – JOE JOYCE
THE LAST trains have come and gone from the Broadstone Railway Station. On Saturday night the familiar terminus ended its career with ceremonial, and a popular farewell. A large crowd assembled to see the last train come in, and the arrival of that train was heard by thousands of people through the broadcast from Athlone. It was, perhaps, fitting that this event should be made audible to the world by the Athlone Broadcasting Station, as Athlone was one of the most important points served from the old terminus . . . When the Broadstone terminus was opened in 1859 its opening was a much greater event in the history of Ireland than is its closing now, as it then brought for the first time the counties of the midlands and the West into direct communication with Dublin.
For the seventy-eight years during which the Broadstone has served as the gateway of the West in Dublin, probably millions of people have first seen the capital from the elevated position above the Rotunda. From the terrace in front of the terminus, Dublin spread on all sides. Street after street stretched away into the haziness that is Dublin Bay, and the hills on the South looked as if they held the spreading city from sprawling over the green fields.
That was the western visitor’s first glimpse of Dublin from the steps of the Broadstone, a glimpse that in future will be withheld. In its time the opening of the Broadstone was a great victory for human progress and for scientific achievement; its closing is no less a victory for both. Eighty years ago the railway was a new thing, the iron road upon which hopes of economic and social advancement sped much faster than ever sped steam-engine and lines of coaches. By these iron rails town was linked with town, county with county, country with country; the great age of human intercourse and mutual understanding was about to begin.
It did not work out quite that way, however; railways have sundered as much as they have joined, and have carried armed bands where it was hoped they would carry only friends. To-day hopes have abandoned the steel rail for the concrete road, and the glory of the steam-engine has been transferred to the internal combustion engine embedded in an omnibus. That vista which so often puzzled the schoolboy, when the parallel rails seem to meet in the distance, has become a reality at last. The steel rails have met in the terminus at Broadstone, so the trains cannot run there any more. The “little white roads” have become the national highways, carrying one of St. Patrick’s prayerful gifts, that of “commerce from all parts.”
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