During these difficult times, I started doing films with my Android camera phone . I moved to Tullyvale Cabinteely at the start of the year and realised I was in a perfect location for doing my railway heritage films, across the road from me is the location of the Harcourt street line track bed. It closed on New Year’s Eve 1958 due to the economic climate in the country at the time. From south of Dundrum back them was countryside down to the former junction at Shanganagh. It was an affluent area and car ownership became popular which had a knock-on effect with the railway. Ironic that 1,000’s used special trains for the race meetings at Leopardstown racecourse, Foxrock had its own special race platforms and was busy for the race meetings that took place at Easter and Christmas. Special trains were laid on for trips to Bray where up to 4,000 would travel from Harcourt street on a Summer Sunday.
I am familiar with the line and initially did a few video’s and improved my presentation technique, what I do is take a location and talk about any remaining infrastructure and illustrate the history of the line in that location. Back in January I had a busy Friday covering locations from the old station at Shankill down to the Junction doing about 7 videos. I try to keep to 4 or 5 minutes per film. I had a YouTube Channel and decided to upload my videos and sending it to various railway related group on Facebook. People started to subscribe to my You Tube channel and I got positive feedback, great to hear stories from people who remember travelling on the line with their parents. Currently I have 200 subscribers as I write this on Easter Monday, I also set up a donation page called Ko-Fi I am looking forward in covering the rest of the line over the coming weeks when restrictions are lifted. What the Luas line shows us is that had the line survived those difficult economic times it would have been a busy Dart line especially Dundrum down to where I live in Cherrywood, what could have been.