I had an email from Shane Joyce a couple of months ago about developments concerning the Marconi transatlantic telegraph site at Derrigimlah. I wrote about a 2017 visit to Clifden with my wife Jackie in the 2018 Newsletter (pages 1 and 2). We spent a fair bit of time over two days at Derrigimlah, one day with Shane and a second on our own.
Shane says that the most recent plan for the site is to put a 3ft gauge railway, about 460m in length, on the site mostly on the original alignment. That original track, a 1½ mile (2.4 km) long narrow gauge railway 2ft (610mm) gauge from the site’s gate to the main station buildings was inaugurated in October 1907.
The map shows details of the Marconi site overlaid onto 1915 Ordnance Survey mapping where the 1907 track layout is shown in purple. The present day proposal is for a 460m length running due south-east from the main station buildings, shown in dashed blue.
The National Park who own the site are very supportive of the plan which is expected to get the necessary permission in due course.
Above we have a photo of the present-day locomotive and carriages to be operated on the track.
The photo above is from the time that the railway was operational during the early 20th century. The photo shows the locomotive and the fuel store loading crane seen loading a hopper of peat next to the fuel store.
Shane has also been working with his cousin Pat to determine the precise landing site of Alcock and Brown in 1917. They have carried out a definitive geophysical investigation and intend getting permission from the Park Authority to carry out a dig on the 11 or so metal detections at location nos. 20-31 on the plan. The location of the memorial to their landing is shown by the red X SE of the south-eastern corner of the condenser house.
Further information on Wikipedia about the Derrigimlah site railway at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marconi_Railway