Portarlington railway station
Toward the end of our trip we drove to Portarlington in County Laois (pronounces Leash), where the other half spent his boyhood summers. Finding a housing estate instead of the fields he walked to reach his grandmothers cottage, he was completely thrown if not mildly traumatised. And this wasn’t because his memories of that time include leaning over the iron pedestrian bridge at the railway station to watch the steam trains. He isn’t actually that old. The first consignment of diesel locomotives wasn’t ordered until 1953, and then it was only 100. At the time the 3500 miles of rail network were being rationalised, leaving the countryside scarred by disused rail lines without any real re- investment until the economic boom of the 1990’s.