The Midland Great Western Railway Athlone
The Midland Great Western Railway - Athlone
Athlone
The race to cross the Shannon at Athlone was a hotly contested one. The Great Southern & Western Railway had high hopes of being the first company to cross the river but the MGWR emerged victorious.
Deaths during Railroad Construction
Returns for August 1850, show that a total of 1,059 men were engaged in building the railway from Jones’ Lake, near Moate to the Batteries in Athlone. The job of the railway navvy was always a dangerous one and the greatest single loss of life during the construction of the railways in Westmeath occurred while excavating for a portion of line near Jones’ Lake, Moate. The bank gave way and four men were smothered. On the same day another man was killed by a wagon running over him. An inquest on the death of a navvy killed while excavating near Athlone commented on the long hours worked by navvies and reported that, by November 1850, no fewer than twelve men had died in accidents associated with rail-works in Westmeath.
The Great Southern and Western Railway reached Athlone in 1859 en-route for the West.
The Railway Viaduct, Athlone
The single greatest engineering feat during the construction of the Dublin-Galway line, was the construction of the railway bridge across the Shannon at Athlone.
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The bridge, which was 542 ft. long, was designed by G.W. Hemans, and built with an opening central span to accommodate the tall superstructures of sailing craft. The contractors were Messrs. Fox and Henderson, who shipped the massive iron-work to Limerick and transferred it from there to Athlone by barge. |
The twelve cylindrical pillars, each ten foot in diameter, made engineering history in December 1850, when the chief engineer, Mr Milner, demonstrated how they could be placed in position by means of compressed air.
The first commercial train to cross the railway bridge in Athlone did so on Monday 21st July, 1851.
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