The prospect of a railway line from the city of Cork to the town of Youghal (pronounced Yawl) was first proposed in the early 1850s. For some years, there was little progress, but the line as far as Midleton was opened in November 1859, followed by the remainder of the route to Youghal a few months later in 1860. But the sponsors of the Cork &Youghal Railway had financial troubles, and were forced to sell the company to the Great Southern and Western Railway in 1866. The line to Youghal ran under their ownership, being incorporated into the state owned Córas Iompar Éireann in the middle of the twentieth century. However, with more people owning cars and rail traffic numbers falling, the line from Cobh Junction to Youghal stopped regular passenger traffic in 1963. There were still excursion trains, and an occasional freight, but even that stopped and the line was closed completely.
After a long campaign, the railway line was reopened as far as Midleton in 2009, with the remaining 21km from there to Youghal staying closed and overgrown with more than thirty years of scrub and bush. In 2020, the government announced that the route from Midleton to Youghal would be turned into a Greenway, a route for walkers and cyclists. But that was at the height of the Covid pandemic, and once again little happened to bring the project forward. The timeline was put back from 2022 to 2024. Early in 2024, just 8km of the Greenway was opened, from Midleton as far as Mogeely. The rest of the route was due this year, 2024, but at time of writing is not yet ready, and will definitely not be ready before 2025.
It had been on my mind to walk the route from Midleton to Mogeely, but somehow, I never got around to it. Until recently, that is. I set out one morning from the train station in Midleton with the intention of making it to Mogeely and back.
A little out of Midleton, I passed under one of just two road bridges between Midleton and Mogeely, and suddenly, I felt like was really out in the countryside. The route is flat, and the trees were still almost in full leaf as I continued on. Not far from there I came to the ruins of Roxborough. The house there is mentioned in documents from the late eighteenth century, when it was inhabited by a Mr. Ball. Possession passed to a Mr. Sweeney, the property did not do well, and by 1850, when the railway line was first proposed, the house was vacant and derelict. By 1890, it was a ruin, and has been quietly collapsing into the countryside ever since. Nevertheless, Mr. Ball’s name lives on. There is a nearby outcrop of rock rising from the fields that goes by the name of Ball’s Rock.
The Dungourney River runs alongside this stretch of the Greenway as well, if indeed that watercourse can really be treated as a river. At what was once a level crossing in Roxborough, the Dungourney goes under a road bridge just beside the Greenway, and soon after, the two part company.
As I walked, I met cyclists, runners, dogwalkers, and people just out for a stroll. Apart from the two older road bridges, the construction of the Greenway involved a new bridge for a local farmer to get his cattle from one side to the other. The second road bridge was just 2km before Mogeely. Somehow, I prefer the cut stone of the bridges built by the railway company to the modern concrete of the bridge built for the farmer.
Eventually, the Greenway reaches Mogeely, passing some silos for agricultural produce on the way into the village. I crossed over the road to the church. It is well decorated, and would compare favourably with many better known churches.
And then it was time to make my way back to Midleton.
There are reports that some stretches of the remaining route to Youghal are nearly ready, but that there are some gaps where there is still a lot of construction to be done. And along with that, the overall future of the route remains uncertain. Irish Rail claims that when they agreed to the Greenway, they reserved the right to take enough back to construct a single track line from Midleton to Youghal. Passenger numbers have increased at Midleton over recent years. Leaving aside the pandemic years, there were 480,000 passengers went through Midleton Station in 2019. In 2023, it was over 700,000. The frequency of train services is being increased. Meanwhile, the town of Youghal has not prospered in recent decades, and many feel that if the railway came back, it would breathe new life into the town. There is a significant possibility that the railway will once again be given a chance to run as far as Youghal, and the dreams of the entrepreneurs of the 1850s could once again become a reality. But if that happens, I do hope that they keep the Greenway alongside any railway project.
Walkingman 