Tara Street railway station

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Tara Street railway station, May 2006
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Tara Street railway station, May 2006

Tara Street is the busiest railway station in Ireland [citation needed], with over 25,000 passengers using it daily. The station is arguably the closest station to the Dublin city centre and certainly is the closest to Grafton Street and O'Connell Bridge.

This station is built on the 'Loop Line' which was constructed towards the end of the 1800s by the City of Dublin Junction Railway. This line made the connection between the Dublin & Kingstown terminus at Westland Row [now Pearse Station] and Amiens St [now Connolly Station]Great Northern Railway (Ireland) and linked into the Midland Great Western freight line thus joining up all the main railways in Dublin.

Tara St & George's Quay station - to give it its correct title - has two through platforms elevated above street level with ticket areas, retail outlets, etc at street level. The platform retaining walls, the stairwells and canopies were originally timber planking but upgraded to include escalators and fibreglass panels in the 1970s and 1980s. More recent additions have seen new stairwells installed and platforms lenghtened to reflect the increasing throughput of passengers. There are proposals to build in the airspace above the station and adjacent property has been acquired for this purpose.

The station deals with mainly Dublin Area Rapid Transit trains, although longer distrance trains for Arklow and Rosslare Europort also stop at the station as do commuter services to Maynooth and the western suburbs, and Balbriggan, Drogheda and Dundalk on the former GNR(I) mainline as these towns develop as dormitory suburbs for the City.

Preceding station Iarnród Éireann Following station
Dublin Connolly   Iarnród Éireann
Dublin-Rosslare
  Dublin Pearse
Dublin Connolly   DART   Dublin Pearse

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