I was only ten when the train to Fermoy from Mallow and on to Waterford ceased to operate. So ’twill be 60 years next March since the last train left Fermoy Station.

Once, that I can remember, was I at Fermoy Station to see an actual train on the tracks there. It must have been in the mid-1960s.

My father had a first cousin, Seamus Barry who lived in Bristol. His father James Barry was a brother of my grandmother.

James emigrated to England and married Mary O’Curry from Belfast. Their son Seamus lived in Bristol - I think he worked in the Post Office.

My father had died in 1961, but Seamus always kept in contact with our family right up until close to his own death in the early 1990s. I suppose he knew that bringing up five children wasn’t easy for a widow - as well as keeping a farm going.

He sent over his complete set of Encyclopaedia Britannica books -presumably he thought they would be useful for school-going children. So he packed the 21 volumes with navy-blue cardboard covers into a wooden box, a bit like a tea-chest. He despatched the cargo by boat to Rosslare and from there the box was delivered to Fermoy Station.

I just remember the hustle and bustle of the train station with smoke billowing and the hooters sounding.

From its opening in May, 1860, until closure in 1967, that railway line served as a great link with Mallow and back to Killarney. Then, in the expansive decade of the 1870s further rail lines were added. Firstly - at the behest of the Duke of Devonshire - the line from Fermoy to Lismore opened in 1872. Six years later, the ‘final piece of the South Munster jigsaw’ was added with the opening of the line to Waterford city.

Looking at the railway map of Ireland for 1890, well, it’s like virtual spiders’ webs of lines big and small.

I went on my very first train trip while I was in National........

© Evening Echo