The Dublin and Kingstown being a worked, not a
working line, the duties of its directors, though important are not
onerous, and my Chairman and Board readily accorded their consent. Such
was my first happy start as a railway director.
[The Gresham Salver: salver.jpg]
The Dublin and Kingstown has the distinction of being the first railway
to be constructed in Ireland. Indeed, for five years it was the only
railway in that country. Opened as far back as 1834, it was amongst the
earliest of the railway lines of the whole United Kingdom. The Stockton
and Darlington (1825), the Manchester and Liverpool (1830), and the
Dundee and Newtyle (1831), were its only predecessors. Soon after its
construction it was extended from Kingstown to Dalkey, a distance of 1.75
miles. This extension was constructed and worked on the _atmospheric
system_, a method of working railways which failed to fulfil
expectations, with the result that the Dalkey branch was, in 1856,
changed to an ordinary locomotive line.
The atmospheric system of working railways found favour for a time, and
was tried on the West London Railway, on the South Devon system, and in
other parts of Great Britain, also in France, but nowhere was it
permanently successful.
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