New book on Cootehill railway memories set for launch

Cootehill Railway Station: Golden Memories From A Bygone Age’ will be launched in Cootehill Library, next week. The book is a long time in the making and includes a selection of memories gathered over the last forty years. I had been piecing together the story of Cootehill's Train Station until 2013 and returned to it recently to complete it. The final result includes a history of the railway, recollections about employees, and some of our family connections (a great grandfather of ours and his family lived in the Station House). Lists of staff records have been uncovered with the help of the Irish Railway Record Society and names go as far back as 1870, alongside other sources showing the workers' names.

Unfinished business

I was once told, you might be lucky to get a chapter on the station, but the result, after editing, is, I think, a nice tidy volume in which I planned to capture a glimpse of Cootehill’s railway past, illustrated by some previously unseen photographs. Then there were parts that I edited out because they did not add anything of substance and I wanted the stories to be reflective of the people and the times when the station was still working.

The late R.M. Arnold’s books on the ‘The Golden Age of the Great Northern Railway,’ part one and part two, were definite inspirations and I liked how they were infused with interviews and stories on the employees. Arnold planned a third volume in the early 1980s that should have included Cootehill, but sadly, he died. The publishers informed me that the third book did not appear to have been started.

Originally, my intention was to publish the book in 2013, but plans got shelved due to unforeseen circumstances and so the years trundled on. One day, while speaking to Margaret in Cootehill Library about the town’s 300th celebrations, I happened to mention the unfinished project, and she encouraged me to finish it for Cootehill's 300th. The more I thought about it, this seemed like a suitable time to complete the final leg of the journey. After months of updating and adding in freshly discovered material it is finally ready.

Women

Automatically, everyone assumes the railway staff were all men, but you would be wrong. Surprisingly, there were women who worked at the train station during its almost 100 years. My father’s aunt Miss Margaret Smyth and others worked as coaching and goods clerks.

At one time, every type of goods came in through the station, from bread to hardware to coal. A man from Drung recalled the time his mother went by horse and cart to Cootehill to pick up a brand new radio delivered to the station by train at Christmas.

The late photographer Brian Mulligan’s photographs appear in the book, and he told me his father owned a shop in the town prompting him to recall the time a lorry loaded with cigarettes from the station came down the Station Road with a crowd running behind it in the hope of a pack or two, falling off the back of it. He also spoke about the crowds of an afternoon waiting at the station for the Evening Herald to arrive with the racing results from the Grand National.

Railway children

As children, growing up in Cootehill, we were aware of our great grandfather Hugh Smyth's connection to the old train station beside Brady’s Mart. During the 1970s, in our home there hung two photographs - one was of Hugh Smyth, the stationmaster, and the other of his wife Annie Rogers. My father’s aunt Margaret had a terrific interest in family life and kept photographs and loved to share her vivid memories and wisdom with family members about the railway where she herself worked briefly for a time. My mother recalled some of Margaret's fascinating accounts. My father also had recollections of his grandfather the stationmaster.

In fact, most of Margaret’s siblings worked for the Great Northern Railway too. Her brother Joe, a naturally gifted mathematician who was always meticulous in everything, down to his perfect copperplate handwriting, became stationmaster in Clones during the Emergency years at the time of the Second World War in Europe (Ireland been neutral). When Joe's health declined, my father remembers him returning to live at his parents and the goat he kept over the fields, which he walked over to milk each day, believing the milk might ease his condition. Joe’s brother Sam worked in the goods office at Cootehill and later went to Ballybay. The late Terry Molloy from Bridge Street, was a lorry driver with the G.N.R.(I) and he told me how the staff found it entertaining that Sam did not like travelling by train himself and would get a lift by lorry or car to Ballybay.

Interviews

Over the years I was lucky enough to interview and take down stories from people connected to the branch line and I hope that you, the reader, will enjoy the story of the railway and its people and that it may raise interest in new generations who never experienced the train for themselves at Cootehill. I would like to say thank you to everyone who contributed their memories of the station and its people, also to Dr Brendan Scott and Cumann Seanchais Bhreifne, The Irish Railway Record Society, my parents and to Pauline, my wife.

On setting out to write a book about the history of Cootehill Railway Station and its branch line, I was aware that a project such as this was going to be a difficult task especially with the passage of time and considering that the focus of the story is directed towards a small section of the Great Northern Railway’s operations. However, I have always believed that it was a worthy project and an important part of Cootehill’s social history and being myself a great admirer of Arnold’s two fantastic books on ‘The Golden Years of the Great Northern Railway,’ I felt spurred on to accomplish the task.

And, finally, I hope that you will enjoy the story of this branch line. Historian, Patrick Cassidy will perform launching duties on the night, for ‘Cootehill Railway Station: Golden Memories from a Bygone Age’ on Thursday, November 27, at 7pm in Cootehill Library. If you are there on the night, I look forward to meeting you.