Railway Troubles in the early 1920s

In September 1920, the Daily Mirror reported that Irish Railway companies had resorted to drastic action by having to temporarily suspend services on certain lines. The kidnapping of railway employees, slashing of telegraph wires and robbery of the postal mail was rampant. The railway track from Dundalk to Enniskillen was shut which isolated the stations along its route including Castleblaney, Ballybay, Newbliss and Clones in County Monaghan and the branch lines to Carrickmacross and Cootehill.

Many engine drivers were refusing to transport British soldiers and munitions and railway staff refused to carry out their duties. Donal Ó Drisceoil, writing in an Irish Examiner supplement on March 20, 2020, outlined how, ‘railway companies dismissed up to a thousand workers’ and now railway lines were either fully closed or ‘partially closed across the country outside of the north-east’ during the ‘munitions strike’ by Irish railway workers from May to December 1920.

Kidnappings

On Saturday, November 6, 1920, The Belfast Weekly Telegraph reported on a dispatch from Dublin Castle about The Belfast train’s arrival at Glaslough Station, County Monaghan around 2:30pm on the Friday, only to be set upon by ‘twelve armed and masked men’ who took away the train driver, guard, fireman and the signalman. They were brought to a location almost a mile from the station. The mail bags had been rifled through and the Lisnaskea letters stolen. A quantity of ammunition was quickly discovered at Glaslough Station following the kidnapping.

Railways are assumed to be friendly places to work. All the same, there was a lot of hard work involved with the loading and unloading of goods. But a sinister kind of hardship faced rail staff in the early 1920s.

On July 24, 1920, the Ballymena Weekly Telegraph revealed that the 9.45am Dundalk to Enniskillen train stopped at Inniskeen, County Monaghan, where about 30 ‘armed men’ ran forward towards the engine with revolvers pointed and ‘seized Driver Bernard Duffy, of Vincent Avenue, Dundalk, and Fireman Kerr, of Dundalk’. They were soon released the following evening at Castletown Cross, Dundalk, on condition that they signed an agreement not to ever transport military personnel or munitions in the future.

A motor car was parked up outside the station to take them away, after they had been ‘hustled from the platform’. The car headed off in the direction of Dundalk while the remaining armed men headed off on bicycles. It is said that the nearby post office was robbed around about the same time. The kidnapped workers had brought a train from Dundalk to Derry on the previous day on which Guard Breslin refused to work upon learning the train on that occasion was transporting 25 armed RIC personnel. Incidentally, the company suspended Breslin for non compliance.

Ballybay Fair

However, when the train came through the station, it stopped and the abandoned train was attached in order to bring the ‘stranded passengers’ to their destination (the passengers were coming from Ballybay Fair).

Down the road from Inniskeen, Philip Magee, the nationalist candidate in the upcoming election for the District Council, was removed from his home in Carrickmacross and forced to make a promise that he would withdraw from the election.

Postal workers targeted

Aside, from railway staff, as just pointed out, others became targets for attacks. This included post offices and postal workers. Around the same time, in County Cavan, three trusty country postmen named P. Cosgrove, J. Dunn and J. Sheridan, who worked out of Cavan Post Office, were each held up and robbed during their rounds. A total of £30 was taken. Cosgrove was going his usual route in the direction of Butlersbridge when three men on bicycles blocked his path and went so far as to take his bicycle too. Sheridan, who had old age pension money taken from his postbag, added that he had been robbed previous to this.

Railway workers in most instances complied with the munitions strike and those who did not, placed themselves in certain danger. The stoppage of rail services in 1920 was brought in to protect the staff from becoming the target of such attacks. However, according to Donal Ó Drisceoil, the ‘Munitions Strike’ by the railway workers had an effect on British military operations in Ireland and played an important role in the drive to achieve Irish independence.

However, the spectre of such attacks on train staff did not totally disappear after the munitions strike ended in December 1920. The Fermanagh Times, on June 22, 1922, reported on the shocking occurrence that took place at Monaghan Railway Station when a ‘gang of the I.R.A.’ struck and kidnapped the guard and fireman from the Armagh to Monaghan goods train. The two Armagh men were removed and bundled away.

Word came later that the railway guard had been released, but that a gentleman named George Dawson, a railway fireman had been detained. It was further stated that Mr Dawson was assumed to be a ’B’ Special and his whereabouts was unknown.

Elsewhere, that same month a young man by the name of Barton Caldwell (whose father was Mr. Joseph Caldwell of Omagh) was travelling on the GNR(I) to Derry on a Saturday when the IRA intercepted him at Port Hall and took him away. Then on Sunday afternoon, there was further trouble when his father was kidnapped, as well.

When the dust eventually settled again, train services could resume their usual journeys in relative peace. Sadly, in the years ahead, partition and disparaging attitudes towards train travel did nothing to help the railways in Cavan and Monaghan and, by the 1950s, the service was being intentionally wound down, to be removed permanently from the landscape.

Thankfully, in recent years there are glimmers of hope of a resurgence in providing a new railway service to the region.