Former Mayo railway station manager shares his memories
By Noel Hoban
My first day in Castlerea, I travelled by train to begin learning the signal cabin.
Before disem-barking, I turned to my trusted friend Tommy Brown (Ticket Checker) and said: “I hear this Christy fella is hard to get on with.”
Tommy smiled and calmly replied: “In this job, take everyone as they are to you and mind your back.”
They were incredibly wise words, and Christy and I got on so, so well.
Driving into Castlerea on my first day's duty, I was struck by a quiet, sleepy town, as it seemed little happened.
There was a lot of unemployment, and the closure of St. Patrick’s Hospital added greatly to this.
Traders blocked multiples like Boots and Dunnes from opening. Mulli-gan’s drapery was, and still is, a fine premises, and I purchased many items there.
But first impressions can mislead, and shortly before I arrived, the first child clerical abuse case had been processed, and a custodial sentence ensued.
Meanwhile, across town, the nation was to be rocked to its core with the Nighthawks programme recorded in Sean Brown’s Hell’s Kitchen Pub in 1992.
That year, a journalist strike occurred, and Shay was given carte blanche to do outside broadcasts.
Even the crew was unaware of the relevance of what former Justice Minister, the late Seán Doherty, told Shay Healy.
In fact, over a pint after, Doherty told Healy that he had told him something he had never told anyone.
The crew raced back to Montrose and played the tape where Doherty said Charlie Haughey knew all about the taping of journalists Bruce Ar-nold and Geraldine Kennedy’s phones.
The rest is history, and the iconic Haughey resigned the next day. Not such a sleepy town anymore, I figured.
The job of signalman was very solitary and yet a very responsible one, as decisions made by you were tantamount to customer safety.
Castlerea cabin also operated the gates on the road be-low, which were worked by a giant wheel.
No shunt within the station could be done without the gate being closed to traffic. It was a miracle I never hit a car, as there were no warning lights, so it was a hit-and-miss procedure.
The all-night duty was the graveyard shift and in-volved crossing liners around 4 a.m.
During periods of heavy frost, it was necessary to head off into the night with a gas cylinder and blowtorch to sort things. All signals had to be lit manually with paraffin lamps. Looking back now, it was a pretty archaic system, but it worked.
AMONGST WOMEN
One of the highlights of the station’s history and my signalling career was being signalman for the filming of Amongst Women, John McGahern’s epic starring Tony Doyle and Ger Ryan in 1998.
All train scenes of the father meeting his daughters were shot in Castlerea. Tony Doyle was my idol from his days as Fr. Sheehy in The Riordans, and it was lovely to chat and meet up with him.
Irish Rail leased the Craven coaches and the A Class loco A39 in silver livery from the Railway Preservation Society. Davy Molloy drove the loco and Morgan Darrey was the in-spector on site. Christy Glynn was haltkeeper while I operated the signal cabin. We were all stall-fed in the cast’s double-decker bus, and it was magic to witness a film being made. Sadly,
Tony Doyle passed away two years later in St. Thomas’s Hospital, London, from pancreatic cancer.
SEAN BROWNE & FRIENDS
When Sean Browne decided to buy an A Class engine No. 55 to plant in the middle of his mu-seum, he turned to me and said: “If my father was alive today, he’d say he reared an awful gob-shite.”
Well, of the many facets of Sean Browne, it’s certainly not that.
His railway museum is one of the finest anywhere in the world, and he is so affable and accommodating to boot. I could sum up Sean in one sentence: “The best railwayman to have never worked on the rail-way.”
He has done more work in promoting railways and artefacts than any manager I know. His filming of the last day of train drivers gave many a memento going into retirement.
Christy Glynn, RIP, was another larger-than-life figure and lifelong friend of Danny Bourke. Christy was a great railwayman and thespian of the arts through his acting in plays and musi-cals. The King and I was one of his classic roles.
Michael Reilly, as Station Master in Claremorris, was my boss in Castlerea, and a lovely boss he was. Michael is just one of the nicest human beings I have ever encountered, and he himself had a long history in Castlerea as a clerk in the goods store office.
The McLoughlin and Sharkey families were all connected to the railway through their work in the post office.
All mail was sent by train in those days, and an armed detective travelled nightly on the mail train. Noel Keenan was also a signalman during my time, and a gentleman as a col-league.
THE MADNESS
Prior to joining Irish Rail, I had a career in drapery which spanned eighteen years.
Part of this was spent in Harlows in Roscommon. Jimmy Harlow was a genial and kind man, and each Christmas, a Knight of the Road would come into the shop.
A big, hairy man called Martin, Jimmy would tog him out in new clothes, free, to face the hard winter ahead.
Jimmy would tell a risqué joke, where Martin would bang the counter with fire in his eyes and shout, “The madness! Sex is a madness!”
As a thirty-five-year-old, virile young man, I failed to understand. Yet after watching hundreds of hours of true crime and seeing the savagery of serial killers, rapists, and the pain inflicted in the name of sex, I began to wonder, had our Martin a point after all? There cannot be that many inherently bad people out there. There must be a catalyst.
Back to the railway, and the madness had little effect on a retired railway man in his eighties who managed to keep three ladies relatively happy in three different towns.
Observing him operate was like seeing David Attenborough up a tree, whispering into a microphone on Nature World.
After hours of waiting, the lady would appear, and he would move faster than a ballboy on Centre Court at Wimbledon.
His prowess at that age made Casanova look like Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch. Was it madness, sadness, or gladness that he suffered from? I leave that one to you, dear readers.
MURDER MOST FOUL
The cabin at Castlerea was a massive vantage point long before CCTV. John Cawley, the local guard, would visit me many nights for a cuppa and a chat by the roaring belly stove.
I remem-ber a lovely, flaxen-haired girl who would park by the cabin, waiting to collect her husband off the bus from Halal. Some evenings he would bring her flowers, which I thought was such a nice gesture.
Imagine, to my horror, a few weeks after I left Castlerea, both of them were horrifically mur-dered by Mark Nash in the village of Ballintober, outside Castlerea.
The Doyles were stabbed to death, while Nash was later convicted of two more murders in Grangegorman. I often say a silent prayer for Carl and Catherine Doyle.
THE BROTHERS
Thinking back to 1992, one has to remember life was relatively simple and devoid of today’s modern technology.
The internet then was just a contrary stitch your mother navigated while knitting your jumper. When I went there, the hospital closed in 1994 and had served as a sanatorium during the TB epidemic of the 1950s.
One ritual always baffled me: a man in a suit would arrive down from the hospital grounds, take off his wellingtons, put on good shoes, and head down. On returning, he reversed the ritual and went back up.
On enquiring, I learned that two brothers lived in a home across the stream. Neither spoke to the other, and one had a key to the door while the other buck used the window. One would get up early, light the fire, cook his breakfast, and then quench the fire on the other fellow.
Nothing as funny as folk!
EPILOGUE
I shed a tear leaving Castlerea, as I had made many friends and acquaintances there, many sadly gone to their just rewards.
I went back after nearly 25 years and noticed everything had changed, and behind it all, not a lot had changed, if you grip my paradox.
A fine primary care centre and Lidl store greet you on arrival, where Benny’s Deli has moved from the square to near the museum. Mulligan’s Menswear still stands supreme, while the lovely red-brick post office is now The Bombay Palace.
The Square, Church Road, and Patrick’s Street look very similar. The gates at the station are automated, and the station is modernised and conditioned for unmanned use if necessary.
Standing on the town bridge, watching the swift morning waters of the River Suck, I imagine seeing the faces of all my departed friends flow by: Mick and Eunice, Kevin McLoughlin, Joe McLoughlin, Casanova, Christy Hunt, and Tony Doyle. Even the legend that was Christy Glynn is dead. I was instantly reminded of the words of a Don Williams song…
Where the Arkansas River leaves Oklahoma
It runs free and rambles, muddy and black
Where the Arkansas River leaves Oklahoma
It's gone forever and never looks back
(Many thanks to Ray Lawlor for typing and arranging the layout for publication. Special thanks to Sean Browne, Castlerea Railway Museum, for the use of some photographs).