Kingscourt railway station is a former passenger and freight station in

Kingscourt Kingscourt, historically known as Dunaree (), is a town in County Cavan, Ireland. It is located near the Cavan– Meath border. The town was founded near the site of the old village of Cabra, by Mervyn Pratt, towards the end of the 18th centur ...

County Cavan County Cavan ( ; gle, Contae an Chabháin) is a Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Ulster and is part of the Border Region. It is named after the town of Cavan and is base ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. The station was built in 1875 by the independent

Navan and Kingscourt Railway The Midland Great Western Railway (MGWR) was the third largest Irish gauge () railway company in Ireland. It was incorporated in 1845 and absorbed into the Great Southern Railways in 1924. At its peak the MGWR had a network of , making it Irelan ...

, as the terminus of its line from . In 1888, the company was purchased by the

Midland Great Western Railway The Midland Great Western Railway (MGWR) was the third largest Irish gauge () railway company in Ireland. It was incorporated in 1845 and absorbed into the Great Southern Railways in 1924. At its peak the MGWR had a network of , making it Irela ...

. The MGWR envisaged extending the line from Kingscourt to via , , and , but this never materialised. ( A line from Castleblayney to Armagh, via Keady, was eventually built in the early 1900s and operated by the

Great Northern Railway (Ireland) The Great Northern Railway (Ireland) (GNR(I) or GNRI) was an Irish gauge () railway company in Ireland. It was formed in 1876 by a merger of the Irish North Western Railway (INW), Northern Railway of Ireland, and Ulster Railway. The government ...

.) Following the creation of the

Irish Free State The Irish Free State ( ga, Saorstát Éireann, , ; 6 December 192229 December 1937) was a state established in December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921. The treaty ended the three-year Irish War of Independence between th ...

, the MGWR became part of the

Great Southern Railways The Great Southern Railways Company (often Great Southern Railways, or GSR) was an Irish company that from 1925 until 1945 owned and operated all railways that lay wholly within the Irish Free State (the present-day Republic of Ireland). The p ...

in 1925, which in turn became part of Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ) in 1945. In 1947, CIÉ withdrew passenger services between Kingscourt and Navan. Goods services from Kingscourt to

Dublin Port Dublin Port ( ga, Calafort Átha Cliath) is the seaport of Dublin, Ireland, of both historical and contemporary economic importance. Approximatively two-thirds of Ireland's port traffic travels via the port, which is by far the busiest on the ...

via Navan and were re-routed via in 1958 and then largely withdrawn in 1963, following which the section to Navan was used almost exclusively for the transport of

gypsum Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula . It is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, blackboard or sidewalk chalk, and drywall. ...

from a terminal adjacent to the station, owned and operated by BPB Gypsum Industries. After a strike by Irish Rail staff in 2001, Gypsum Industries decided to transfer its traffic to road. The last gypsum train departed Kingscourt on 30 October 2001. The last train of all to operate to and from Kingscourt was a weed-spraying train on 7 June 2002, after which the line was disconnected at Tara Junction in Navan. The station building at Kingscourt remains intact today, having been partially restored in the mid-2000s. Also still extant are the station's single platform, the gypsum terminal and a goods shed. The tracks also remain in situ, albeit heavily overgrown.

References

Disused railway stations in County Cavan Railway stations opened in 1865 Railway stations closed in 2001 Railway Station, Kingscourt Railway stations in the Republic of Ireland opened in the 1860s {{Ireland-railstation-stub