Athlone railway station is a station which serves the town of Athlone in County Roscommon and County Westmeath. It is located in the town on the east side of the river Shannon. The station is an interchange station between the

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...

Galway Galway ( ; ga, Gaillimh, ) is a city in the West of Ireland, in the province of Connacht, which is the county town of County Galway. It lies on the River Corrib between Lough Corrib and Galway Bay, and is the sixth most populous city on ...

and

- Westport rail services. In addition it is located adjacent to the town's bus station. There are three platforms, of which Numbers 2 and 3 are an

island platform An island platform (also center platform, centre platform) is a station layout arrangement where a single platform is positioned between two tracks within a railway station, tram stop or transitway interchange. Island platforms are popular on ...

History

Athlone has had two Railway stations of varying roles over time. They are on opposite sides of the River Shannon, connected by the

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Midland Great Western Railway

The first of these was built 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 Irelan ...

and opened on 1 August 1851. Designed by J.S. Mulvany, it has a long, rather austere façade, in an Italianate style. The two-storey building has a staggering seventeen-bay façade which is broken by four breakfronts. It connected Galway and Dublin via the MGWR mainline, which ran between

Dublin Broadstone railway station Broadstone railway station ( ga, Stáisiún An Clocháin Leathan) was the Dublin terminus of the Midland Great Western Railway (MGWR), located in the Dublin suburb of Broadstone. The site also contained the MGWR railway works and a steam ...

, Mullingar and Athlone via

Moate Moate (; ) is a town in County Westmeath, Ireland. The name ''An Móta'' is derived from the term motte-and-bailey, as the Normans built an example of this type of fortification here. The earthwork is still visible behind the buildings on the m ...

. Since 1985 it has served as engineering offices and stores for Irish Rail.

Great Southern and Western Railway

The second was opened in 1859 by the Great Southern and Western Railway that reached Galway via a branch of the Cork main line. For many years there was great rivalry between the two railway companies who developed the railway stations in Athlone but this was subsequently solved by arbitration. In the 1920s this station was designated as the goods station for Athlone and served in that capacity until 1985 when it became the mainline railway station for the town. The design, by Wilkinson, is a simple but elegant Italianate style of five-bays and two storeys. The success of the design is in its simplicity and in the decorative features. The entrance with its three arches supported on Doric pillars and the attractive ashlar architraves on the windows all add elegance to this piece of Irish railway architecture.

Great Southern Railways

In 1924, the MGWR and GSWR were merged into a single company, Great Southern Railways, which rationalised all passenger services to Galway through the old MGWR station in Athlone, leaving the GSWR station primarily as a goods terminal. This changed in the 1970s and 1980s, when the national transport operator Córas Iompair Éireann switched most of its passenger services to the GSWR route via , with the consequence that the old GSWR station was renovated and the MGWR station closed. Athlone Midland

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