A Complete Trial Run Takes Place for Ireland’s First Passenger Railway

October 9, 1834

In a trial run, the steam locomotive Hibernia pulled a train consisting of eight carriages on the newly built Dublin and Kingstown Railway (D&KR) line in Ireland. (At that time, the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland were merged together as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; this sovereign state remained in existence until the establishment of the Irish Free State, forerunner of the Republic of Ireland, in 1922.) The D&KR, which had been jointly developed by Irish engineer William Dargan and his British colleague Charles Blacker Vignoles, was Ireland’s first passenger railway.

The steam locomotive Vauxhall had hauled a train on a portion of the new route five days before Hibernia’s own trial run. Hibernia, however, made the first round trip on the entire length of the D&KR line between the street called Westland Row in the city of Dublin and Kingstown Harbour (also known as Dún Laoghaire Harbour) along Dublin Bay. Hibernia had been designed by Welsh engineer Richard Roberts and manufactured by Sharp, Roberts and Company for the D&KR earlier that year.

For more information on the Dublin and Kingstown Railway, please check out http://www.dalkeyhomepage.ie/dublinkingstownrailway.html