Askeaton railway station

The station was opened by the Waterford and Limerick and Limerick and Foynes railways, then absorbed into the Great Southern and Western Railway. In 1924 the Railways Act passed by the Oireachtas of the Irish Free State moved the station to the Great Southern Railway. In 1925 another merger led to management by the Great Southern Railways. Then it was moved to the CIÉ by the Transport Act 1944[1] from 1 January 1945, on nationalisation. The station was closed to passenger traffic by CIÉ on 4 February 1963 and freight on 2 December 1974. Trains for Foynes continued to pass through Askeaton until the line effectively lost all its freight services in 2000. The line is still officially open to freight traffic, but it has not seen a train since the annual weedspray train visited the line on 7 May 2002. The last known movement was on 9 January 2003 when a permanent way inspection car visited the line.

In an interview on Limerick's Live 95 fm on 18 April 2011, Kay McGuinness, the Chairperson of Shannon Foynes Port Company, said that they were confident that the rail link could be reopened for €7 million. This was considerably less than the initially quoted price of €30 million by Irish Rail.

On 10 February 2015, Irish Rail wrote to lineside neighbours informing them of planned work (to take over six weeks) to clear the line of vegetation in order to allow a condition survey and inspection of structures to take place. This was to inform a study that they were undertaking on behalf of the Shannon Foynes Port Company into the re-establishment of rail freight traffic on the line.

The building and platform are still in good condition next to the mothballed railway.[2]

• Butt, R. V. J. (1995). The Directory of Railway Stations: details every public and private passenger station, halt, platform and stopping place, past and present (1st ed.). Sparkford: Patrick Stephens Ltd. ISBN 978-1-85260-508-7. OCLC 60251199.
• Jowett, Alan (2000). Jowett's Nationalised Railway Atlas (1st ed.). Penryn, Cornwall: Atlantic Transport Publishers. ISBN 978-0-906899-99-1. OCLC 228266687.