Oranmore needs to have its own railway station which would service not only Oranmore, but the industrial estates, Maree, Clarinbridge, Derrydonnell, and Craughwell.
This is the view of Labour candidate for Oranmore Enda O’Rourke who sought to make his point about the need for a station in a most unusual way recently.
In conjunction with the Oranmore party branch, he re-enacted a bicycle and train journey from the 1960s with a difference.
In 1963 Liam Hanniffy, from Ballinacourty Hill, was attending St Mary’s College in Galway. Each morning he cycled to the station at Oranmore, put his bicycle on the guard’s van and got on the train.
When Mr Hanniffy arrived in Ceannt Station he collected his bicycle and proceeded to St Mary’s. After hurling training at the college in the evenings he completed his journey in reverse. The cost per day was less that one old shilling.
Mr O’Rourke re-enacted this journey recently on a classic 1920’s butchers bicycle but when he arrived at the railway gates at Oranmore, there was no stop to board the train to Galway city.
As a result he is calling for a new station to be built at Oranmore, not Gurraun, at a site east of the existing level crossing. He also wants to see a “proper park ands ride facility to be sourced close to station”.
