I had to laugh when I saw this doing the rounds on Facebook.
Irish Rail are currently asking commuters to vote for their favourite station, based on issues such as station presentation and services. A campaign of sorts has sprung up behind Broombridge station. Anyone who has been through Broombridge station will know it is beyond the words ‘awful kip’, a station neglected while those around her have been modernised, she continues to crumble, the very station sign telling you where you are difficult to read.
I would like to ask you to take a moment and vote for Broombridge as station of the year. Once more this humble Dublin station has excelled and deserves our recognition, it shuns many of the newfangled modern ideas in transport like ticketing and not being on fire and has once more outclassed the rest by just being two poorly guarded concrete platforms.
Brrombridge winning the ‘Best Station’ award would draw some attention to the sheer state of the place, and be the best coup for a public vote campaign since the BBC had to award the Wolfe Tones the best song of the last century. Go over here and give it a minute.
Done
Great idea. About to vote. I assume 5 is good and 1 is bad. They don’t actually tell you.
Next competition, best kept toilets. Needing to win: Tara St. or Dún Laoghaire neither of which have toilets.
Someone needs to post this on 4Chan, they love this type of thing. 4 billion votes for Broombridge!
Alan Costello..
What is 4Chan and how can we put Broombridge on it?
If you need to ask what 4chan is you do not want to know what 4chan is!
We need to get this out there. Varaker gave 2 million euros to upgrade three stations in his constituency but not a penny to Broomer
What a beautiful station, everything out in the open, nattily dressed and helpful.staff.
All categories done and dusted. 😉
A guy who drinks in the gravediggers was the attendant at that level crossing a long time ago. He got a bit comfortable after some liquid refreshment between trains and fell asleep. He didn’t hear the bell to tell him the train was coming. The level crossing got wrecked. They call him Bisto.
There isn’t a level crossing there, the bridge predates the train station too!
It’s at Reilly’s bridge just before Broombridge on the Rathoath Road.
Broombridge was where William Rowan Hamilton, in a eureka moment, scratched the formula for quarterion multiplication into the stone with his penknife. The formula became an important factor in the development of the internet allowing millions of people to communicate. That’s not always a good thing.
A were to start broomer forever etched in my heart. waiting to catch an early morning train to leixslip the smell of piss mixed with dutch gold and old english filling the air the embers of the pallet fire still glowing with the melted perspex and traffic cone. or long before the days of STT pulling in on a late night train heading from the city to blanch waiting wit a mixture of fear and excitement will we be robed or have our windows smashed o the thrill of it all no amount of money will ever change this station it is what it is a kip has been and allways will be its all about location and its in the worst location in the world it can not be moved so CLOSE IT stright from ashtown to drumcondra
@Dermot Nolan..
Who exactly do you think you are telling people to close our station?
Dublin Bus have reduced the bus service in our area and now you want to mess things up further by having our train station closed down.
We live in Cabra West and use Broombridge station everyday.
At one stage Kilbarrack Station was ‘a kip’, but then Irish Rail got its act together and invested in the station and guess what? Its not ‘a kip’ anymore.
We have little enough services around here without making matters worse for young and old.
Plenty of people use the station to get to college in Maynooth, Dun Laoghaire or to work and hospitals across the city. How do you purpose they get to their destination without using Broombridge?
Broombridge will surely get my vote 🙂
Your post made my day. This just needs to gather more momentum and we’ll have staff wondering how to put the ‘Favourite Station’ plaque on the without it being nicked. Broombridge ftw!
I used to work for Irish Rail and they gave up on the station after some nifty fingers literally took the thing apart and carried away the parts when they began to renovate, including the paving stones and metal frame. However…perhaps a new if you pardon the pun…train of thought is needed here….the country is crying out for work. Put some bleeding security on it!!
Voted. I always used to think it was beautiful as I ran along the canal on a Sunday morning.
I found this rare specimen beside the tracks at Broombridge Railway Station. Ever since 2002’s brutal Plastic Bag Environmental Levy, introduced by then Environment Minister Martin Cullen, the humble plastic bag tree (Crann Mála Plaisteach) or bush has become almost extinct. This relatively untouched beauty spot, owned by Irish Rail on the extremity of Cabra West has provided refuge for this once common botanical delight
http://www.stoneybutter.com
I think it’s a very interesting station, it has a sort of beautiful neglect to commend it. http://eoinhiggins.com/2010/wire/
[…] Come Here To Me: Irish Rail are currently asking commuters to vote for their favourite station, based on issues […]
I remember I was coming home from college around 9ish one night & stopped at Broombridge.
This little fella walked up to my window very calmly and coolly and took out a screwdriver and started to try to unscrew the window. As the train started moving, so did he. When it started going too fast, he looked at me , smiled & waved goodbye.(I don’t know if there are screws on the window or if he was trying to jimmy it out)
I’ll never forget that!
done & done
I have posted my vote & intend to go there tomorrow & suss the place out for my self. I reckon if it does win or come a credible 2nd, Varadkar will be embarrased into pumping a few bob into it . Geographically speaking it is an ideal spot with the aid of a feeder bus to serve a large population stretching from the park up to Finglas/Glasnevin it has a lot of potential, feck the begrudgers ??
And vere vill he get zis few bob? More fare hikes! Ve haff vays of making you pay!
Broombridge is all we deserve, just stick a sign on it, sponsored by Fianna Fail.
Voted for it but wasn’t sure about the ‘staff appearance’ question: never saw any staff at Broombridge. As someone said above it is actually a very busy station with loads of people using it to go to Maynooth, school in west Dublin or work in KIldare and people heading into town as well. Force Varaker to put funding into it.
(Did have to laugh during the Ryder Cup when all the stations were ‘golfified’ with fake green turf etc all the way from town to Leixlip..except for Broombridge.)
[…] It was the story of Broombridge train station, the sheer state of the place, and the campaign for Broombridge to win the Irish Rail station of the year. […]
Facebook campaign for a memorial garden on the disused plot of land between Broombridge Rd and Broombridge Train Station.
It is hoped that benches could be placed along the platform and plaques with loved ones names who have passed away can be erected over the benches. Trees, shrubs and flowers can be planted on the disused plot to brighten the place up. Each tree and shrub will be planted with a name of a deceased family member. Also hope to have a ‘Worry Tree’ planted for the community in the memorial garden.
We have spoken to the lads up who drink and cause damage up at the station and they were thrilled at the prospect that a memorial garden will go on that plot. They have already spread the word around the area that the new paint work is not to be written on with markers and that the place is to be left untouched. This is very promising..
Go to Broombridge Memorial Garden on Facebook and like our page.
Thanks..
How do you vote? Can’t see the link..
I am glad some good has come from the campaign . Let us hope it does not die out, the commuinities within which we dwell are really our greatest asset !!
Fair play to the good people of Cabra !!
So what happened?
To be quite honest the place is a dump and while many people might want it improved, simple and sad truth is the place is in the wrong location and any attempt to fix it usually ends up being destroyed within minutes. Best thing would be to close the place down. (and build a new station up the line at Ratoath crossings instead thats next to a manned crossing)
Well I had the pleasure of getting the wrong train last night from connolly street. long story short I jumped on the maynooth instead of dundalk train. I noticed my mistake and quickly jumped off at broombridge to catch a returning train….
Needless to say, I was stunned…. I had read about the place in the Metro a few weeks ago with the stories of donkeys on platforms and gangs hanging around, petty theft and grafiti. Well I thought Id stepped out of a timewarp and into wartorn berlin mid WW2.
The place is an absolute hole. Gangs of brazen teenagers and kids running around with free reign, pushing and running into disembarking passengers, playing football ON THE TRACKS BETWEEN ARRIVALS!!! It was so dodgey that I and some other passengers stayed on the apex of the canal bridge until we could see the train coming. all it would take is a proper station building, regular patrols by gardai for a few weeks, a campaign with the local community who live in close proximity and of course Irish rail depoying its spetznaz, sorry i mean rail security teams and this eyesore would quickly be recovered from its destitute state!!!! Something HAS to be done, i feel so sorry for the majority of people who live near or use the station and hope something is done soon.
Totally agree with you, Ross. I’m on the Dartline so would only very occasionally use the Maynooth line, but every time I pass through it, I am left in a state of shock that Ireland in 2012 has a station like this. It reflects a total systemic and government failure.
I live in the Kilbarrack end of Raheny, so use Kilbarrack station for my daily commute to town. When I was a kid in the late ’80s/early ’90s, Kilbarrack Station was almost – though not quite – as awful as Broombridge. Not alone was the station a kip, but it was surrounded by mini-Ballymum-style towers (Swan’s Nest Flats) that were totally drug-ridden. It and Howth Junction were fairly dangerous stations to be hanging around. Now, Kilbarrack is one of the nicer stations (aesthetically at least) on the northside of the Dartline. Why? Undoubtedly, partly because millions was spent re-generating Kilbarrack (including knocking down the flats and building decent mixed housing there and on surrounding wasteland), but also because the station was upgraded, always manned, fitted with CCTV and high-illumination floodlights, and security regularly patrol it. Also, the local kids were asked to paint murals on the walls of the station, which gave a bit of community buy-in – a great idea. It’s not perfect: there is the occasional gang of kids drinking cans at weekends, and I did see kids tresspassing across the tracks once; however, I’ve seen all of the above in Dalkey and Blackrock stations, too.
My point: why should local Finglas/Cabra residents be denied a train service just because Irish Rail aren’t willing to invest in the infrastructure and security required to make this place safe again? The station needs to be properly secured, upgraded, manned and Gardai need to patrol it with heavy resources until it beds down.
I work right beside here, in Broombridge Business Centre so my office window overlooks this train station! Its in a sorry state at the minute alright but hopefully with the new Luas Broombridge line that will all be behind the place soon. Its an area that definitely needs some regeneration, its in bad need of it. 2017 apparently is the date for completion. Maybe I’ll get a window box until then, lol!
[…] while those around her have been modernised, she continues to crumble,” Donal Fallon wrote at the time on Come Here to […]