CURIOSITIES:MY VERY FIRST memory is of a railway station. It was at night and the platform was dark with shadows. I can still feel the tension and excitement as the train could be heard puffing round the bends, before arriving in a glitter of lights from another world. Nothing has ever surpassed the glamour of going to bed between snowy white sheets on the bunks in our compartment, writes Melosina Lenox-Conyngham
I have been drawn to stations ever since and what, from my perspective, could be better than to have two stations beside each other? One a plain building of grey, roughly-dressed stone with a canopy over the platform on the main Dublin to Sligo line and the other across the car park, a low, redbrick building that looks as if it should be part of a toy railway system. The first station at Dromod was built by the Great Southern and Western Railway Company and still functions. It was here that Albert Reynolds worked as a clerk before becoming a successful business man, politician and then taoiseach.
When my train drew into this station, the tannoy announced that there would be a pause so the passengers could get out to have a bit of a smoke. I thought it should add: "Are you right there Michael, are you right?"
The other station, with witchy pointed eaves, was erected in 1887 by the impressively named Cavan, Leitrim and Roscommon Light Rail and Tramway Company, alas no longer in existence. The trains ran to Belturbet and to the coal mines at Arigna.
The engines, Gertude, Violet and Lady Edith, were named for the relations of the local directors. Oh, how much I would like to have an engine called after me.
Now the station is in private hands with only half a mile of track open for the little train that carries tourists up and down the line.
The station still has the little waiting room, warmed by a couple of sods of turf in the tiny fireplace and decorated with posters of the ever-sunny sands of Bundoran.
The enthusiastic owner is Michael Kennedy, who is the porter, the station master, the ticket collector and the restaurant car attendant, and has also created a museum of transport memorabilia in the old sheds. He blows his whistle, puts on his engine driver's hat and we are off.