The railway station at Oranmore, Co Galway, reopened yesterday, 50 years after it had closed. Iarnród Éireann and Galway County Council have invested €4.8 million in the station and car park outside the village.
The station will primarily serve commuters from south Galway travelling into the city but will also be a new station on the Galway-Dublin and Galway-Limerick lines.
The journey time to Galway city will be as little as seven minutes. Some 23 services on the main Dublin and Limerick lines will call each weekday.
The Oranmore station opened 162 years ago when the Great Midland and Western Railway used it predominantly to facilitate the transport of livestock to Dublin, en route to the UK. It closed in 1963, but the massive expansion of the Oranmore area over the past two decades led to demands for it to be reopened.
At the official opening yesterday, Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar noted that it was the 144th station in the rail network and the second he had opened in the past month.