After a gap of almost 80 years, a unique railway has once again accepted its first fare-paying passengers.
Yesterday while the public travelled free for a day on mainline rail thanks to industrial action by unions, adults in Listowel queued to pay €6 and €3 per child on part of a replica railway whose design was inspired by camels.
The Lartigue monorail which operated between Listowel and Ballybunion between 1888 and 1924 has had ½ kilometre of track reinstated and a replica of the original locomotive and two carriages built.
Mr Jack McKenna, one of the Lartigue's original drivers, was one of the first on board yesterday as the whistle blew for the first paying passengers. He had the privilege as a child of four of driving the original train "for a few yards" as it left the station in Ballybunion in 1923.
"It felt the same. I remembered the noise. It all came back to me. And it rocks a bit as well." Mr McKenna was one of those who spearheaded the restoration project in 1998 along with Fine Gael TD, Mr Jimmy Deenihan.
"People travel all over the world to see unique railways," Mr McKenna said, adding he hoped they would came to Listowel also. The Kerry Group, along with FÁS, Leader and local community groups supported the railway. The next phase of the project will include a museum, an auditorium, a gift and souvenir shop as well as café facilities in the former Great Southern Railway Goods Store.
The Lartigue became an institution and was responsible for putting the seaside town of Ballybunion on the tourist map. It supplied sea-sand to farmers inland and transport for students to St Michael's college Listowel, Mr Deenihan recounted. Even during its lifetime it attracted rail enthusiasts, journalists and writers. Named after a French designer and inventor, Charles Francois Lartigue, the story goes that it was while on a visit to Algeria to examine a means of transporting esparto grass across the semi-desert plains that he saw a cavalcade of camels with luggage and it was this which inspired him to build a railway 3 feet 3 inches off the ground.
"The legs of the camels became trestles, their humps were transformed into wheel and the thellis (the leather pouches hanging down either side of the camel) became a carriage," Mr Deenihan said.The train will operate on weekdays on the hour between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.