Bray Railway Station - County Wicklow

Bray Railway Station - County Wicklow, originally uploaded by infomatique.

Bray Daly Station is a railway station serving Bray in County Wicklow, Ireland.

When I operated a business there about thirty years ago the station was in very poor condition and the train service was terrible and the carriages were in a very poor condition but with the introduction of the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) the train service that is available in 2011 is excellent. However, the facilities available at the station could not be described a being good.

The station has two main platforms - platform one on the west side of the station near the main entrance, and platform two over the footbridge on the east side of the station. Although platform one is generally used for northbound services and platform two for southbound services and terminating trains, the roles are frequently reversed so as to accommodate as many services as possible. Platform three, the platform formerly used for the Greystones diesel shuttle, is now very seldom used as it has no northbound capacity (the line ends directly south of the station building), however it is often used for cleaning trains and occasionally for DART services to and from Greystones.

One thing that I do like about Daly station is the series of paintings on platform two on the east side of the station. Beginning with a painting of the station's opening ceremony in 1852, the series runs along the length of the platform , documenting both Irish history and Irish railway history right up to the present day. Various types of carriage, locomotives and characters can be seen in the pictures, including British soldiers in the 1916 panel, James Joyce in the 1940s panel, and a hippy couple in the 1960s panel. Many of these panels were in need of repair as lime was seeping through the plaster. In 2008 the original artist began a Mosaic replacement programme for the Murals but the work has yet to be completed.