29th January 2025 marks 100 years since the closure of the Dublin and Lucan Electric Railway in 1925. The 3’ 6”-gauge Company-owned tramway had linked the village suburb of Lucan on the banks of the River Liffey with the conurbation of Dublin, some eight miles to the east. This replaced an earlier 3’-gauge steam tramway. However, its tracks only extended as far as Phoenix Park Gate in Dublin, stopping just 12 yards short of those operated by the much larger Dublin United Tramways Company, which were built to the Irish standard gauge of 5’ 3”.
Image 1: Map of the Dublin and Lucan Electric Tramway. Source: https://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/environment-geography/transport/the-lucan-tram/electrication/
Image 2: Phoenix Park Gate, Dublin, showing the interconnection between the Lucan tram waiting at its terminus on the left, and its Dublin United Tramways counterpart, whose terminus is on the right. Detail from old Postcard, circa 1900 (National Tramway Museum collection).
The electric tramway had opened just over 25 years earlier on 8th March 1900. Passenger services were initially provided by five double-deck open topped bogie cars supplied by G. F. Milnes & Co., together with a motorised former steam tram trailer and an additional double-deck car that was obtained from Milnes Voss in 1906. The tramway also acquired an electric locomotive in 1905 from British Thomson-Houston, which was used for goods haulage.
Image 3: Dublin and Lucan tramcar no. 15, illustrating the distinctive curved trolley boom which the new electric tramcars had fitted. The first five electric trams were numbered 12-16, following on from the former steam trams. Photo: National Tramway Museum collection.
Image 4: Unidentified Dublin and Lucan tramcar. Photographer: Walter Gratwicke, source: National Library of Ireland on The Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=151078687
Image 5: The Dublin and Lucan Tramway locomotive no. 17, built by British Thomson-Houston for haulage of goods. Photograph: Walter Gratwicke, source: Dublin Trams Collection, https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000747483 Reproduction rights owned by the National Library of Ireland.
Although initially successful, the tramway’s fortunes were undermined by the combined impact of the First World War and the three-year Irish War of Independence that was waged between 1919 and 1921. During the preceding Easter Uprising of 1916, the Lucan tramway was the only Dublin service not to have been suspended. This fact was celebrated in an advertising postcard commissioned by the Spa Hotel (which was also served by the tramway) in nearby Dodsborough.
However, it was taken over by the British Government in 1917 under the Defence of the Realm Act and remained under Government control until 24th August 1921. By this stage, the trackwork was in urgent need of replacement. The company was unable to finance this, as its income was greatly exceeded by its operating costs. An additional overwhelming challenge was the steep rise in competition from unregulated motor buses. These vehicles starved the tramway of revenue and also damaged the local road surfaces: upkeep of these was the responsibility of the tramway company.
So, once government control was relinquished and its effective subsidies withdrawn, it was only a matter of time before the company declared bankruptcy. This resulted in the service being withdrawn on 29th January 1925. Most unusually, however, this was not in fact the end of the line for the tramway which – almost uniquely among Britain and Ireland’s first-generation tramways – was to be granted a reprieve, albeit not a permanent one.
Amidst local clamours for the tramway’s reinstatement, a convoluted set of negotiations among various authorities resulted in an agreement for the Dublin United Tramways Company to acquire the assets of Dublin and Lucan Electric Railway, reconstruct it and integrate it into the rest of the Dublin tramway system. Moreover, ten new tramcars were built to provide the reinstated service, which reached Lucan on 27th May 1928, just over three years after its initial closure.
In return for undertaking this rescue mission, Dublin United Tramways was granted a number of significant concessions from Dublin Corporation. These included an undertaking not to oppose the company’s application for powers to run motor buses as well as tramcars, and also a deferment of the corporation’s right to buy the company’s tramway system for forty years.
As it turned out, Dublin United Tramways Company decided in the 1930s to phase out its entire tramway operations in favour of motor buses. The last tramcar ran over the Dublin and Lucan line on 13th May 1940, and the final Dublin tram service (on the Dalkey line) finished on 9th July 1949.
Image 6: Dublin United Tramways tramcar no. 254 pictured at the Lucan terminus on 24th April 1938, two years before the tramway’s final closure in 1940. Photo: W A Camwell (National Tramway Museum collection).
Another unique claim to fame for the Dublin and Lucan tramway is for it to have featured in a well-known 1923 painting by Irish artist Jack B Yeats, which he entitled “In the Lucan Tram”. It depicts three fashionably dressed women talking animatedly in the corner of a Lucan tramcar while a soberly dressed male passenger sits rather stiffly at the other end of the compartment. The painting has been interpreted as an observation on the dynamism of modern urban life in contemporary Ireland. The painting is on display in the National Gallery of Ireland.
Image 7: “In the Lucan Tram” by Jack B. Yeats, 1923: painting in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland: http://onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie/objects/2796/in-the-tram
Although the Dublin and Lucan Tramway is not represented in the National Tramway Museum’s collection, Crich is home to another Irish tramcar – Hill of Howth 10 – from a tramway on the opposite side of Dublin. This had been operated by the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) until its closure in 1959. For more information on this tramcar see: https://www.tramway.co.uk/trams/howth-10/
With thanks to Museum volunteer Jim Dignan for producing this article.
Image References:
- Source: https://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/environment-geography/transport/the-lucan-tram/electrication/
- National Tramway Museum collection.
- National Tramway Museum collection.
- Source: National Library of Ireland on The Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=151078687
- Source: Dublin Trams Collection, https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000747483 Reproduction rights owned by the National Library of Ireland.
- National Tramway Museum collection.
- “In the Lucan Tram” by Jack B. Yeats, 1923: painting in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland: http://onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie/objects/2796/in-the-tram