The farce lift

1973: in a major company-wide study ordered by the top brass at Iarnród Éireann, it is determined that lifts in train stations improve access for a certain percentage of the population: people who are wheelchair bound, elderly people who find it hard to manage stairs, women with buggies* or very very drunk passsengers (on a Sunday night in 1973, that's a high percentage of the population).

1983: Salthill Dart station still doesn't have a lift.

1993: Salthill Dart station still doesn't have a lift.

2003: Salthill Dart station still doesn't have a lift.

2009: Mick Flannagan's (the Senior Station Officer) mum is pushing on and she has voiced her difficulties at managing the stairs to the northbound trains platform during her annual trip to the city centre to catch the St Patrick's Day parade.

June 2011: work begins on the Salthill station lifts.

March 20th 2012**: After much head scratching, cigarettes smoking and tea drinking, the work is finally completed. The testing phase begins.

March 30th 2012: After ten intensive days of testing the lifts (pressing the 'up' button for them to go up and the 'down' button for them to go down), the lifts are certified as perfectly fit for use.

March 31th: The lads from BigFokkoffShutters & Co arrive

April 2nd: The shutters are fully fitted, painted green and set to the closed position.

They have been that way ever since.

I guess they'll be opened again on 17 March 2013 for Molly Flanagan to catch the 09:48*** to Connolly.

If she's still alive.



* no such thing as a dad pushing a buggie in 1973. Impossible
** Poor Molly Flanagan, she had to climb the goddam stairs this year again...
*** it usually arrives sometime between quarter past nine and half past ten (ish)