Garradice Halt was the small station between Corramahon and Aughawillan School, a rural stop that connected the family’s daily life to Ballinamore and the wider railway. Remembered through journeys with the narrator’s mother, it became a place of greetings, waiting, and return, where the railway’s practical limits sat alongside the pleasure of an outing.

Setting and position

The station lay between Corramahon and the two-teacher Aughawillan School, no more than a ten-minute walk from the house and farm. Trains from the Halt ran to Ballinamore, placing a small country stop within reach of the town while leaving the school and home close at hand.

On Saturdays, the narrator and his mother reached it by turning right at the railway bridge rather than climbing the hill past Mahon’s shop toward the school. A little siding led up to the stone station. The Reilly family lived in the stationhouse, and their son Paddy, then about fifteen or sixteen, often worked on the family farm.

Lines and wartime travel

The narrow-gauge line ran to Ballyconnell and Belturbet, connecting with the Dublin–Sligo mainline at Dromod. A smaller branch ran from Ballinamore toward Drumshanbo and the Arigna coal mines, making the Halt part of a network that reached well beyond the immediate village and farm.

Wartime shortages shaped the experience of travel: the trains had to run on low-grade coal from Arigna, and the journey could be so slow that walking the four miles of sleepers from Aughawillan to Ballinamore might have been quicker. The train nevertheless served as more than transport. When outings were rare, its platform and carriages offered a social occasion in their own right.

People and Saturday journeys

The gravelled platform was a scene of talk, laughter, meetings, and greetings. People dressed in their Sunday clothes; the narrator’s mother wore a fur clasped at her throat with the small head and paws of a young fox. Neighbours approached her both at the station and aboard the train, and sometimes gave the child coins. The family’s journeys thus placed the station at the centre of a social world extending from the farm into town.

The railway’s difficulties could become part of its communal ritual. On a steep incline, passengers sometimes had to leave the train and walk uphill while the empty carriages slipped back down the track. The engine gathered steam for another attempt; when it reached the top, a shovel was waved from the engine and the waiting passengers clapped before climbing aboard again. Firemen who lodged at Maggie’s also called and waved their shovels from the train as it passed.

Hughie McKeon, the ticket conductor, was known for the large ornamental gold watch he had received from America, worn on a gold chain across his black waistcoat. People knew to ask him the time, turning his pride in the watch into a familiar joke. Uncle Pat met all the trains in his hackney car, another local presence making the station a point of arrival as well as departure.

The return after dark

The homeward journey from Ballinamore was downhill, so the passengers did not have to get out and walk. In midwinter, sparks from the engine lit the darkness; at some level crossings, newspapers and parcels were thrown from the slowly moving train to people waiting with lanterns. The day’s purchases and prices were discussed on the way back, and sometimes a man’s excessive drinking supplied an unexpected disturbance to the journey.

At Garradice Halt, a lantern met the family. At first they had to grope for their footing until their eyes adjusted, though on some nights the moon and stars lit the hedges and the yellow, ghostly road. At home, the children listened for the train whistle; sometimes the twins, Margaret, and Monica waited by the little iron gate, eager to carry the parcels down the cinder path to the dimly lit house. The Halt’s importance in the memoir lies in this movement between worlds: the rare bustle of town and the close, dark return to home.