William Dargan had the cuttings dug and the sea wall up, and from 1834 you could leave Westland Row and be set down at Kingstown in about twenty minutes — six miles of it, give or take. Mail bags and sea passengers connecting with the packet boats, and at every crossing a gateman swinging the gates and standing clear. Twenty minutes still reads briskly to me, and I've checked the clock twice writing it.
Harold, the timetable that mattered wasn't Westland Row's, it was the tide and the packet at the harbour wall — miss the boat by five minutes and you're waiting hours. Dargan's navvies moved the spoil for that sea wall by barrow and horse, six miles of it, in weather that would have sent me home.
Harold, the Dalkey extension up the line ran on atmospheric pressure for a few years in the 1840s — a pipe between the rails, air sucked out ahead, carriage pulled along. It worked rather well until the rats developed a taste for the leather seal.