BECAUSE OF EXTREME DRUGS RELATED ANTI-SOCIAL ACTIVITY
About a week before Christmas I met my next door neighbour and he asked me if I knew why the building beside the Luas Tram Stop was being boarded up .. . that is discussed below. Anyway, the following day I went to Trim, County Meath, for Christmas but on my return to Dublin I discovered that my neighbour had sold his apartment and had moved to Athy. Despite the fact that he had lived in his apartment for about thirty years no one appears to have known of his plan to move however I was aware that he was very upset by the riot that took place nearby a few weeks ago.
In the 1960s, Dublin City Council cleared Dominick Street of a number of the terraced houses that were in use as tenements and replaced them with eight blocks of five-storey flats, containing 198 units. With a renewed commitment to regeneration and the creation of sustainable communities, the decision was made to demolish these flat complexes and replace them with a mixed-use, mixed tenure scheme, within the 1.26 ha site.
The Dominick Street Regeneration Project has seen a small number of new homes built directly across the road from the old flats which are now derelict. The redevelopment project took at least two decades to complete and resulted in the replacement of about 200 sub-standard homes with about seventy two new units. The complex now includes 72 new homes, a community centre, a residential courtyard, ground floor commercial space, car parking and street improvement works on Dominick Street and Dominick Place. The design of the building aimed to separate the private world of the residents from the public nature of the city centre
Public access to the vacant Dominick Streets flats and an associated car park are now being boarded up to prevent constant and extreme drug-dealing and anti-social behaviour. Dublin City Council will secure the walkway and car park along the flat complex on Dominick street Lower following requests from local residents and gardaí (police).
The site will eventually be secured by hoarding at the front of the complex facing onto the Luas stop and the back of the complex will be secured by steel fencing.
Towards the end of last year it was reported that Dublin Bus, Go-Ahead and the Luas Tram operator had been fined a total of €5m by Ireland’s National Transport Authority for late and cancelled journeys. My experience of Go-Ahead is limited to the 17 bus service which has been discontinued recently as the bus routes have been reorganised. I had to visit an old relative twice every week and she was located on Roebuck Road. I travelled there by getting the Tram to Windy Arbour and then the 17 to the Fosters Avenue end of Roebuck Road. However, the 17 service was so unreliable that I often gave up and walked to/from the tram stop. There was supposed to be a bus every twenty minutes but I frequently had to wait for close to sixty minutes (especially on Saturdays).
Towards the end of 2022 the Luas service received a penalty of €2.67m for the number of journeys not operated or which didn’t run to time. However, I have not found the tram service to be unreliable but I have noticed that many trams are too crowded for my liking and it is getting worse especially on the Red Line.
Today I decided to visit the Golden Bridge cemetery I was really surprised to discover that the tram was packed and it was only 2PM. When I got to the Drimnagh stop I was surprised by the frequency of the trams as there was one about every minute. It should be mentioned that if you wish to visit the Goldenbridge Cemetery you should get off the tram at the Drimnagh Stop rather than the Goldenbridge Stop.
I am still experimenting with my old Sigma DP1 Quattro and today, 24 April 2023, I photographed in manual mode and underexposed as the camera was inclined to over expose despite any settings that I make.
In the “Lotus-Eaters” episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses Bloom imagines that the couple leaving the Grosvenor Hotel are “Off to the country: Broadstone probably,” and in Wandering Rocks Mr. Dudley White stands on Array Quay “undecided whether he should arrive at Phibsborough more quickly by a triple change of tram or by hailing a car or on foot through Smithfield, Constitution hill and Broadstone terminus.” Both passages refer to a railway station in the northwest part of inner Dublin, at the top of Constitution Hill between Smithfield and Phibsborough. In 1904 it served as the terminus of the Midland Great Western Railway Company, whose trains went to the west of Ireland.
Broadstone railway station was the Dublin terminus of the Midland Great Western Railway (MGWR), located in the Dublin suburb of Broadstone. The site also contained the MGWR railway works and a steam locomotive motive power depot. The Luas tram station opened at the front of the station in 2017.
It is currently the headquarters of Bus Éireann, housing most of their administration and one of their main garages. Nearby on the same property is a Dublin Bus Depot.
In June 2013, Luas Cross City – a construction project which extended the Luas Green Line North from St. Stephen’s Green to Broombridge – commenced. The line, which opened to passengers on 9 December 2017, traverses the city centre on street-running track and arrives at Broadstone. It then enters into the Broadstone cutting where it continues on its own right of way. Broadstone – DIT is a Luas stop on the line. Its name refers to the fact that it was intended to be the closest stop to Dublin Institute of Technology Grangegorman campus. However, the plans were changed at a late stage, adding Grangegorman stop, which is closer to the campus. Construction of the stop involved excavating a large amount of earth from the land in front of the station, and building a road bridge over the tracks which buses can use to access the depot. The Luas stop has two lateral platforms and is in front of the station building. It was built several metres below the station in order to make it level with Constitution Hill; and a curved, white wall separates the southbound platform from the garden in front of the building. Trams approach the stop from Dominick Street Upper and continues by passing under the new bridge and turning sharply to the right, where they traverse the edge of the bus depot and enter the cutting.
A few years ago i was offered a Sigma DP1 Quattro at a very good price and while I had a bad experience with all my previous Sigma cameras I decided to accept the offer especially as the camera could produce .dng images but, as you may have guessed, there were many problems that can be really annoying. The DP1 Quattro is a fixed lens camera aimed at enthusiasts who demand the best image quality in a reasonably portable form factor. Announced in September 2014, it’s a unique camera in many respects, employing an unusually-shaped body, a fixed focal length lens and a sensor unlike any outside of Sigma’s range. It also eschews modern features we take for granted on other new cameras such as Wifi or even a movie mode. The DP1 Quattro is all about still photo quality.
There are volunteer groups who clean up sections of the canals in Dublin on a regular basis and what you see in my photographs is typical of what is dumped into the waters of the canals.
I live of Henrietta Street and the nearest tram stop is Broadstone if walk via the park at Kings Inns [the gates are closed at weekends]. However if the park is closed the nearest stop is Lower Dominick Street but for various reasons I prefer not to walk along that street. So, today, I got to Broadstone via Upper Dominick Street.
The Sigma DP1 Quattro, which I used today, is the wide-angle sibling to the DP2 Quattro. Image quality is outstanding [when everything goes right), but it’s slow to use and RAW processing requires much time and effort. In general the camera is unreliable and post-processing is a nightmare.
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