Inside Ceannt Station: Conserving 175 years of heritage while constructing the gateway to the West

🎙️ Inside Ceannt Station: conserving 175 years of heritage while constructing Ireland’s gateway to the western region This episode of iProperty Radio goes on site at Galway’s Ceannt Station, recorded inside the newly opened train hall as services run around us. Host Carol Tallon is joined by Liam Boyce of Iarnród Éireann IE Architects, Darren Devane, Director of Building at BAM, and Peter Cox, CEO of Carrig Conservation, who has been conservation consultant on the project since 2021. Originally built in the early 1850s to a design by railway architect John Skipton Mulvany, with cast iron by Richard Turner of Botanic Gardens fame, the station lost roughly half its original train hall in the 1950s to make way for bus maintenance. The current redevelopment reinstates that train hall and takes the station from two platforms to five, building capacity for Galway, the Western Rail Corridor and the wider region west of the Shannon. We get a first look at the detail some commuters may never notice: the cast iron colonnade that had to be taken off site, strengthened with hidden “intervention steel” and reassembled bolt by bolt; the stone repairs and salvaged fabric; the original limestone staircase uncovered during M&E works; and the reality of delivering all of it in around 30 phases while the station stayed open every single day. It’s a candid, practical conversation about balancing heritage with modern building standards, the value of an integrated client, contractor, design team and conservation approach, and what a project of this scale means for Galway and the west — plus the story of the nesting pigeons that held up demolition for two months! For the full visual effect, including Peter Cox’s on-site tour, skip Spotify and watch on YouTube. Thanks to Katie Tallon for producing within another challenging but inspiring LIVE location 👏 (*And if it sounds like we were shouting over the noise of trains, people and construction works — we were!) 📽️    • Inside Ceannt Station: Conserving 175 year...   🎧 https://open.spotify.com/episode/4jYe...