Limerick Junction
Limerick Junction, actually situated in County Tipperary and formerly named Tipperary Junction, is a railway station in Ireland. Tipperary town is itself only a mile or two away, though Limerick Junction, with only a few houses and a pub, is not even a village in itself. The station lies at the only railway junction in Ireland where two line cross at near-90 degrees. One line is the Dublin-Cork mainline, the other is the Limerick-Waterford line. Trains from all four locations are served, some connecting elsewhere onwards to Ennis, County Clare and Tralee, County Kerry.
 The entire station at Limerick Junction is surrounded by track. Trains accessing the Waterford bay, arriving from Limerick or Waterford, must reverse into the platform (those from Waterford also reverse back from "Keane's points", where the curve out from the station joins the line). |
The platform layout consists of four platforms – two alongside the Cork-Dublin mainline (which passes in front of the station), and the other two, serving Limerick/Waterford trains, facing sidings on the rear of the station. Thus we come to the unusual nature of the station – access to the rear platforms (the "Limerick bay" to the right as one faces the station front, the "Waterford bay" to the left). A train coming from Limerick, needing to pull into the Waterford bay, must switch onto a curve off the Limerick-Waterford line, pass behind the station building, past the platforms, and reverse into the Waterford bay. A train coming from Waterford, must pass across the Dublin-Cork mainline towards Limerick, before reversing back to come into the curve used by trains arriving from Limerick. It can then stop at the Limerick bay.
This unusual reversal into a station is shared with:
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