WALKING THE LINE

by Tom Kenny

‘Walking the Line’ is the title of an important book written by Kevin Brophy which describes his childhood growing up in Renmore Barracks. The ‘Line’ is the path alongside the railway line on the causeway between the barracks and the station, and is seen in our photograph c.1960.

“It was separated from the railway by four strands of wire linking a string of wooden posts. When you were used to walking the Line you marked it off in your mind in sections. The first section was all downhill, the small chapel on your right, then the stretch of plots where some of the soldiers grew potatoes and onions and cabbages. After the downward hill there was a straight stretch until you reached the first bridge on the Line. We called it Paddy Walsh’s bridge. Legend had it that Paddy, hearing a train approaching in the darkness, and mistakenly thinking that he was walking on the sleepers of the railway, had clambered, as he thought through the wires to the safety of the Line, but instead had plunged to his death. A rough cross of stones later marked the spot.

The longest section of the Line ran from Paddy Walsh’s bridge to the middle bridge. On either side lay the wet, marshy ground which stretched on one side to the salt water lake, on the other side to the sea. From this bridge one moved on briskly to the Lough Athalia Bridge, by far the biggest bridge on the Line, spanning the wide neck of water that passed between lake and bay. If you were crossing this bridge at the same time as a train was pulling in or out, you could feel the bridge tremble and groan under the clanking mass of iron, and sometimes the engine would hiss violently and clouds of smoky steam would billow around you. Then the Line veered right, away from the glass cage of the signalman’s box, past the low cottage where Ollie McCormack lived, up the hill over the turning circle where the railwaymen pushed the engine around on the turning mechanism, so that the engine faced outwards for the next journey.”

Kevin Brophy was born in 1943. His father Jim was a soldier and a fine hurler who played many times as corner back for Galway. His mother was Sara Garvey. Kevin walked the Line on his way to and from the Mon and the Bish when going to school. He graduated from UCG and became a teacher. He married Mary Fergus in 1967 and they had three children. In 1972 he got a job as senior editor with a company called School and College Services. In 1977 he set up his own educational publishing company, Brophy Educational which provided textbooks for the post-primary market. He set up another few imprints which were very successful, but all the time, he wanted to write himself. His first book “Walking the Line” was followed by “Almost Heaven”, a romantic novel set in Galway, and by several other titles. Two of his novels, “The Berlin Crossing” and “Another Kind of Country” dealt with the Cold War. Kevin was an erudite, gentle, soft-spoken man who made a very significant contribution to the world of publishing and writing in this country. He never quite lost his Galway accent or his love for his native city, but sadly, he died recently. Solas na bhFlaitheas dá anam uasal.

Finally, in last week’s column, while listing the teams which featured in the Street Leagues in the fifties and sixties, I am afraid I omitted the Sarsfields team. That was the name of the group of boys drawn from Eyre Square, Prospect Hill up to the Union Hall and also College Road. Sincere apologies lads.