Dunboyne Railway Station – Train Standing at Platform
Image by infomatique
There are two rail stations in Dunboyne. Dunboyne railway station and Pace M3 railway station were built as part of the reopening of the Navan-Clonsilla line under the Irish Governments Transport 21 development programme.
The original Dunboyne station opened in August 1862 on the Clonsilla-Navan railway line, but was closed in January 1947 (Trains to Navan ceased in 1963. Since then the town has not been served by passenger trains, with the old station being converted into a private residence. However, in 2005, the Irish Government announced that, as part of its Transport 21 plan, the line between Clonsilla and Navan is to be reopened for passenger trains in two stages, with the first stage included a new station for Dunboyne, which opened in September 2010.
Some 300 pay-and-display car parking spaces are available at Dunboyne, with a further 1,200 spaces at M3 Parkway. The M3 Parkway is the largest public transport park-and-ride site in Ireland.
The station was officially opened on September 2, 2010, and the first regularly scheduled train to the station arrived on September 3. The new service offers peak journey times of 31 minutes from M3 Parkway to Dublin and 27 minutes from Dunboyne, with services operating every half hour in each direction at peak times.
Dunboyne is centred on the crossroads formed by the R156 regional road and the R157, just south of the N3 National primary route. Dunboyne Castle and 18th century mansion replaced the old castle as the seat of the Butlers, Lords of Dunboyne, this is now Dunboyne Castle Hotel & Spa. It has a long and turbulent history but today is a bustling town with a unique charcacter.