Overview
The Custom House was designed to be seen from O’Connell Bridge; the Loopline Bridge is the reason you can’t. This working railway viaduct, thrown across the River Liffey in 1889–91 to join Dublin’s north and south rail lines, cut clean across that sightline, and Dubliners have been calling it an eyesore ever since. It carries two active tracks about six metres above the quays – DART, commuter and InterCity services between Connolly and the southern lines – so you can’t walk it. It’s a thing to look at and photograph, not to cross.
The bridge that blocked the view
The Loopline was designed by the civil engineer John Chaloner Smith for the Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford Railway and built between September 1889 and 1891. The point of it was blunt and practical: to close the last gap between Dublin’s separate northern and southern rail networks and speed the transatlantic mail landing at Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) and Queenstown (now Cobh). One side effect was that it finished off the Liffey as a route for sea-going ships upstream, its height leaving no room for masts.
It was unpopular from the drawing board. The double row of piers permanently blocked the river view of the Custom House, a building deliberately set at an angle so it would show at its best from O’Connell Bridge – and now didn’t. The bridge went up anyway, judged too useful to stop. A century on, opinion hasn’t fully softened: the historian Richard Killeen called it ‘one of the city’s true eyesores’, while others make the case for its raw, functional look. In the early 2000s Iarnród Éireann hung big advertising hoardings across its faces; after An Bord Pleanála and Dublin City Council leaned on them, the ads were scaled back from 2006 to give the skyline back some room.
Engineering
It’s a textbook piece of late-Victorian railway building: wrought-iron lattice girders riveted onto a double row of cast-iron fluted columns with ornate neck mouldings, springing off limestone and cast-iron piers. Five main spans carry the two tracks, and the open lattice lets wind and light through rather than fighting them. It is one of only two railway bridges to cross the Liffey inside the city, and it still takes heavy commuter traffic every day.
In Ulysses
The bridge has a fixed place in Irish writing thanks to James Joyce’s Ulysses, where a thrown-away leaflet drifts down the river ‘under Loopline bridge, shooting the rapids where water chafed around the bridgepiers, sailing eastward past hulls and anchorchains, between the Customhouse old dock and George’s quay.’ Read the line standing on the quay and the early-20th-century river it describes is still recognisably there. The James Joyce Centre is a walk north, up near the top of O’Connell Street.
Best views and photography
Since you can’t get onto the bridge, the views are all from the quays and streets around it:
- Custom House Quay – the classic shot, the iron lattice framed against the Custom House front; best in the low light of early morning or evening.
- George’s Quay and Liberty Hall – lower and closer, good for the rivet detail and the rhythm of the piers, and for catching a train in motion.
- Tara Street station – from the platforms you’re right alongside the trains as they cross.
- After dark – the bridge is lit at night and throws colour onto the water; a tripod and a slow shutter will hold it.
Practical information
The bridge is free to view and there’s nothing to book – it’s simply part of the city. Being live railway, it has no pedestrian access, footpath or railing of its own, but the quays around it are fully walkable and level.
Getting there:
- Train: Tara Street station is two minutes south; Dublin Pearse a bit further east.
- Luas (Tram): Abbey Street (Red Line) and Marlborough Street (Green Line) are both about four minutes’ walk.
- Bus: plenty of city-centre routes stop at Custom House Quay and Eden Quay, right on the riverbank.
Nearby
Butt Bridge sits immediately upstream to the west, and Talbot Memorial Bridge immediately downstream to the east; the Custom House stands on the north bank just below the viaduct, with its visitor centre inside. About 440 m north-west are the Spire and O’Connell Street, and the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s national stage, is a couple of minutes’ walk north. For the single best frame of the bridge, stand on Custom House Quay half an hour before sunset, when the river turns into a reflector and the ironwork goes to silhouette.