What's in a name?

The Loopline, as the bridge is most popularly known, boasts of three names, all merely functional, for unlike other Liffey bridges it has not fired the usually poetic imagination of the Dubliner in a flattering way.

In Victorian times it was aptly called The City of Dublin Junction Railway Bridge as it was a vital part of the two kilometre long link between two great railway lines: the northern line to Belfast operated by The Great Northern Railway and rail services to the south Dublin suburbs and Rosslare operated by the Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford Railway. At the time two looplines were, in fact, proposed, the second to link Kingsbridge (now Heuston) and Amiens Street Stations.

The bridge is also known as the Liffey Viaduct and that name was also used from as early as 1891. A viaduct is a bridge crossing an obstacle, such as a river, in the way of a road or a railway line. The name is not unique to this Dublin bridge, Loopline bridges are found the world over. The dictionary definition states a loopline to be a branch line of a railway which diverts from the trunk or main line and then rejoins it. The term ‘Loopline Bridge’ was in use from the very outset, especially in newspaper reports on the progress of the bridge’s planning and construction stages.

The Act of Parliament necessary for its construction was referred to as ‘The Loopline Act’. Taking a bird’s eye view of the railway link between Connolly and Pearse Stations it does indeed elegantly loop around the eastern end of the city. The bridge itself forms the midsection of the loop.

Little is said in praise of the Loopline name or entity, yet it is immortalised by James Joyce in Ulysses: ‘A skiff, a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming, rode lightly down the Liffey, 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.’