Waterford, Limerick and Western Railway
railway company in Ireland (1845–1900)
The Waterford, Limerick and Western Railway (WL&WR), formerly the Waterford and Limerick Railway (W&LR) up to 1896, was at the time it was amalgamated with the Great Southern and Western Railway in 1901 the fourth largest railway in Ireland, with a main line stretching from Limerick to Waterford and branches to Sligo and Tralee.
Inception
The Limerick and Waterford Railway Act 1826 (7 Geo. 4. c. cxxxix) was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom on 31 May 1826 and had the distinction of being the first act authorising an Irish railway. No construction followed and it was 1845 before the Waterford and Limerick Railway was authorised by the Waterford and Limerick Railway Act 1845 (8 & 9 Vict. c. cxxxi), the first section of the line being opened from Limerick to Tipperary on 9 May 1848, the remainder of the main line being opened in stages, finally reaching Waterford in 1854.
Secondary lines
The company eventually operated two long branch lines which extended from Limerick, north west to Sligo and south west to Tralee.
Branch lines
By 1900, there were a number of branch lines:
Ballingrane to Foynes, (opened by the Limerick and Foynes Railway 1858, purchased by the W&LR 1873)
Killonan to Killaloe, (opened by the Limerick, Castleconnell and Killaloe Railway between 1858 and 1867, purchased by the W&LR 1873)
Clonmel to Thurles, (opened by the Southern of Ireland Railway in 1880)
Tralee to Fenit, an 8 miles (13 km) section opened in 1887 by the Tralee and Fenit Railway.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Waterford, Limerick and Western Railway” is railway company in Ireland (1845–1900). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Waterford, Limerick and Western, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “railway company in Ireland (1845–1900)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25037932. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1896, 1901, 1826 and 1845.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Waterford, Limerick and Western Railway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.