Streamstown
Baile an tSrutháin

The Ireland's Hidden Heartlands
STOP 03 / 03

Baile an tSrutháin · Co. Westmeath

A crossroads west of Mullingar where the railway used to fork. Now the cycleway runs through it.

Streamstown is a small crossroads village in west Westmeath, about twenty kilometres from Mullingar and a short hop north of Moate. The Irish name is Baile an tSrutháin — the town of the little stream — and the older Anglicisation, Ballintruhan, sits underneath the present one on old maps. There is no main street to speak of. A road in, a road out, a church on the rise, a few houses set back, and the country laid out in long fields on either side. It is a village in the way that a name on a signpost is a village. The shop is gone. The post office is gone. The pub is gone. The handball alley that once stood here is long quiet.

What pulled the place out of the ordinary for eighty years was the line. The Midland Great Western Railway opened a station at Streamstown on the first of August 1851, on the new main line between Mullingar and Athlone, and from April 1863 it became a junction — the short Streamstown-to-Clara branch peeled off here, ten kilometres south to a stop on the Tullamore line. For the rest of the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth, this little crossroads had a station-master, a goods yard, a signal cabin, and trains in two directions. The branch lost its passenger service in 1947 and ran on for goods until March 1963. The main line itself held on until 1987 and then it too went.

The track-bed did not. The Mullingar–Athlone Old Rail Trail Greenway opened in October 2015, forty-two kilometres of tarmac following the old line through the middle of Westmeath, and Streamstown is roughly the halfway point. Cyclists pass through where the trains used to stop. The platform shapes are still legible if you know where to look. Whatever else the village is now, it is at least back on a route again.

Population

Well under 200 across the village and townlands

Walk score

A crossroads, a church, and the old line through the back of it

Coords

53.4750° N, 7.6814° W

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At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The village

Crossroads, church, a few houses.

Streamstown sits about twenty kilometres west of Mullingar, halfway to Moate on the old back roads. Historically called Ballintruhan, an Anglicisation of the Irish name. A shop, a post office, a handball alley and a pub all once stood here. The village is quieter now.

About the village → 02 The line

Junction station for eighty years.

Streamstown opened as a wayside stop on the MGWR Mullingar–Athlone main line in August 1851. From 1863 it was a junction — the short branch south to Clara peeled off here. The branch lost passengers in 1947 and closed for good in 1963.

The railway → 03 The greenway

Old Rail Trail through the back.

The Mullingar–Athlone main line shut in 1987. The track-bed reopened as the Old Rail Trail Greenway in October 2015. Forty-two kilometres of flat tar from Athlone to Mullingar, and Streamstown is roughly the halfway point.

Greenway notes →

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Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

A small crossroads on a big network

The junction at Streamstown

Streamstown opened as a station on the first of August 1851, when the Midland Great Western Railway pushed its main line west from Mullingar to Athlone. For twelve years it was a wayside stop. Then on the first of April 1863 the short branch line south to Clara opened, and Streamstown became a junction — small as junctions go, but a real one, with two lines, a signal cabin and a yard. The branch was known locally as the Horseleap Branch, after the village halfway down it. Passenger services on the branch ended in 1947. Goods trains kept running until 1963 — the last train ran on the eighteenth of March that year, a special organised by the Irish Railway Record Society with a hundred-odd enthusiasts on board. Streamstown station closed three months later, on the seventeenth of June 1963. The main line through the village held on until 1987, and then the rails came up entirely.

The Old Rail Trail Greenway

From rails to tarmac

The cutting did not stay empty. In October 2015 the Mullingar–Athlone Old Rail Trail Greenway opened along the old MGWR track-bed — forty-odd kilometres of flat tar between the two towns, with Streamstown on the route. The greenway is hardly the busiest in the country, which is part of the appeal. You can pass through Streamstown on a Tuesday afternoon and see no one. The platform edges of the old station are visible to anyone who slows down. The village above, on its little ridge to the south, is a five-minute pedal off-route if you want to look at where the trains used to fork.

Getting there.

By car

Mullingar to Streamstown is about twenty-five minutes west on the back roads off the N6 and N52. Moate is about fifteen minutes south. Athlone is half an hour west. The village is signposted off the local roads but the signs are small.

By bus

No regular village bus. Local Link runs broadly along the Mullingar–Moate corridor on weekdays — none of it stops in Streamstown itself. In practice, you drive, or you cycle in off the greenway.

By train

No station — the line closed in 1987 and the track is now the greenway. Mullingar is on the Dublin–Sligo line, half an hour east. Athlone is on the Dublin–Galway line, half an hour west. From either, it is car the rest of the way.