Welcome to the 2020: A Year in Review Gallery.

This gallery contains over 200 photos from the past 12 months from the railways of Ireland. When we all started out in January, the Coronavirus was beginning to emerge as a problem on the far side of the world in China. Little did anyone think that by March it would be in Europe and we would be all under “lockdown” by the end of that month. Travel and leisure activities were pretty much abolished with small respites in the middle of the year. Staycations are the order of the day it seems for the next while.

On the railway front, passenger numbers have collapsed with the message being travel is for essential purposes only, and the heritage sector has been closed all year, however the RPSI did manage to run one train from Dublin to Galway for a filming contract. Thankfully the planned capital investment projects so far appear to be “on track” with some exciting projects being proposed by the new Transport Minister.

On the Bord na Mona narrow gauge railways, it was more bad news with the closures of West Offaly Power Station in Shannonbridge and Lough Ree Power Station in Lanesborough closing in December 2020. Thankfully I managed to get to both locations to record the final days of operations.

Enjoy the gallery and we can only hope that 2021 is a turning point for our hobby, and the wider world so we can get out and enjoy it once again. Good riddance to 2020! A year to certainly forget.

Some website statistics from the year:
Number of photos published in 2020 to the website: 2292.
Total photo views: 2.17 million.
Total page views: 382,500.
Most photo views in a single day: 29th September 2020 (19129).
Most popular gallery for 2020: January 2020.
Where users come from: Social media (35%), Organic (31%), Referral (16%) and Directly (19%).
How do you view the website? Desktop (37%), Mobile (55%) & Tablet (7%).

Happy New Year and thank you for viewing The Wanderer's Photos.