The Waterford - Rosslare Harbour Railway was opened in 1906 by the Fishguard & Rosslare Railways & Harbours Company (F&RR&H) to link to South and West of Ireland to the Port of Rosslare with its shipping services to Fishguard and connections to the GWR for London. It was once part of a route onwards from Waterford to Mallow to allow easy access to Cork and Kerry.

The raison d'etre of the railway was to cater for the Boat Train Traffic to Rosslare and the line passes through sparsely populated areas, hence local traffic was never strong and the route’s timetable has always reflected this. The railway between Mallow and Waterford was closed in 1967 and all remaining traffic was diverted to the Waterford - Limerick Jct Route with the boat trains diverted from Cork to operate to/from Limerick instead.

With the growth of low cost airlines in the early 1990's, the foot passenger traffic has died away and passenger numbers continued to fall. The limited timetable that was offered suited commuting to Waterford, but with the tired infrastructure, low speeds, the sparse local population and the fact there was only one train a day in each direction the uptake of this service was low.

The lines only saviour was the seasonal Beet Traffic from Wellington Bridge and once this ended with the conclusion of the 2005 Beet Campaign and closure of the Beet Factory at Mallow the writing was on the wall.

The final nail in the coffin was the economic downturn and in March 2010 in an effort to reduce its costbase Iarnrod Eireann proposed to suspend services. The final passenger train eventually ran on Saturday 18th September 2010.

This gallery was originally published in April 2012 and was expanded in November 2019 with the addition of 75 photos to the expanded gallery. The gallery now covers the route from Waterford eastwards to Rosslare Strand with photos of the route since services were suspended in September 2010 including some of the rolling stock and PWD movements over the route.

In the early years since the route was mothballed, the route saw stock transfers of Iarnród Éireann 22000’s and 29000’s stock between Waterford and Rosslare when the Dublin – Rosslare route was closed at Lansdowne Road in November 2011 due to flood damage to the River Dodder Bridge. In September 2014 the route saw the RPSI Cravens operate from Rosslare Europort to Waterford, this was the last passenger stock movement over the route. The railway also sees the occasional PWD Inspection Car and has been visited by the Weedspray Train most years since closure.