School tours are not what they used to be!
WHEN I was in national school 60 plus years ago school tours were few and far between, writes Tom Gillespie.
The first tour I remember was to Co. Clare and to our young minds it was one of the last places on earth we wanted to be. Not that I have anything against Co. Clare.
One of our destinations was to the Shannon hydroelectric scheme at Ardnacrusha, about which we had no interest whatsoever.
I suppose our teachers felt it was a development worth seeing. And I suppose looking back on it, the power plant was certainly an achievement back in the 1920s.
The ESB-run Ardnacrusha power plant, located 2.4 kilometres from the Limerick border, is still producing power today. It is Ireland’s largest river hydroelectric scheme and is operated on a purpose built headrace connected to the Shannon.
The plant includes fish ladders so that returning fish, such as salmon, can climb the river safely past the power station.
Completed within seven years of Irish independence at a cost which was equivalent to one-fifth of the Irish state's annual budget, the plant enabled an enormous surge in demand for electricity across the country and demonstrated the ability of the new government to develop during a difficult financial period.
The plant was constructed by the German company Siemens-Schuckert, although much of the design was done by Irish engineers and Ireland provided most of the labour force.
Opened in 1929, the scheme involved changes to the flow of the whole river, multiple dams and bridges and the construction of a national power grid.
The generating plant at Ardnacrusha is composed of three vertical-shaft Francis turbine generators (commissioned in 1929) and one vertical-shaft Kaplan turbine generator (commissioned in 1934) operating under an average head of 28.5 metres.
The scheme originally was designed for six turbines, with four turbines fitted. The 85 MW of generating plant in Ardnacrusha was adequate to meet the electricity demands of the entire country in the early years.
The full output equates to about 332,000 MWh generated on an annual basis. Ardnacrusha generates at 10.5 kilovolts (kV) but this is transformed to 40 kV for local distribution and to 110 kV for long distance transmission.
All of this meant nothing to us in the late 1950s and we did not realise the importance of the Ardnacrusha plant and how it had transformed Ireland.
On the same tour we visited Shannon Airport, which was a far more exciting place to explore, and we looked on in awe at the airplanes with their large propellers as they came into view in the sky above, landed and taxied close to where were standing on a lookout deck while others took off and disappeared into the clouds.
On the outdoor viewing deck, long since gone due to security restrictions, we encountered the smell of aviation fuel as it wafted through the air and the thundering of the engines.
We were giving a brief history of the airport before being let loose in the few shops that were land-side back then. A stick of rock was about all we could afford.
In the late 1930s, transatlantic air traffic was dominated by flying boats, and a flying boat terminal was located at Foynes on the south side of the Shannon Estuary.
However, it was realised that changing technology would require a permanent runway and airport.
In 1936, the Irish government confirmed that it would develop a 3.1-square-kilometre site at Rineanna for the country's first transatlantic airport. The land on which the airport was to be built was boggy, and on October 8, 1936, work began to drain the terrain.
By 1942 a serviceable airport had been established and was named Shannon Airport. By 1945 the existing runways at Shannon were extended to allow transatlantic flights to land.
When World War II ended, the airport was ready to be used by the many new post-war commercial airlines of Europe and North America.
On September 16, 1945, the first transatlantic flight, a Pan Am DC-4, landed at Shannon from New York City. On October 24, 1945, the first scheduled commercial flight, an American Overseas Airlines DC-4, passed through Shannon Airport.
An accident involving President Airlines on September 10, 1961, resulted in the loss of 83 lives. The Douglas DC-6 aircraft crashed into the Shannon River while leaving Shannon Airport for Chicago.
The number of international carriers rose sharply in succeeding years as Shannon became well-known as the gateway between Europe and the Americas. Limited aircraft range necessitated refuelling stops on many journeys. Shannon became the most convenient stopping point before and after a trip across the Atlantic.
Additionally, during the Cold War, many transatlantic flights from the Soviet Union stopped here for refuelling because Shannon was (and is today, though it no longer matters in this sense) the westernmost non-NATO airport on the European side of the Atlantic.
On September 30, 1994, Shannon was the site of the ‘circling over Shannon’ diplomatic incident involving Boris Yeltsin.
But, as I said, school tours are not what they used to be. Today some of my grandchildren have been overseas for several days on school outings to Germany and Belgium, an unheard of adventure in my day.
Such trips are truly educational as they broaden the mind and give a glimpse on how other people, with different cultures, live.
Our trip to Shannon Airport was novel in its day. But now most children have been in and out of Shannon and Ireland West Airport on many occasions and, unlike us, they do not marvel at the sight of aircraft.