>>1064685>>1064819Broadstone was the intial terminus in Dublin from services from the West of the country, and Connolly to the north, with a line connecting to the docks. There was an upper line above the dock line which was then built between Broombridge and Connolly which allowed the Broadstone services to enter there, so it was closed for redundancy. Most of the Western trains were then moved to Heuston after improvement works on the Cork line made it faster than the line into Connolly from the Midlands, it was quicker to go from Athlone to Dublin via Portarlington than via Mullingar at the time, with the second route closing.
Harcourt was part of a load of routes which were closed during the 60s to just ape what the British were doing with the Beeching cuts, that one was picked because the terminus was Bray and they assumed that they could use the other line to Pearse without considering anyone inbetween. That line and a few others such as the West Cork and Portadown to Derry line were making money at the time but were closed just to get a spread of lines closing everywhere. The Portadown to Derry line was offered to be run by the services in the Republic rather than Northern Ireland, but they didn't take the opportunity to run it sadly.
In the 70s when there was an urban rail plan for Dublin which was this had the Harcourt line reworked as an express bus lane to try and save the embarrasment of reopening it as a rail line. Broadstone was planned to go to the urban areas North of Dublin, then tunnel under Temple Bar to Pearse to create a cross city route.
Nothing really happened with the plan, and eventually were then reworked to become metro lines, with the Harcourt line made as a tram in the meantime. Broadstone is planned to reopen as a tramline later this year to connect to Harcourt, and the long term plan is to rework the Harcourt line from Ranelagh as a metro, as
>>1064662 said there was no point closing them as we're spending so much to fix them up now.
