Train travel in Ireland

Seeing Ireland by train is easy, but if you want to see certain things you will find it best to base yourself in a larger town for a few days and take guided day trips. This is the approach that I took, and it worked well for most places I wanted to see. I started in Dublin, visited some places in the city and did a guided day trip to Newgrange and a few other stops. Then I took the train to Killarney where I spent a few days and did guided day trips to Dingle, as well as Gap of Dunloe. From Killarney I took the train to Cork, and then a bus to Kinsale where I spent a day and a half just wandering local sites. I then returned to Cork, and took another bus to get to the Rock of Cashel and from there did a bus/train trek to Kilkenny. Spent a day wandering Kilkenny then took the train to Galway (via a stop in Athlone to get out to Clonmacnoise). From Galway I did guided day trips to Cliffs of Moher/Burren, Connemara/Kylemore Abbey, and a day to Inishmore. From Galway I took the train to Belfast, my last stop, and I did a day trip to the Giants Causeway, plus a city tour, and just wandered on my own. I purchased a train/bus pass that allowed me 8 days of travel in two weeks, and my trip was a total of three weeks. You have to plan well to travel this way so you arent spending a whole lot of time waiting for trains and buses, but it is easy to do. The best thing to do is to plan to get the earliest train you can so that when you get where you’re going you still have time to do some sight seeing.

Thank you for all the info. What was your source for day guided trips?

It’s been about 15 years since I did this trip, but I started with a couple of guide books (Lonely Planet was one as they tend to cater to budget travellers, can’t recall the other one). After I figured out what I wanted to see I narrowed down my list by doing google searches on how to get to each one without a car, and this brought up the results for the companies that do the day trips. I had to take some things off my list as they weren’t really accessible from transit, or tours didn’t go there. Once I decided I liked a tour itinerary then I googled reviews to see what other people liked or didn’t like. Most of the time the same companies would come out on top. I think I ended up doing about seven tours in total, and they were all good, but I can’t recall the names of each one, now.

Irish trains basically criss-cross the country (no service to County Donegal, however) out of Dublin, north to Northern Ireland and south and southwest servicing the Republic. Most of the countryside the trains go through is flat, rather boring farmland. It's a dependable, inexpensive and pleasant way to get to some larger towns and cities and look at the cows as you zip by.

You'll find schedules, etc. here:

http://www.irishrail.ie/

A good resource for finding and comparing day trips and tours is the Tripadvisor "Things to do" pull down menu, which has a section devoted to day trip providers. There you'll find any number of tour operators, links to their websites, and user ratings for each. We don't usually do organized day trips, preferring to go independently, but when we do we typically comparison shop using the ratings provided - it's a good starting point at any rate.

Trains fan out from Dublin to many points but don't travel along most of the coastline. See an overview at https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/trains/ireland-rail-passes. Rick's Ireland guidebooks summarize bus and train service between the towns described, as well as some local tours that you might use to reach more rural destinations.