Ballyglunin railway station
The first thing John Wayne sees of Ireland in The Quiet Man is a small country station with a signal cabin and a footbridge, where nobody can agree on the way to Innisfree. That station is Ballyglunin, a few miles south of Tuam, and it looks much as it did in 1952 because a local restoration project has spent twenty years keeping it that way. No train has stopped since 1976.
Checked against the source on 2026-09-19.
Declan Maher, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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Tuam High Cross on the 3D model; tap a pin for its page and directions.
1860 to 1976
The Waterford, Limerick and Western Railway opened the station in 1860 on its line from Limerick to Claremorris; the Great Southern and Western took over in 1901. John Ford filmed here with Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in 1952. Córas Iompair Éireann closed the station with the rest of the line to passengers in 1976, and the building, a protected structure, was taken in hand in the 2000s by the Ballyglunin Railway Restoration Project.
Will trains come back?
Transport 21 proposed reopening the Limerick to Claremorris line with a stop at Ballyglunin as part of the Western Rail Corridor. The first section, Limerick to Athenry, opened in 2010; the second, Athenry to Tuam via Ballyglunin, was never progressed, but the 2024 All-Island Strategic Rail Review recommended it. Until then the station is reached by road from Tuam or Athenry; the model on this page pins Tuam's centre, and the Tuam railway station guide has the rest of the corridor story.
Questions people ask
Where was the station scene in The Quiet Man filmed?
Is Ballyglunin station open?
Written from Wikipedia, "Ballyglunin railway station" (CC BY-SA 4.0), read on 2026-09-19, and from the OpenStreetMap places on the model. Nothing has been added from memory; follow the source for its footnotes.