Road signs in Ireland

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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by FosseWay »

Johnathan404 wrote: Sun Nov 12, 2017 16:14
Berk wrote:Nice to see the old ‘PW’-style signs there. :) So they clearly had Irish on them, even in those days.
Still plenty of examples of them in place, if you know where to look.

Image
Someone will no doubt be along to correct me, but unless I'm mistaken the Irish is wrong there - Dublin is usually Áth Cliath on signs, i.e. "the hurdle ford". Baile Átha Cliath is literally "the town of the hurdle ford", where Átha is in the genitive case. So it's a bit like writing DUBLIN'S on a direction sign rather than DUBLIN.

Signwriters' gremlins are clearly not a new phenomenon.
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by bothar »

FosseWay wrote: Wed Oct 03, 2018 13:29 Someone will no doubt be along to correct me, but unless I'm mistaken the Irish is wrong there - Dublin is usually Áth Cliath on signs, i.e. "the hurdle ford". Baile Átha Cliath is literally "the town of the hurdle ford", where Átha is in the genitive case. So it's a bit like writing DUBLIN'S on a direction sign rather than DUBLIN.

Signwriters' gremlins are clearly not a new phenomenon.
The people in Kingstown might not notice such things.

Here is one with a correct Áth Cliath.
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by odlum »

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Re: Road signs in Ireland

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It’s a diamond... *sniffs*
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by Viator »

FosseWay wrote: Wed Oct 03, 2018 13:29
Johnathan404 wrote: Sun Nov 12, 2017 16:14
Berk wrote:Nice to see the old ‘PW’-style signs there. :) So they clearly had Irish on them, even in those days.
Still plenty of examples of them in place, if you know where to look.

Image
Someone will no doubt be along to correct me, but unless I'm mistaken the Irish is wrong there - Dublin is usually Áth Cliath on signs, i.e. "the hurdle ford". Baile Átha Cliath is literally "the town of the hurdle ford", where Átha is in the genitive case. So it's a bit like writing DUBLIN'S on a direction sign rather than DUBLIN.

Signwriters' gremlins are clearly not a new phenomenon.
You're not wrong there, a Uachtaráin: Áth Cliath it should be. There's a further error on the sign: the correct spelling of the Irish for "Coast Road" is Bóthar Chois Farraige.

P.S. I can never see that placename Cill Iníon Léinín without thinking it must commemorate some kind of socialist revolution in South Dublin...
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by Viator »

This is an interesting image of an Irish signpost in the early 1940s. The location is Leemount Cross, northwest of Cork City: the L9 is today's R579. [Source: Wikipedia]
Image

No less interesting is the uniform of the soldier on the right! At the establishment of the Irish National Army in 1922 there was an understandable reluctance to use British-style helmets. French Army helmets were first trialled, but found to be unsuitable, so the decision was taken to adopt German-style helmets. They were manufactured by Vickers in London, however, because at the time, under the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was not permitted to export any type of military equipment.

Following the United Kingdom's declaration of war on Germany, photographs like this began to be used by sections of the British press as part of their anti-Irish propaganda campaigns -- and it was not long before the Irish Army took the decision to switch to "Tommy"-style helmets (though where they got them from in a time of war is not clear!) Many of the old helmets were crushed to form hardcore (they were never really as robust as genuine German Stahlhelme) while others were painted white and re-issued to fire brigades and other emergency and civil defence personnel.
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by Euan »

I presume that judging by the distances the units on the signs are in miles. Kilometres must have been introduced later on, but there could still be some very old signs out there with mile distances. There may even still be some ancient signs with old road numbers intact. Hopefully not too many though, the old L link roads may be mistaken by some to be the modern L local roads. However, all local roads are numbered with four or five digits whereas the old link roads did not go beyond L201 according to the wiki. I wonder whether the similarities of the prefixes between the different systems was a big factor in the decision to number L roads with a minimum of four digits, despite only being numbered county-wide in each county.
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by Viator »

Euan wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 09:07 I presume that judging by the distances the units on the signs are in miles. Kilometres must have been introduced later on, but there could still be some very old signs out there with mile distances. There may even still be some ancient signs with old road numbers intact. Hopefully not too many though, the old L link roads may be mistaken by some to be the modern L local roads. However, all local roads are numbered with four or five digits whereas the old link roads did not go beyond L201 according to the wiki. I wonder whether the similarities of the prefixes between the different systems was a big factor in the decision to number L roads with a minimum of four digits, despite only being numbered county-wide in each county.
Metrication of road signs began in the early 1970s. The earlier use of an L prefix for link roads may have been a factor in the use of more than three digits in local road numbers, but I think it just as likely that the new system was devised with the 0-99 (national), 100-999 (regional), 1000-99999 (local) distinction in mind. One point to remember is that every road in (the republic of) Ireland is numbered, although local road numbers are normally displayed only at the junctions with higher-category roads.
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by AndyB »

I'm not sure that numbering was considered beyond regional level. Certainly the N1-99/R100-999 was in mind as a single sequence of unique numbers, and it covered almost all existing T and L roads in terms of being a like for like system.

The fact that miles were so well established as the unit of measure until the 1970s is the reason why newer signs had to be marked with "km".

Also, with regard to the signs around Dalkey, Fairrge would have been a correct spelling of the word that is now Farraige at the time (probably the Genitive). It's also worth highlighting that until the 1970s, most signage was provided by Failte Ireland (signs with two Fs made to look like a pair of wings with the first F reversed), the AA and possibly also the RAC, which may explain why some placenames are non-standard. There used to be a sign on the N14 between Manorcunningham and Lifford with several aspirated consonants (simplified in the modern Irish placename to a single letter F) that it wasn't funny - but it does show how Irish spelling was modernised and simplified.
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by J N Winkler »

Has anyone found design references, other than the various Traffic Signs Regulations, for direction signs prior to the 1997 Traffic Signs Manual?

I ask because I recently mined the Irish public tenders website for signing sheets, finding about 4118 of them. For many of the contracts, such as a sign replacement along the R445 (former N7) near Limerick, a photo of the existing sign appears next to the sign panel detail for the new sign, with each of the various generations of Irish direction signing being represented--pre-1962 fingerposts, post-1962 "pre-Worboys" map-type signs, post-1977 "Worboys" with unitalicized Irish legend, and post-1989 (?) "Worboys" with italicized Irish.
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by Viator »

OK, I'll give you that fairrge is an old way of writing farraige -- though the official spelling reform took place in 1945 and this sign looks a lot more recent -- but as to cois or chois (both words after bóthar are functionally genitive) every time I try to get to the bottom of this appositive versus attribute genitive question in Irish (or indeed in Welsh) I end up with a different answer ...and a headache! So perhaps I'd better say no more on this for now... :( :)
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by A42_Sparks »

J N Winkler wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 16:29 I ask because I recently mined the Irish public tenders website for signing sheets, finding about 4118 of them. For many of the contracts, such as a sign replacement along the R445 (former N7) near Limerick, a photo of the existing sign appears next to the sign panel detail for the new sign, with each of the various generations of Irish direction signing being represented--pre-1962 fingerposts, post-1962 "pre-Worboys" map-type signs, post-1977 "Worboys" with unitalicized Irish legend, and post-1989 (?) "Worboys" with italicized Irish.
Could you provide a little more detail on how you found these contracts as they sound very interesting and I would like to see them.
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by Euan »

AndyB wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 12:34 I'm not sure that numbering was considered beyond regional level. Certainly the N1-99/R100-999 was in mind as a single sequence of unique numbers, and it covered almost all existing T and L roads in terms of being a like for like system.
The R road series definitely would have covered many routes that were previously unclassified under the T and L system given that there are over three times as many R roads as there were L roads. There also would have been a small proportion of T roads which straight away became R roads as well given that in quantity the T roads slightly outnumbered how many N roads were originally allocated in the 1960s.
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by bothar »

Euan wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 23:24 The R road series definitely would have covered many routes that were previously unclassified under the T and L system given that there are over three times as many R roads as there were L roads. There also would have been a small proportion of T roads which straight away became R roads as well given that in quantity the T roads slightly outnumbered how many N roads were originally allocated in the 1960s.
I don't think R roads included a lot of unclassified routes, other than in towns. I think many long L cross country routes became 2 R routes after renumbering. Some T routes became R or even unclassified, later becoming Lxxxx.
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by AndyB »

Some L roads became National Secondary roads and many T roads became R roads. It was a root and branch rethink of what should be the main roads.

It's worth remembering that many R roads have been allocated since the initial allocation in the 1990s.
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by J N Winkler »

A42_Sparks wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 23:06Could you provide a little more detail on how you found these contracts as they sound very interesting and I would like to see them.
The main search page is here:

https://irl.eu-supply.com/ctm/supplier/publictenders

Checking "Search within expired RFTs" and searching on "Signage" (no quotes) as a keyword in the tender name will find most of them, going back ten years. From our point of view, there is a fair amount of noise in the results since many of the contracts are for architectural/building signs (especially on university campuses) and urban wayfinding rather than traffic. However, there have been large traffic signing contracts in connection with the N7 redesignation, the Wild Atlantic Way in the coastal counties, the Sligo orbital, etc.

If there are documents attached to a tender advertisement, they generally go on open public access once the tender closing date passes. (Before the tender closes, they are accessible only to entities that formally express interest, which entails creating an account on the site and logging in.) Clicking on "Documents" opens a listing.

The contract that is especially rich in photos of old signs (all grayscale, unfortunately) has the short description "N7 Castletown to Nenagh R445 Off Route Signage":

https://irl.eu-supply.com/app/rfq/publi ... licTenders

Sligo orbital:

https://irl.eu-supply.com/app/rfq/rwlen ... IMPLE&PS=1

Wild Atlantic Way in the Dingle Peninsula (fairly rich in Gaelic-only signs):

https://irl.eu-supply.com/app/rfq/rwlen ... IMPLE&PS=1
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by A42_Sparks »

Thank you very much J N Winkler, should keep me occupied for a good while :)
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by bothar »

1940s crossroad sign, probably here.

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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by Owain »

Viator wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 16:37 OK, I'll give you that fairrge is an old way of writing farraige -- though the official spelling reform took place in 1945 and this sign looks a lot more recent -- but as to cois or chois (both words after bóthar are functionally genitive) every time I try to get to the bottom of this appositive versus attribute genitive question in Irish (or indeed in Welsh) I end up with a different answer ...and a headache! So perhaps I'd better say no more on this for now... :( :)
... as long as nobody spells it 'farage'...
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Re: Road signs in Ireland

Post by AndyB »

bothar wrote: Sat Dec 29, 2018 00:45 1940s crossroad sign, probably here.

Image
Surely 1956 at the earliest?
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