When Thomas Byrne and his twin sister Mary Jane were born in 1864 in Ireland, their father, Edward, was 35, and their mother, Ellen, was 30. Thomas married Elizabeth Anne Sharkey on December 25, 1890, in Lurgan, Armagh, Ireland. They had seven children in 14 years. Thomas died sometime after 1928 in Lurgan, Armagh, Ireland, at an age of over 64.
Thomas, like his father Edward, worked as a Railway “Ganger”. A “ganger” supervised a crew of railway workers called “Platers”. Thomas, who likely started working around 1880, probably worked for the Great Northern Railway of Ireland. By the time Thomas started working, almost all of the tracks had been layed, so Thomas’s crew was likely responsible for inspecting and repairing tracks. Thomas’s father Edward, however, was likely involved in re-laying the tracks belonging to the Ulster Railway, a company that eventually merged with others to form the Great Northern Railway of Ireland. When Ireland’s first railroads were built in the 1830s through the 1840s, different railroad track gauges were used by different companies. In 1846 , the Irish Parliament passed a law mandating a standard gauge for all tracks. The track that had been layed from Belfast through Lurgan to Armagh had to be re-layed using the new standard, and Edward’s crew was likely to have been involved in that project.
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Here is a locomotive that was operated by the Ulster Railway in the 1840s. Thomas’s father Edward and his crew may have seen it roll through the Lurgan station !! The Lurgan station opened in 1841, establishing a rail route between Belfast and Lurgan.
