Cork City Terminus

A further section of the line was constructed between Dunkettle and Tivoli and then on to the so-called "temporary station" at Bruin Lodge, in an effort to bring the Cork terminus closer to the C&YR's city offices in King Street (now McCurtain Street). This was never intended to provide a long-term solution, and so the track was not built to accommodate heavy locomotive engines. To counter this problem, the engine was detached at Tivoli and large Flemish horses were harnessed to the carriages in its place to draw them over the remaining distance into the city. This process was accommodated for in the train timetable published in the Cork Constitution at this time, which allowed "ten minutes for the team of horses to pull the train from Bruin Lodge to Tivoli, and another five minutes to untackle the horses and hook on the steam engine."

A more permanent solution was achieved with the construction of a city terminus at Summerhill, with the lines passing over the mouth of the Great Southern & Western Railway tunnel. On the 30th December, 1861, the first steam-powered train exited the station en-route to Youghal.

While Queenstown had been developing as an important port of call for cross-Atlantic liners since the late 1850s, it was not until March of 1862 that the C&YR Company made the move to extend the line beyond the Queenstown Junction to accommodate traffic travelling to and from the harbour town.