During a brief weekend trip to Dublin in May 2000, we were lucky enough to re-visit Radio Dublin courtesy of Pete Reed and Gerard Roe of Phantom FM. It was also hoped to meet up with Eamonn Cook, but unfortunately he was not on the premises at the time. We did however manage to visit the studio and were made very welcome.  The station had gone through many format changes during the past few years, and at the time of our visit a country format was in operation and was proving very successful. The original country station in Dublin was Treble T R Radio which had closed in 1988 following legislation. Treble T R Radio had made a brief comeback during the late 1990's but it is believed it merged with Radio Dublin to produce the country station we saw in 2000.

The station operated on FM only up until closedown, usually on 100.0MHz, although other channels were sometimes used in parallel to serve different part of Dublin City.

Since our last visit during the 1980's, Radio Dublin had moved from its Inchicore Road studios close to the city centre, to a housing estate in the west of the city.  The photo left shows the house with the link aerials on the roof to the several FM sites in the Dublin mountains.

The studio itself was a purpose built building in the back garden, backing onto a large park. The park can also be seen at the side of the house. The studio was accessed past the side of the house and through the back garden.  Unfortunately our photos of the rear garden failed to come out, as it was like passing through a time warp.  At either side of the path were remnants of old station equipment and radio transmitters, including one of the large old Sunshine Radio medium wave rigs.  Radio Dublin actually dropped its medium wave (the famous 253 metres / 1188kHz) and short wave (6910kHz) broadcasts some years ago.  A story came to light that the long wires for the services went across the park at the back of the studio, and eventually they had to be taken down following complaints from the council.

The photograph shows the link aerials as seen from the studio door, the FM transmitters being in other parts of the city and mountains.

Below are three shots of the studio take at various angles.   As well as the dropping of medium wave and short wave, the other big change since our last visit to Radio Dublin (back in the 1980's), was the use of CD's rather than vinyl.  As with most stations, the double record deck setup has long since been replaced by CD players.