Located on the south side of Athy town was the Asbestos Factory which produced large quantities of bulk cement. In the 1940s a short siding was constructed to serve the factory which diverged from the goods only Athy to Ballylinan branch line, which had originally been opened by the Great Southern & Western Railway in 1918 to serve the collieries at Wolfhill. The line to Ballylinan remained in use for sugar beet traffic until April 1963, but the ½ mile section from Athy to the cement factory, by then owned by Tegral Cement, remained in use until 2005. The siding into the cement factory faces south towards Ballylinan, which necessitated trains to reverse in and out of the factory compound. Today this short section of the Ballylinan branch line which served the factory, which also features one of Ireland's first concrete bridges spanning the River Barrow, remains in situ though now disused.