MGWR amalgamated with its rival, the Great Southern and Western Railway, to enable rationalisation and survival, and in 1927 the bridged section under Foster aqueduct was filled in, and the canal and railway were permanently disconnected. Decline of the railway By the 1930s the railway was failing too and the last train arrived from Westport in 1937. In 1944 the Canal and Railway both passed into the ownership of the state transport company Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ), which transferred all its steam locomotives there in 1954. However, when steam locomotion ended in 1961, Broadstone was closed. Foster Aqueduct was removed in 1951 to facilitate road widening. Today the historic building is used as offices by Bus Éireann and the rest of the site is used a parking and servicing area for buses, with the main building mostly obscured by public housing and light industrial buildings. Modern times After the closure of the railway came the hardships of the war, rationing, and a prolonged recession. Unemployment and deprivation hit the inhabitants of Dublin's north inner city hard, and the area around Dominick Street, Grangegorman and Broadstone was one of the worst affected by drug abuse, especially heroin. The park at Royal Canal Bank and the disused reservoir at Blessington Street were magnets for delinquents, as was the dereliction around Paradise Place. The Irish Youth Hostelling association, An Óige, took over the old convent building on Mountjoy Street and this now serves as both the headquarters of the organisation and its main international hostel in Dublin. Regeneration The linking canal spur was filled in and made into a long narrow park, Royal Canal Bank, in 1956. The reservoir, however, still exists. In 1993, after decades of stagnation and neglect, Dublin Corporation's Parks Department began restoring it as a recreational facility, removing 6000 tons of silt and debris, adding a fountain, enlarging the central island for wildlife and undertaking extensive replanting. The Blessington Basin still obtains its water from the canal above the 8th lock, two miles away, but is now a picturesque walled park of one and a quarter acres, with a beautifully paved and landscaped walk around a large oblong body of of water, fenced off by wrought-iron railings, and scattered with sculptures and places to sit. The large site at St. Brendans Hospital, Grangegorman is currently the planned future home of the Dublin Institute of Technology, and the area development