Branch Railway Closures
In January 1950 the UTA closed almost the entire BCDR network except the Queen's Quay, Belfast – Bangor commuter line. In the same year it closed the Macfin — Kilrea section of the former NCC's Derry Central Railway and the freight-only former NCC line from Limavady to Dungiven. It also withdrew passenger services from the former NCC branch lines to Cookstown, Draperstown and Limavady and the Magherafelt — Kilrea section of the Derry Central. That summer it closed Northern Ireland's last 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge lines: the Ballycastle Railway and the Ballymena and Larne Railway.
In 1955 the UTA closed the (by then freight-only) branches to Cookstown and Limavady, and the line between Castlewellan and Newcastle, County Down (which was worked by the GNR).
In 1957 the Northern Ireland Government made the Great Northern Railway Board close much of its network in the province. This left no railways in many rural areas, including the whole of County Fermanagh. By 1958 the GNR main line was the only remaining railway across the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. In that year what was left of the GNRB was dissolved and split between Córas Iompair Éireann (the Republic of Ireland's nationalised transport company) and the UTA.
In 1959 the UTA closed the (by then freight only) remaining Magherafelt — Kilrea section of the Derry Central and the former GNR (by then freight only) branch from Dungannon to Cookstown. The UTA also took over the Londonderry Port and Harbour Commissioners' dual gauge railway that linked Derry's four railway termini, and in 1962 the UTA closed this railway as well.
Read more about this topic: Ulster Transport Authority
Famous quotes containing the words branch and/or railway:
“True variety is in that plenitude of real and unexpected elements, in the branch charged with blue flowers thrusting itself, against all expectations, from the springtime hedge which seems already too full, while the purely formal imitation of variety ... is but void and uniformity, that is, that which is most opposed to variety....”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)