Downpatrick & County Down Railway

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Downpatrick & County Down Railway

The Downpatrick & County Down Railway is a heritage railway

Heritage railway

A heritage railway , preserved railway , tourist railway , or tourist railroad is a term used for a railway which is run as a tourist attraction, is usually but not always run by volunteers, and seeks to re-create railway scenes of the past....
in County Down

County Down

County Down is one of the nine Counties of Ireland that form the province of Ulster and one of six counties that form Northern Ireland. The county forms an area of ....
, Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland

conventional_long_name = Northern Ireland|native_name= Tuaisceart ?ireannNorlin Airlann|motto =|image_map = Europe location N-IRL2.png...
. The project is based at Downpatrick

Downpatrick

Downpatrick is a town in County Down in Northern Ireland, about 33 km south of Belfast. It is the county town of Down with a rich history and strong connection to Saint Patrick....
, on part of the former route of the Belfast & County Down Railway.

The railway, which has a triangular layout, connects two local tourist attractions, Inch Abbey

Inch Abbey

Inch Abbey is a large, ruined monastic site 0.75 miles north-west of Downpatrick, County Down, Northern Ireland, on the north bank of the River Quoile in a hollow between two drumlins and featuring early Gothic architecture....
to the north, and a locally famous Viking site (King Magnus' Grave) to the south, and will eventually reach an 18th century corn mill to the south.

l architect Gerry Cochrane was inspired to start the scheme after talking a walk along the route of the line, and by 1982 had gained support to rebuild part of the line as a heritage steam railway from the local council

Down District Council

Down District Council is a Local Council in County Down in Northern Ireland. The Council is headquartered in Downpatrick. Other towns in the Council area are Ardglass, Ballynahinch, County Down, Castlewellan, Clough, Crossgar, Dundrum, County Down, Killough, Killyleagh, Newcastle, County Down, Saintfield, Seaforde and Strangford....
.

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Encyclopedia

The Downpatrick & County Down Railway is a heritage railway

Heritage railway

County Down

County Down is one of the nine Counties of Ireland that form the province of Ulster and one of six counties that form Northern Ireland. The county forms an area of ....
, Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland

conventional_long_name = Northern Ireland|native_name= Tuaisceart ?ireannNorlin Airlann|motto =|image_map = Europe location N-IRL2.png...
. The project is based at Downpatrick

Downpatrick

Inch Abbey

History

Local architect Gerry Cochrane was inspired to start the scheme after talking a walk along the route of the line, and by 1982 had gained support to rebuild part of the line as a heritage steam railway from the local council

Down District Council

Baron Dunleath

Baron Dunleath, of Ballywalter in the County of Down, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1892 for John Mulholland, a businessman and former Conservative Party Member of Parliament for Downpatrick ....
, who's father (the 3rd Baron Dunleath) had purchased the railway trackbed adjacent to his estate after the closure of the B&CDR in Downpatrick, gave the newly formed society a package of land on which to build the line and station for a peppercorn rent. This was on the approaches to the old Downpatrick station, which had been demolished in the 1970s. Work started on rebuilding the railway in 1985, with passenger trains finally running in the town again in December 1987. Track has been relayed on nearly 6 km (4 mi) of Belfast and County Down Railway

Belfast and County Down Railway

The Belfast and County Down Railway was a railway in Northern Ireland linking Belfast south-eastwards into County Down. It was built in the 19th century, absorbed into the Ulster Transport Authority in 1948 and all but the line from Belfast to Bangor, Northern Ireland was closed in 1950....
trackbed, and a 1.6 km (1 mi) extension south to the hamlet of Ballydugan has been proposed.

The railway began life as the Downpatrick & Ardglass Railway, as the original intention was to extend the railway to this fishing port on the south coast of County Down. This name was dropped in 1996 following the abandonment of this proposal and the railway was renamed the Downpatrick Railway Museum until 2005 when the new name, Downpatrick & County Down Railway was adopted following the opening of the Inch Abbey extension.

The Downpatrick & County Down Railway was the subject of a BBC1 Northern Ireland

BBC Northern Ireland

BBC Northern Ireland is the main public service broadcaster in Northern Ireland.The organisation is one of the three national regions of the BBC, together with BBC Scotland and BBC Wales....
40-minute documentary, "Raising Steam", which was broadcast on Monday 14 January, 2008.

Operations and Rolling Stock

Approximately 5 km (3 mi) of Irish standard gauge (1600 mm / 5 ft 3 ins) track are open , along which one Orenstein and Koppel steam locomotive and some early 1960s era diesel locomotive

Diesel locomotive

A Diesel locomotive is a type of railroad locomotive in which the prime mover is a Diesel engine. Several types of Diesel locomotive have been developed, the principal distinction being in the means by which the prime mover's mechanical power is conveyed to the driving wheels ....
s (three CIÉ G611 Class

CIE 611 Class

The C?ras Iompair ?ireann 611 class locomotives were delivered from the manufacturers, Deutz AG at Cologne, Germany between December 1961 and February 1962, entering revenue earning service in the following August after receiving the new brown / black paint job at Inchicore....
and two CIÉ E421 Class

CIE 421 Class

The C?ras Iompair ?ireann 421 Class was a railway locomotive, built by the CI? at Inchicore Works between 1962?1963 and designed for branch line traffic use and shunting....
) are run, drawing preserved rolling stock

Rolling Stock

Rolling Stock was a newspaper of ideas and a chronicle of the 1980s published in Boulder, Colorado, Colorado by Ed Dorn and Jennifer Dunbar Dorn....
, including no. 836, a carriage built for the Great Southern and Western Railway

Great Southern and Western Railway

The Great Southern and Western Railway was one of the main railway operations in Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The company was the largest of Ireland's "Big Four" railway operators, buying up smaller operations and expanding its route mileage for much of its existence....
in 1902. The DCDR has also introduced back into service 1896-built BCDR No 148, the first Belfast and County Down Railway coach to be restored by the railway and the oldest operational passenger carrying railway vehicle in Ireland. After withdrawal from traffic in the mid 1950s, 148 did duty as a henhouse until rescued by the DCDR in 1987.

The railway also operates one of the prototype BR-Leyland Railbuses, RB3, which was modified in the early 1980s to run on Irish metals and was used for a period by Northern Ireland Railways. The railway has also been donated by Irish Rail, Sligo Leitrim and Northern Counties Railway Railcar B, built in 1948. This railcar is in poor condition and it wil be some time before the DCDR can return it to operational condition. A second O&K steam locomotive is also under restoration. 1875-built 0-6-0 tank engine, GSWR No90, which was delivered to Downpatrick in October 2007 after overhaul at the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland's workshops in Whitehead, Co Antrim, is Ireland's oldest operational steam engine.

Downpatrick & County Down Railway

History

Operations and Rolling Stock

See also

External links