As regular readers will know, I grew up in Bangor in Northern Ireland, but I've lived in England for most of the last 15 years. In 2017, I got involved in a small way with the original "All The Stations" endeavour, helping to plan Geoff and Vicki's epic trip round all 2,563 National Rail stations in Great Britain, and you can see me in a short cameo in this video at Shippea Hill.
After the original "All The Stations" was complete, attention naturally turned to the question of what was next. The island of Ireland was the most obvious natural extension; with just 198 stations it was also not nearly as large an undertaking. Surprisingly, despite growing up in NI, I'd been on relatively little of the railways in Ireland: I'd been on the whole network in Northern Ireland, but much of the network in the Republic of Ireland remains unknown to me.
Still, a one-eyed man is king in a world of blind men, and I thus got involved in helping Geoff plan All The Stations: Ireland. I wrote a very sketchy plan that, in theory, meant you could have done the whole island in five days, but that would have been very, very rushed — probably even more so than some of the English parts of All The Stations, where it really was a feeling of "if it's Tuesday, it must be Bradford".
When I travelled back to NI for Christmas in 2017, I did so by train and ferry through Holyhead and Dublin — Ryanair had pulled out of flying Gatwick-Belfast, and Easyjet's prices were thus insane, so this was a much cheaper option — which meant I could pick up lots of timetable leaflets when I passed through Dublin Connolly station.
Geoff and I had a first planning meeting in early 2018, with the intention of it happening later that year. Although we stretched the plan to about two weeks, it was still fundamentally following the same order as my five-day plan, starting in Rosslare and finishing in Derry/Londonderry, going round the lines out of Dublin in a roughly clockwise fashion, and using a bus between Ballina and Sligo to save a very long back-track.
However, in the end, due to other commitments, it didn't happen in 2018, but instead ended up pushed back to Easter 2019. In the meantime the plan was refined and extended a little, but I'm delighted that the plan ended up working almost without a hitch! It looked like Brexit could end up complicating matters, but an extension to the Article 50 negotiating deadline meant that didn't matter in the end.
Geoff and Vicki departed from London on the night of Thursday 21st March 2019, making their way to Rosslare the following day and then spending two weeks going round the Republic of Ireland. By the time they got back to Dublin on Sunday 7th April, they had just the line from Dublin to Belfast, and all of Northern Ireland, left to cover. Meanwhile, I flew to Belfast on Friday 5th April to stay with my parents for a few days, ready to meet up with Geoff and Vicki in Northern Ireland!
Monday 8th April (Day 15)
For Geoff and Vicki, Day 15 started in Dublin, as they made their way to Belfast. Although the Enterprise runs up to eight times a day between Dublin and Belfast, they of course needed to call at every intermediate station, so they only used the Enterprise between Drogheda and Newry.
My day started in Bangor, from which I caught the 14:57 train to Belfast, and then the 16:05 Enterprise from Belfast to Newry, to meet them there. We had over a two-hour wait for their first train in NI: Northern Ireland's two most awkward stations are Scarva and Poyntzpass, between Newry and Portadown. While Newry is served by the Enterprise service between Belfast and Dublin, the rest of the suburban services usually only go as far as Portadown, with just five trains a day extending to call at Poyntzpass and Scarva.
After nipping into the town centre to get a coffee, we boarded the 18:50 train all the way into Belfast. There being plenty of material for the one video already, I didn't appear on camera in the video, but I can assure you I'm sat on the train out of shot! The train was very quiet leaving Newry, and Geoff and Vicki naturally got talking to the guard; what I wasn't expecting was that the guard would make a special announcement welcoming them to NI! That was definitely the most surreal moment of the trip for me.
The trouble with there being so few trains calling at Poyntzpass and Scarva was that it really wasn't hard for the educated enthusiast to work out which train we were on... and even before we arrived into Great Victoria Street in Belfast, a couple of young fans had managed to track down the train and introduced themselves to Geoff and Vicki, with half a dozen more people waiting for their arrival into Great Victoria Street at 19:59, including a family with a young girl who'd made a lovely drawing for Geoff and Vicki!
Eventually, Geoff and Vicki managed to escape to their hotel, and I headed back to Bangor. Saying "See you in Bangor!" to folk who I'm used to seeing in London was... somewhat disorienting...!
Tuesday 9th April (Day 16)
The next morning (Tuesday 9th April) I met Geoff and Vicki at Bangor station just before midday. Unlike the previous day, where I had stayed entirely off-camera, today I was very much on-camera. I'd done videos with Geoff before, but this was somehow different: here I was the third person on camera, not the second. But more than that, it also felt like I was introducing Geoff and Vicki to the place I grew up, almost like I was showing them round.
We started with Geoff interviewing me in the café in Bangor station — which even as I write that seems like a completely surreal concept — with a few questions about the Northern Irish railway network. He started by shaking my hand — only, I was expecting his signature left-handed handshake, and you can just spot on the video that I start to reach out my left hand before realising he isn't holding the camera (Vicki was)!
I'd brought along my copy of Johnson's Atlas and Gazetter of the Railways of Ireland, an absolutely wonderful historical atlas of Ireland's railways, as a prop to talk about how many railways in Ireland had closed in the 1950s and 1960s to leave the shriveled network we have today.
The atlas was a gift from my grandparents some twenty years ago, and I still treasure it. In fact, the first question Geoff asked was about how I'd got into railways in the first place: that was very much down to my grandpa, who was a civil engineer in the Roads Service in Northern Ireland but who passed on his love of all things transport to me. The question and my answer ended up on the cutting room floor, but it relaxed me into the rest of the interview.
After the interview, we split up, with Vicki going to look at the castle, and Geoff and I walking into the town briefly to get a drone shot of the marina (which also ended up on the cutting room floor). We reconvened to get the 12:27 train to Cultra, on which I described to camera what all we were going to do that day — and in so doing I managed to steal Vicki's thunder by doing what she normally did!
We stopped off at Cultra to head to the Ulster Transport Museum — co-located with the Folk Museum and thus generally advertised as the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum (which I must confess paints a very schizophrenic picture until you realise they're separate!) — where we spent an hour looking round. This was very much a trip down memory lane for me: a trip with my grandparents from Bangor to Cultra to visit the Transport Museum was probably one of my first, if not my first ever, train trip. Although I visited the museum several times as a child, including one or two school trips, it must have been at least 15 years since my last visit.
An hour after we arrived, we were back on the train heading to Belfast Central — or rather Belfast Lanyon Place, it having been renamed seven months previously. The name "Central" stems from the Belfast Central Railway, on which the station lies, rather than the station's location within Belfast: the station is in fact at the eastern edge of the city centre, with Great Victoria Street being much closer to the city centre. While the renaming is welcome, "Lanyon Place" is hardly the kind of memorable name that is likely to displace "Central" in the public consciousness; something more straightforward like "Laganside" would have been better in my view!
The line from Cultra to Belfast runs largely along the south shore of Belfast Lough; after changing at Central (sorry, but old habits die hard!), we headed back out along the opposite shore on the 14:25 train out to Whitehead. I'd not been on this line in many, many years, and I'd forgotten how lovely the views are across to Holywood and Bangor. We passed by the iconic Carrickfergus Castle, but unfortunately there wasn't enough time in the plans to stop for a visit. Vicki was very disappointed. (The drone shot seen in the video, incidentally, was actually filmed a couple of days later.)
Upon arrival at Whitehead at 15:00, we were met by Robin from the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland, who whisked us off to the Whitehead Railway Museum. Vicki and I introduced ourselves to Robin while Geoff went and got a few extra shots; I explained I was the local (even if I haven't lived in NI for many years), and Robin immediately replied "ah, you're the fixer!" In the video, Geoff described me exactly like that as he pulled into Bangor, but that was before I'd seen either of them, so this was my first time hearing myself described like that!
The RPSI works have been based at Whitehead since 1964, but the museum was brand-new, having opened in 2017, and I'd never been, so I was really quite excited to see round. The museum only usually opens on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, but the folks at the museum had heard Geoff and Vicki were coming, so opened the museum especially for us to look round!
We quickly realised there was lots to see, more than we'd bargained for. As a result, Geoff and Vicki decided quickly that the Whitehead museum deserved its own bonus video, rather than just being a snippet in an already busy day's video, so they quickly filmed a piece to camera to act as a teaser for the bonus video. Robin then showed us round as much of the museum as we could see in about an hour — although we'd planned to get the 16:01 train to Larne, we quickly realised the 16:35 made more sense, and re-planned accordingly.
The guys at the museum were wonderful, and even though we had very little time there we got to see a fantastic amount of stuff, including a working signal box where Vicki and I both got to pull some real old-fashioned levers. Robin even gave us a lift between the station and the museum, even though it was only a 10-minute walk, to make sure we could see as much as possible — many thanks to the whole team for pulling out all the stops on the day.
A couple of the young lads from the museum joined us on the train onwards to Larne, which has some lovely views over Larne Lough that I'd forgotten all about. Once we got to Larne Harbour, at the end of the line, they headed straight back, while the three of us got off and took a quick look round. The station was, as you'd expect, deserted, there being no ferries in the harbour and little other reason to use the Harbour station over Larne Town.
Geoff and Vicki filmed the closing segment to the video outside the station, and then we headed back to Belfast on the 17:35 train. Our earlier re-planning worked out quite well, in that we ended up only having to spend half an hour in Larne Harbour, as well as avoiding the 20-minute walk from Larne Town to Larne Harbour that had been part of the previous plan. The segment where Geoff and Vicki say goodbye to me at the end of the day was actually filmed on the way back to Belfast!
We arrived back into Belfast Central at 18:36; Geoff and Vicki headed to their hotel, while I headed back to Bangor for the night, ready for another day of trains.
Wednesday 10th April (Day 17)
The next morning was the last day of ATS Ireland, and there was only one line left to do: Belfast to Derry/Londonderry, as well as the short branch to Portrush. My day started with the 10:27 from Bangor to Belfast, and I met Vicki at Belfast Central to get the 11:20 to Coleraine.
Geoff, however... off of my suggestion he'd gone to get a drone shot of Bleach Green Viaduct (which you can see in the video). Due to the location, he'd had to get a taxi to and from the viaduct site, and it took a bit of a walk to get the right shot, so he only just made the train at Yorkgate — which is why the video starts there rather than at Central.
In the video you can see me talking about the viaduct, which is part of the reason I actually appeared in the video and wasn't just out-of-shot as I was on Monday. The section from Bleach Green to Antrim was shut in 1978, with trains diverted via Lisburn, but reopened on Sunday 10th June 2001 — and I was a passenger on the very first day, again with my grandparents. According to the commemorative ticket, I was passenger number 162 (my grandparents were number 163 and 164 respectively)!
The station at Portrush was in the middle of being rebuilt, and would fully reopen a couple of months later in time for The Open golf championship, which was hosted by Royal Portrush Golf Club in 2019 for only the second time, the first being in 1951. This provided a huge boost to tourism in the area, but required quite substantial reconstruction of the existing station, which was therefore something of a construction site when we visited.
That said, for Geoff and I the visit was very brief indeed: on arrival at Portrush, we split up, with Vicki going off to explore the seaside town of Portrush. Although I said "goodbye" in the video, this was simply a convenience of the video, and in reality Geoff and I headed straight back to Coleraine on the train we'd just come in on, to go and get a very special shot for later in the video...
Outside Coleraine station we took a taxi to Downhill Strand, Northern Ireland's answer to Dawlish. The railway runs through two tunnels west of Castlerock station, emerging on the beautiful white beach at Downhill — the perfect location for a drone shot of a train. There were very few buses, so we took a taxi; the driver said he hadn't been to Downhill beach in at least a decade. Hilariously, my accent — which has been somewhat anglicised over the years of living in England — reverted and became ever more broad the more I talked to the taxi driver, to the point where even Geoff struggled to understand me at times!
We got out of the taxi and crossed under the railway bridge onto the beach itself, and Geoff got his drone out to take the shot. Sadly, he'd accidentally left it on after getting the shot at Bleach Green, and the battery had run down — all that was left in the batteries was for a brief 30-second flight where it went up and came back down again — so while it was a lovely shot of the beach and Mussenden Temple (the building perched atop the cliff above the railway), it didn't have any trains in it.
Geoff tried to get it to come back to life, but to no avail. With minutes to go until the hourly train passed through, Geoff hit upon the great idea of filming a passing shot from the beach — which you can see in the video. To steady the shot, Geoff rested the camera (tripod and all!) on my shoulder, before panning round to track the train as it passed us heading towards Derry/Londonderry. (Geoff also shot some panning shots of the train coming back the other way a few minutes later, although those weren't needed in the end.) Fortunately the panning shot worked brilliantly, and rescued what could have been a disastrous trip to Downhill.
However, there was then the small matter of Geoff and I meeting up with Vicki again to get the following train to Derry/Londonderry. My original plan had been to walk round the headland to Castlerock, but even at low tide it turned out to be impassible, at least in the shoes we were wearing. So we had to turn back and head back to the car park where the taxi had dropped us off. We thought briefly that we'd have to call another taxi to come and get us, but then Geoff checked the bus timetable online — and found there was a number 134 bus right when we needed it, heading towards Castlerock, that would get us there just five minutes before the train!
We nervously waited in the rather forlorn bus shelter for the bus to come, and I confess I was a little worried it wouldn't show up — but it showed up bang on time, or perhaps even a little early. Because of our iLink cards, we didn't even have to pay extra for the bus, and it got us to Castlerock in plenty of time for the 14:50 train to Derry/Londonderry. We were reunited with Vicki on the train, which took us right past Downhill Strand where Geoff and I had just been — which is perhaps why Vicki is so awed by the beach, whereas Geoff had already seen it!
The video sequence ("What the actual Dickens?!") — complete with specially composed extended music — perfectly captured the sense of wonder I remember feeling the first time I went on a train to Derry/Londonderry as a child, with the beautiful view suddenly emerging from the darkness of the tunnels. I still maintain that the views between Coleraine and Derry/Londonderry are perhaps the best views from a train anywhere in the British Isles; at the very least they give the West Highland Line and the Kyle Line a very good run for their money — and have a much more frequent service!
Our arrival into Derry/Londonderry was bang on time at 15:22; Geoff and Vicki got a number of shots from the platform while I waited off-camera. When they were done a handful of fans were waiting for them — they had worked out which train they were on based on Twitter — and Geoff and Vicki happily posed for selfies once they came off the platform.
After a few more shots of the external of the station — which both Geoff and Vicki took care not to actually name on camera, to avoid even being seen to take sides in the naming dispute! — and of the following train arriving into Derry/Londonderry (as seen from the new Peace Bridge), we boarded the 16:38 back to Belfast, with Geoff and Vicki taking a well-earned nap after 17 days of trains in Ireland.
And that was it: all of Northern Ireland done in less than 48 hours!
The original plan had been written to do the whole island in as short a time as possible, and while the rest of the Ireland plan had been dilated to take a good bit longer and allow plenty of time to stop and see the local sights, the Northern Irish plan remained mostly unaltered from the original 2018 plan.
With hindsight, I suspect Geoff and Vicki could or should have spent longer going round Northern Ireland: perhaps one day for the Bangor branch, one day for the Larne line, and one final day (or possibly even two days) for the line to Derry/Londonderry. That said, given my flight schedules, too much change might have meant I couldn't make it into the videos!
All in all I had a lovely few days in Northern Ireland, in which it felt like I got to show Geoff and Vicki round this wonderful railway network that I'd grown up with, and which I still cherish as one of the hidden railway gems in the UK.
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