NI Railways (NIR) - NI Railways History - ANI Railways (NIR) - A NI Railways, also known as Northern Ireland Railways (NIR) in Irish: Iarnród Thuaisceart Éireann, and for a brief period Ulster Transport Railways (UTR), is the railway operator in Northern Ireland. NIR is a subsidiary of Translink, whose parent company is the Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company (NITHCo), and is one of seven publicly owned train operators in the United Kingdom, the others being Direct Rail Services, Northern Trains, Transport for Wales Rail, Southeastern, LNER, and ScotRail. It has a common Board of Management with the other two companies in the group, Ulsterbus and Metro (formerly Citybus). The rail network in Northern Ireland is not part of the National Rail network of Great Britain, nor does it use Standard Gauge, instead using Irish Gauge in common with the Republic of Ireland. Also, NIR is the only commercial non-heritage passenger operator in the United Kingdom to operate a vertical integration model, with responsibility of all aspects of the network including running trains, maintaining rolling stock and infrastructure, and pricing. Since the Single European Railway Directive 2012, the company has allowed open access operations by other rail operators, although no operator has started such a service. In 2019, NI Railways carried over 15 million passengers. NIR jointly runs the Enterprise train service between Belfast and Dublin with Iarnród Éireann. There is no link to the rail system in Great Britain, proposals have been made, but allowances would have to be made for the different rail gauge (standard gauge) in use in Britain and Ireland (Irish gauge). NI Railways History From the early 20th century until 1948, the three main railway companies in Northern Ireland were the Great Northern Railway Ireland (GNRI), which had around one half of its network north of the border, the Northern Counties Committee (NCC), owned by the Midland Railway of England and later the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), and the small Belfast and County Down Railway (BCDR). The Transport Act (Northern Ireland) 1948 created the Ulster Transport Authority (UTA), which took over the BCDR later that year, followed by the NCC in 1949 as a result of the Ireland Act 1949. In 1958, the GNRI was dissolved and its lines north of the border were also taken over by the UTA. Under the UTA's management, the railway network of Northern Ireland shrank from 900 miles (1,450 km) to 225 miles (362 km). The UTA was split into rail and road operations in 1967, and the rail operations were taken over by the present company Northern Ireland Railways (NIR). Suffering frequent disruption and damage to infrastructure caused by the Troubles and starved of investment by successive political administrations, the NIR network had become badly run down by the 1960s, with old rolling stock and poorly maintained track. NIR's last steam locomotives were withdrawn in 1970. In 1970, NIR re-launched the once-popular Enterprise between Dublin and Belfast with three new NIR Class 101 diesel locomotives built by Hunslet in England and Mark 2B carriages built by British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL). Despite frequent interruptions due to bomb scares, the service has remained a more or less constant feature of the NIR network. As older trains became obsolete in the 1970s, the Class 80 slam-door diesel-electric multiple unit was introduced. BREL built these units between 1974 and 1977 to British Rail's Mark 2 design with some trailer cars rebuilt from hauled stock. The power cars were powered by an English Electric 4SRKT engine, nicknamed 'Thumpers' due to their characteristic sound, and had two English Electric 538 traction motors. These entered service on the suburban lines around Belfast, becoming a stalwart on the whole network. They remained in service until 2012, latterly primarily on the Larne-Belfast line and the Coleraine-Portrush Line. In the early 1980s, NIR purchased one of the prototype LEV Railbuses built to test the railbus concept. This was intended for the Coleraine-Portrush branch, but was withdrawn due to the capacity constraints of a single car. A plan was mooted to use it on the Lisburn-Antrim line to prevent it from being closed. This proposal failed, again because of the limited capacity. NIR has three EMD class 111 locomotives, 111-113, for freight and passenger use, built in October 1980 (111-112) and December 1984 (113). During the eighties it was apparent that additional trains would be needed. BREL built nine 450 Class sets on former Mark 1 underframes between 1985 and 1987. The power cars had an English Electric 4SRKT engine recovered from former 70 Class units (except 459, which used the engine recovered from 80 Class power car 88) and had two English Electric 538 traction motors. The sets were three-car diesel-electric multiple units, based on a more modern British design, with air-operated sliding doors. They were withdrawn from service in 2012 and replaced by new 4000 Class diesel multiple units. In 1994, NIR bought two EMD 208 Class locomotives identical to Iarnród Éireann's 201 Class. These haul the cross-border Enterprise dedicated trains of modern carriages. Since 2002, NIR has modernised its rolling stock, with a full fleet replacement of new trains built by the Spanish company CAF. 23 Class 3000 diesel multiple units made up the first batch of trains ordered at a cost of £80 million. They offered greater capacity, performance and accessibility than their predecessors when they were delivered in 2004 and 2005. The next order was for 20 Class 4000s, built 2010-2012. These offered similar benefits to the Class 3000s and completed the fleet replacement. Additionally, NIR has purchased 23 new carriages, via an option in the existing Class 4000 train procurement contract, these are to be used to extend Seven trains from three cars to six cars, which will add much more capacity and will also allow only one guard to be needed on a six-car train, which required two before. In 2021, Translink announced it would change all of its iconic logos (used for the previous 25 years in the Translink brand and sub brands such as NI Railways, Ulsterbus & Metro) to a new design. The design was intended to focus to "modernise and simplify the brand presence". The creation of the logo cost £15,000 and was created by Belfast based company McCadden Design in partnership with Translink. NI Railways Overview NI Railways Main Region(s): Northern Ireland NI Railways Fleet Size: 47 NI Railways Stations Called At: 54 NI Railways Parent Company: NITHCo (Translink) NI Railways Dates of Operation: 1967- NI Railways Predecessor: Ulster Transport Authority NI Railways Track Gauge: 1,600 mm (5 ft 3 in) Irish gauge | |||||
| |||||
