It was a tense weekend for all of us at the railway, with rising floodwaters lapping at our tracks and seeping into our station yard again. Memories of 2023’s devastation are still raw, indeed we are still trying to build back from some aspects of that event just over two years ago.
Following sustained heavy rain in the area, water was already starting to rise in the locomotive yard where our volunteers were replacing point timbers on Wednesday. They dug down to the bottom of the sleeper level and it was getting pretty damp.
By Friday, we had water levels rising in the marshland behind the railway and rising in the yard behind the carriage gallery, with stepping stones needed to get into the ‘tarry’ carriage where the volunteers eat lunch and get changed. We watched CCTV anxiously to see how it looked when high tide arrived that evening.
By Saturday morning there wasn’t much change, the weekend volunteers needed a bit of courage to get their cars in through the floodwater in the public car park. By the afternoon, still unsure of what was to come in the following days, we took the decision to move rolling stock that was at the lowest part of our yard up into the station, where it would be above 2023 peak flood levels. You just can’t take chances when faced with this sort of situation.
Thankfully the water didn’t rise any further this time, and by Monday morning it was receding again – good news for us and the wider Downpatrick community, we got lucky this time.
