A wet and soggy Sunday brought our Summer Season to a close, with hundreds of visitors enjoying our final weekend as part of the European Heritage Open Days.
But that wasn’t all – forget ComicCon, the DCDR hosted this year’s CarriageCon (the Carriage Restorers’ Convention), held outside Great Britain for the first time. Experts from heritage railways across England, Scotland and Wales, including the Bluebell Railway, Ferryhill Railway Heritage Trust, Gwili Steam Railway, Buckinghamshire Railway Centre and Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway, joined us to see the amazing award-winning carriage work that goes on at DCDR (even if we do say so ourselves).
Guests toured our workshop to see current and future projects in the Carriage Gallery, took trips out to Inch Abbey on our restored Edwardian gems hauled by the resurrected locomotive 124, and enjoyed a short presentation by David Crone on our partnership with Harland & Wolff to design and build a new underframe for the Ulster Railway carriage.
These visits are vital not just to showcase restoration work, but to benchmark against colleagues, share ideas, and foster collaboration.
A huge thank you to the staff of Denvir’s of Downpatrick for giving our guests such a warm Northern Irish welcome on Saturday night – we hope to see you all again at a future CarriageCon.
