Carriage woes
The legacy of not being able to run trains for a prolonged period continues. With a myriad of other tasks to be dealt with post-flood, it is only now that our carriage team has managed to turn its attention to the ‘green set’, i.e. UTA ‘Festival coach’ 728 and CIÉ Park Royal carriage 1944. Some […]
Jack passes his digger exam
Congratulations to Jack Turner who passed his digger exam last week! We assess machine operators on our railway to a high standard before they can operate as part of our permanent way team. It’s always good to have a new operator to spread the work a bit more evenly. As a relatively recent volunteer, Jack […]
Bubble bath?
A vice-chairman’s work is never done… You may think that such high office in a railway organisation means it’s all meetings and traybakes and awards ceremonies. That’s definitely not the case for our vice-chairman Mike. With public trains just around the corner, thoughts turned to making the station presentable. The recently-arrived cement bubble wagon was […]
HRA Awards 2026
The official snaps are in – and perhaps the entourage is only just recovering – but a huge congratulations to the DCDR and the Irish Traction Group posse at the Heritage Railway Association Awards last weekend at Llandudno. No need to go waiting for a star to fall this year… Christopher McCausland picked it up […]
Spring is in the air
With our first public running day of the year coming up on St Patrick’s Day, our volunteers on Saturday were definitely in a Spring-cleaning mode, as we started getting the railway ready for the public again. Mark, Callum and Connor were hard at work all day in the bright sunshine cleaning the platform edge with […]
A right pair of clamp-its
These two are a right pair of clamp-its! Our friends at the Cavan and Leitrim Railway (C&L) at Dromod in County Leitrim are working on a project to install a new passing loop at the ‘country’ end of their line at Clooncolry, to enable them to run round their passenger carriages at each end of […]
Raise the roof
We’re excited that, after years of planning – and yes, frustration and impatience – work has officially begun on repairs to the Maghera Locomotive Shed While the roof works are 80% funded by Newry, Mourne and Down District Council, we now need to raise the remaining 20% of the project costs. If you’d like to […]
The big shed shunt
Last Saturday saw the final clearance work for our locomotive shed ahead of roofing contractors moving in this week. And what a clearance it is, it sure makes your garden shed look tiny – no lawnmowers here. We had to clear out steam and diesel locomotives and heavy tools and equipment. Our volunteers undertook a […]
New road-rail excavator arrives
Who said you ever grow out of Tonka toys? Because sometimes the toys just get bigger… and come with rail wheels. A huge thank you to the team at Railway Plant Services Ltd, especially Chris and John, who have come to our rescue with a brand new (to us) road-rail excavator. Since the floods, when […]
90 Restoration update: removing the ashpan
We’ve had an impressive influx of new volunteers over the past few months. What better way to get them started than having them work on our 150-year-old steam loco No. 90? A few weeks ago we started removing the firebars from 90’s firebox. These are metal bars which hold the coals in place and let […]