A roof over our heads
We’ve got a roof over our heads! At long last, the Maghera Shed locomotive shed is (mostly) watertight, the first time since before Storm Ciaran and the floods. C Mason Steelwork have been working diligently over the last few weeks. They have been dealing with nice rotten surprises and fussy railway volunteers. However, the smoke […]
DCDR provides filming location for Crookhaven
Have you been watching Crookhaven this week? If you have, you may have noticed a familiar looking station in the first five minutes of Episode 1… Our very own Loop Platform serves as Moorheart Station, a mysterious halt in the middle of nowhere surrounded on all sides by trees and shrubbery. It was the perfect […]
Fintown track team visit
We love working with other Irish railway heritage groups. It was a pleasure recently to welcome a team from Cumann Traenach na Gaeltachta Láir, the Fintown Railway, recently. The team are preparing to install new points on their railway, and came here to receive advice on permanent way work from our own Chief Civil Engineer, […]
Morgan gets his driver’s licence
St Patrick’s Day was not just a busy one for our many passengers, it was a long, hard day’s work for our train crew, especially for Morgan Young who was being put through his GM loco driver’s exam. So now you know what the L plate on 121 Class loco 124 was for. To cut […]
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 […]