All in an afternoon: AGMs, bananas and fast food
We held our Annual General Meeting in The Saint Patrick Centre on Saturday. This included all the usual business of reports, financial updates, directors being re-elected followed by a lively Q&A once the formal business was completed. It’s a great opportunity for volunteers and other members to consider the railway’s progress as a business. After […]
On Track Technicians upgrade User Worked Crossing
We’ve been quietly working away in the background with our “Big Proper Rail Industry” supporters. This is with a view to help with rail infrastructure work around our site. Last year we were very grateful to welcome Babcock Rail down to upgrade the centre of one of our farm crossings. We followed this work up […]
90 restoration update: removing the ashpan
Our volunteers continue to work on steam locomotive No. 90 in preparation for its boiler being removed. This week we’ve been trying to take apart its ashpan. However, years of rust and awkward nut diameters have made this a very difficult process. The ashpan sits beneath the fire. As the name suggests, it catches ash […]
Replacing turnout timbers
Work to replace timbers on the Gallery turnout on our South Line outside the station continued on Saturday, with the team clearing stone and installing ‘new’ timbers obtained from Belfast Great Victoria Street after closure. These massive timbers are 24-feet long. There’s no easy way to move them by hand. The Komatsu is out of […]
New Year, new project
New Year, new project? With the 80 class project now its final stages, our carriage team volunteers has turned its attention to the next major restoration project. This is CIÉ ‘laminate’ carriage 1918. It is one of the of the very first carriages to arrive at our railway back in the late 1980s. 1918 hasn’t […]
First Aid Check-Up
Running a heritage railway goes beyond maintaining locomotives, carriages and infrastructure; we need to look after our people too. Having a fully-stocked First Aid kit on site is essential to this. Yesterday, our volunteer Tony called in to conduct their regular inspection. This is to ensure that our First Aid supplies are kept stocked, up […]
New Year’s clean up
With Christmas out of the way, many people feel it’s a good time to have a shed clear out. A time to start the new year afresh. Well, we don’t do anything on a small scale like that. In order to tidy up our locomotive shed, volunteers were needed en masse. The Maghera Shed is […]
Railway Robin
We’re always on the lookout for new volunteers. Well, today our track gang were joined by their newest foreman on the railway, Robin. Though diminutive in size, Robin arrived with his own high-vis orange PPE and an impressive CV, including extensive experience in locating mealworms and peanuts. As you can see, he was closely and […]
Christmas break Permanent Way work
With the Santa trains over, the winter closure period is a useful time for our track volunteers to get on with some maintenance and upgrade jobs. These tasks just can’t be done when we are running public trains. A relatively small project to kick off the winter programme of work was the replacement of a […]
DCDR shortlisted in three categories in HRA 2026 Awards
We’ve some more positive awards news to finish off 2025. The Heritage Railway Association has shortlisted us in not one, not two, but THREE categories in their 2026 awards. Our railway we are particularly proud of being very much people-focussed. The locomotives and carriages are important, but the real success of DCDR is the people […]