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The Great Northern Railway of Ireland, originally known as the Irish North Western Railway, maintained an independent existence for 77 years, much of that time prosperously established as the second largest and certainly the most enterprising of the Irish railway systems. Springing basically from the need to link Dublin and Belfast by rail, the Great Northern was the result of amalgamation of numerous smaller companies.

The system began in the mid-1830s when the Ulster and the Dublin & Drogheda Railway Companies were formed. Ireland’s population had by then risen to more than 8 million, and it was increasing. Dublin was the capital and the only considerable city, but Belfast had embarked on industrialisation and was growing at a phenomenal rate. Between the two places the best means of travel was by coach, a tedious hundred-mile journey over rough roads. It took longer to travel between Dublin and Belfast than it did to cross from either in a small vessel to Liverpool.

No. 91 takes over the branch train to Belturbet at Ballyhaise from No. 107 which will now presumably go back to the Clones shed. Gerry Douglas/Chris Banks from “Irish Railways in Colour 1955-1967” by Tom Ferris

Baird’s Railway Map of Ireland 1927
Courtesy of Dan Kerr

The GNR Building, Belfast.
Copyright National Museums & Galleries of Northern Ireland, Ulster Folk and Transport / L3292/6
Courtesy of Michael Kennedy, Dromod Station

The Dublin-Belfast rail link was forged piecemeal. The Ulster Railway got to Portadown from Belfast by 1842, and from Portadown it headed towards Armagh and Monaghan. At the Dublin end, after a late start, Drogheda seemed a good enough goal and it was reached in 1844. A third company, fittingly named the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway, made plans to bridge the gap from Drogheda to Portadown and accomplished this in 1853.

Rail access to Derry was similarly accomplished in stages, the Derry and Enniskillen Railway and the Portadown, Dungannon & Omagh Railway participating. Between these routes, the Ulster had reached Clones, which was already on the course of the Dundalk & Enniskillen Railway. Secondary and branch lines were supplementing the main routes.
Amalgamation of the four main-line companies of the area took place in 1875-76, forming first the Northern and then the Great Northern Railway. Entry into the territories of the Belfast & Northern Counties Railway at Cookstown, and the Belfast & County Down at Castlewellan, came later.

In the following decade as part of a process of adding profitable network branches, the Great Northern obtained an Act in 1881 which revived the long-awaited Belturbet branch west of the Clones-Cavan line, as well as a branch to Carrickmacross. The branches diverged at Ballyhaise and at Inniskeen. Progress was slow due to delays in land purchase and the Belturbet line was not opened until 29 June 1885.

Optimism prevailed during the first ten years, but the disaster of the Potato Famine in the late 1840s initiated wholesale emigration from Ireland. A tradition developed, and in the course of a century the population shrank by half. So it was that the Great Northern, in common with the other Irish railways, was presented with the difficulty of paying its way in a country which was progressively becoming more depopulated.

“The Emigrants”
by Erskine Nicol. Copyright Tate, London 2000

Timetable from GNR(I) Timetables 1894
Courtesy of IRRS, Heuston Station, Dublin

In spite of a falling population the Great Northern was at its most prosperous in the thirty years or so preceding the first World War. The political and technical changes which followed that conflict produced a rapid change in fortunes: the political division of Ireland, civil war, tariff restrictions, and above all the development of road transport, all reacted against the Great Northern. Falling receipts and soaring operating costs brought the company to its knees shortly after the end of the second World War. Five years of shared nationalisation followed, during which most of the system suffered closure. In 1958 what was left was divided and administered thereafter by the Ulster Transport Authority and Coras Iompair Eireann in Northern Ireland and the Republic, respectively.

The Great Northern Railway had a home at Belturbet Station for 72 years.