Irish Derry Lough Swilly Railroad Annual Report 1939

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Irish Derry Lough Swilly Railroad Annual Report 1939 Album Large 12 page annual report of the directors and statement of accounts, dated 31st December, 1939. Folded folio in original paper wrapper. Unopened. Detailed map on the back page. Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway History Initially planned as the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway Company when an application for incorporation was filed in 1852 after spurning the construction of a canal network to connect the two inlets, the company opened its first line, a standard gauge link between Derry and Farland Point on December 31, 1863. A branch line to Buncrana followed in 1864, with much of the Farland Point link being closed in 1866. An extension to Letterkenny was constructed in 1883, and the network was converted to narrow gauge in 1885. Carndonagh was served by an extension constructed in 1901 and Burtonport in 1903. These two lines were constructed as joint ventures with the British Government, with ownership and liabilities shared between the two parties. During this period the company did not turn a profit, and struggled to meet its debts. The end of rail operations The last train to run on the line was the 2.15pm from Letterkenny to Derry, on 8 August 1953. It was laden with 14 wagons of cattle and turned in 50 minutes late! Bob Turner was the driver with Paddy Clifford as fireman. As the Derry Journal reported at the time "... the guard, Mr. Daniel McFeeley, or anyone else, did not call out 'Next Stop Derry'. Everyone knew that the next stop would be the last stop - the last ever." Source: The Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway - Edward M. Patterson, 1964. Irish Railways Irish railways were built between 1834, when the Dublin to Dun Laoghaire line opened, and the early years of the 20th century. In the early 1920's, both the route mileage (at about 12000 km) and the traffic levels carried were at their peak, but competition form road traffic began to make inroads into railway traffic from the 1920s. While most of the system was 1600mm gauge, some lines mostly in rural areas were narrow gauge - 914mm gauge. In the north west, County Donegal was almost entirely served by two large narrow gauge systems totalling some 300 km. In 1923, the Keady - Castleblayney line in Co. Armagh was closed after only 10 years open to traffic, and by the early 1930's a number of rural lines had followed into oblivion, mostly in the south and west. The main lines between Dublin and Cork, Belfast, and Belfast - Derry received a fair amount of investment over the years, and locomotives, carriages and services were as good as anyw in Europe, but rural and western lines received little new investment especially during the lean years of the 1920's - 1930's. In 1925, all the railway companies whose lines fell wholly on the Southern side of the newly created border (between Northern Ireland and the Republic) were amalgamated as the Great Southern Railways. By the late 1940's, Ireland still had an extensive railway system which was almost entirely steam operated, and indeed, one short branch line in Co. Tyrone was to remain horse worked until its closure in 1957! Between 1949 and 1960, huge changes took place. Large investment was made in diesel locomotives and railcars and new carriages in the Republic, with Inchicore working at full capacity for many years. Following nationalisation of CIE (the State transport company in the Republic) in 1950, many unremunerative lines were closed, and others reduced to freight only status. Meanwhile, in the North, the Ulster Transport Authority (state owned railway and general public transport in Northern Ireland 1949 - 1967) closed almost 80% of the railway system under its control, and introduced diesel railcars to the rest. Both economic circumstances and political interference had resulted in the closure of most of the Great Northern Railway system in... read more

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