Fintona Junction – Fintona railway line

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Fintona Junction – Fintona
Passenger train between Fintona Town and Fintona Junction, around 1930
Passenger train between Fintona Town and Fintona Junction, around 1930
Gauge : 1600 mm ( Irish track )

The Fintona Junction – Fintona (Town) railway was a short railway line in what is now Northern Ireland . Its unique selling point was that it was operated as a horse-drawn tram for passenger transport , while the freight trains were pulled by steam locomotives.

History and description

Fintona (Town) terminus, 1957
Original wagons in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum

The track with the track width 1600 mm was on 5 June 1853 by the railway company Londonderry and Enniskillen Railway taken (L & ER) in operation. It formed the end of a main line leading from Londonderry via Omagh to Fintona . Their southern extension to Enniskillen began in the purpose-built Fintona Junction station. This made the end section on May 1, 1856 a subordinate branch line.

The two endpoints were about 1200 meters apart. At the branching station there was an open wedge platform, over which the passengers changed from one train to the other. At its southern end there was a small brick railway station building across the tracks. In the terminus, the main platform at the station building and the associated track were protected by a hall with a round roof made of wood.

A horse and a carriage were purchased for passenger transport. All of the train horses, regardless of gender, were named "Dick". The last "Dick", born in 1942, worked from 1945 until the company closed down. In case of failure of the regular draft horse was a local draft horse rented. There was an enclosed wooden shelter next to the Fintona Junction signal box. There the draft horse was "parked" to save it from panic in the face of the steam locomotives.

The first passenger car resembled a stagecoach, it had a first class compartment and two second class compartments. Since there was no bridge over the route, third-class passengers were carried on the open upper deck.

In 1883 the operation was taken over by the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) (GNR). The new passenger car put into service that year was more like a tram car . Here, too, the open upper deck was intended for the third class; there was a compartment below for the passengers of the two upper classes. There was seating for 24 passengers per floor, and heavy luggage could be transported in an additional trailer. In the last few years of operation, the car was blue with a cream-colored window band, corresponding to the paintwork of the railcars of the GNR.

The timetable was based on the trains that ran on the main line and established appropriate connections. In the 1950s, eleven pairs of trains ran between Fintona Town and Fintona Junction every day. On January 17, 1953, the car was damaged after the horse "ran out". Until April 2 of that year, the passengers had to run next to the draft horse, which only pulled the baggage cart.

The last train on the route ran on September 30, 1957. As part of the “Great Closure”, 541 kilometers of railway lines were shut down in Northern Ireland that year. The car has been given to the Belfast Transport Museum and is now in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra . The last horse was saved from the slaughterhouse after an appeal for donations and given to the Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (USPCA).

Web links

literature

  • Martin Bairstow: Railways in Ireland. Part One . Martin Bairstow, Leeds 2006, ISBN 1-871944-31-7 , pp. 30th f .
  • Tom Ferris: Irish Railways in Color. From Steam to Diesel 1955-1967 . Midland Publishing, 1992, ISBN 1-85780-000-1 , pp. 116 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tom Ferris: Irish Railways in Color. From Steam to Diesel 1955-1967 , p. 116