St Valentine's Day 1965: The day Donegal's love affair with rail ended

Valentine’s Day is most commonly associated with love - but for Donegal, the day also marks the ending of an almost 120-year relationship with the island’s rail network.

The world’s first passenger rail services began in England in 1825, and the new technology had reached Ireland by 1934 with the opening of the six-mile ‘Dublin and Kingstown Railway’ (the world’s first commuter rail service).

It wasn’t until 1847 - the bleakest year of the Famine/An Gorta Mór – that rail had made its way to Donegal and the north-west as part of the newly established ‘Londonderry and Enniskillen Railway’. Its route and construction started at Derry’s old Foyle Road Station on the westbank/Cityside of the Foyle, and from there traced the river south towards Strabane - via Carrigans, Porthall, St Johnston and Carrickmore.

These railway stations had the honour of being the first to open in Donegal in 1847 – and would also be the last to close when the curtain came down on the county’s rail presence on February 14, 1965.

In 1862 the Derry and Enniskillen Railway renamed itself the Irish North Western Railway, and in 1876 it merged with the Ulster Railway (which operated between Belfast and Monaghan) to form the Great Northern Railway.

It was at this stage that the section of the Derry to Enniskillen line north of Omagh (which skirted through the edge of Donegal) became part of what was known as ‘The Derry Road’ – the mainline rail route from the north-west to Dublin and Belfast, via Portadown.

The Derry Road proved to be a great commercial success for much of its existence, and was the most important rail line in Ulster for over a century, helping to stimulate significant economic activity all along its route. The first blow to its fortunes came in the 1920s, however, when the arrival of motorised road vehicles combined with the global economic depression to severely impact passenger and freight demand. The Second World War provided a temporary boost, with the line used to ferry troops and munitions (and also for cross-border smuggling by civilians).

The end of the war saw the old challenges return and amplify, however, made worse by the road-focused new Ulster Transport Authority (UTA) in Belfast. It has been established by the 1948 Northern Transport Act, which saw Stormont nationalise all rail and bus services north of the border.

It was a move which would eventually lead to the decimation of rail across the entire west of the province of Ulster. The UTA began closing a series of rail lines across the west of NI in the 1950s, leaving the Derry Road increasingly isolated. Stormont then published the Benson Report into the future of rail in NI in 1962, which recommended mothballing the Derry-Portadown line.

By that stage, it was the last remaining piece of rail anywhere in Donegal (or Tyrone) – so when the line carried its last train on St Valentine’s Day in 1965, it marked the end of the county’s almost 120-year love affair with rail. Donegal’s continuing decades of isolation from the island’s rail network began on February 14, 1965 – in what was a St Valentine’s Day Massacre for rail in the north-west.