THE LARNE LINE

THE LARNE LINE...
a great past and a bright future

HEADING back into Belfast from Carrick a couple of Friday evenings ago, I was surprised to see that the train in service had ancient narrow slam door coaches.  I had a difficult job manhandling my bicycle through that narrow gap. The next day I  read Emma Blee’s heartening story in the your Carrick Biz reporting that the Larne Line is to get its fair share of the twenty new trains recently ordered by Northern Ireland Railways.
  This is welcome news.  According to Ursula Kelleher of Translink, passenger journeys along the Larne line have risen by over 10% in the last year. This has been helped by an upgrade of many of the halts along the line and the new park and ride facility at Greenisland station that has increased parking capacity from 10 to 71 car-parking spaces. Similar facilities are planned for Jordanstown and Whiteabbey stations.
  This is not before time. For too long the Larne Line was NIR’s poor relation. Some of us feared that the starvation of resources was a prelude to complete closure.  This new investment offers some reassurance as does the recent upgrades of stations on the line.  I am particularly impressed by the improvements to Clipperstown halt.
  Browsing through the Linenhall Library last week, I came across Along UTA Lines: Ulster’s rail network in the 1960s by Ian McLarnon Sinclair, a Bangor man who was prominent in the campaign to Save Our Railways a few years ago. Mr Sinclair takes the traveller on a virtual train journey through every station and halt inherited by NIR from the old Ulster Transport Authority in 1967.
  The Larne Line of the 1990s and early noughties was a pale shadow of the line that NIR took over in 1967.  I find it fascinating to see how the stations on the line have changed in the past forty-odd years. Most of the fine stations have gone to be replaced by rudimentary shelters. Some of the old stations  - Jordanstown springs to mind – were quietly demolished early on Sunday mornings before anybody realised what was going on.
   Greenisland, now heavily transformed, was originally called Carrickfergus Junction until 1893. The old Belfast and Northern Counties Railway built the station and the golf cou-rse on the Upper Road as a tourist attraction. The original station had three platforms and its own signal box. A back line from Greenisland went to and from Monkstown and carried boat trains direct from Londonderry to Larne Harbour. This service ended in 1961. The lovely old buildings were destroyed by fire in the late eighties.
  Trooperslane used to have an attractive station building which can been seen in the picture above. This was demolished in 1974-The halt was threatened with closure in 1977 but was reprieved and it is still in service. The Mount halt opened in 1925 and was shut in 1930.  It came back into service again in 1946 when the massive Courtaulds textile factory opened. Two sidings supplied the factory with coal from the port of Belfast and paper pulp from Larne.  The sidings closed in 1967 and the halt was taken away altogether after its closure in 1972.
A siding used to run to the Carrick saltworks just before the bridge at Clipperstown halt. This siding closed in 1957. Clipperstown halt opened in 1925 and never had any fancy buildings.  It has never looked as well as it does today.
  Carrickfergus station is one of the few buildings erected by the old Belfast and Northern Counties Railway to survive largely intact. The mock-Tudor design was restored in 2001 which brought at degree of comfort to what used to be freezing waits for trains.  The seats might not be heavily upholstered but at least passengers won’t catch their death waiting for the next train and the lifts are handy for mothers with prams and cyclists who no longer have to manhandle these things down huge flights of stairs.
  Most of the halts around Carrick opened in 1925 to cater for a growing population in the town’s suburbs. Barn closed in 1931, reopened during the war years and remained as a request stop until 1977.  Today only the footbridge remains. Downshire Park had only a corrugated iron shelter and cinder platform when it opened in 1925. Renamed Downshire in 1979, the halt is still in daily use.  The Eden halt did not do so well. It closed in 1977 and its cinder platforms were taken away.
  Kilroot was one of the earlier stations opening in 1862. It was the terminus for some local NCC railway services in the 1930s. It fell to the 1977 cull of stations and halts on the line and the buildings were demolished in 1979.
Whitehead station was built in 1877 with just one platform.  Whitehead was largely developed by the BNCR as a holiday destination aimed especially at day-trippers. The railway company spent a lot of money on the promenade and the Gobbins cliff path. Increased popularity led to the station’s expansion and the construction of another platform.  An additional excursion station was built in 1907. Today this is the headquarters of the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland. The town is still popular today with day trippers and no wonder. It’s still a fine place to visit.
  I’m delighted to read about and see wonderful pictures of the Larne Line’s past glories but I’m even happier to see that it has a bright future well into the coming century.