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The Ballycastle Railway New updated edition

Category: Transport

It is true to say that County Antrim cradled the Irish narrow gauge railways, and in those early days its colourful north coast was soon linked to the hinterland by the Ballycastle Railway.

For over forty years the Ballycastle Railway Company struggled for existence and, but for the benevolence of the Belfast & Northern Counties Railway and its successors, the Ballycastle Company would have succumbed long before it did.

This updated edition of Dr Patterson's 1965 book, with additional material by local railway historian Norman Johnston, provides an opportunity to retell the story of the crowds on Lammas Fair Days, a runaway train, snowbound carriages and the men who worked this 16-mile railway. New information and many additional photographs help to tell the story of what, despite its many trials and tribulations, became the last UTA-operated, passenger- carrying narrow gauge route.

A description of what remains of the railway in 2006 provides a useful and interesting addition to the 1965 book; you'll be surprised what can still be seen, fifty-six years after closure.

The Author

Dr EM Patterson, BSc, MSc, DSc, MPhil, MRIA, FRSE was born at Bangor, Co Down, in 1920 and educated at Bangor Grammar School and The Queen’s University, Belfast. He was trained as a geologist but in 1941 he moved to Scotland to take up employment as a research chemist at ICI (Explosives) at Ardeer, Ayrshire. His interest in geology continued to flourish and in 1947 he moved to St Andrews University where he lectured in the Department of Geology and Mineralogy. In 1953 he married Violet Kirk (neé Adams), a Queen’s graduate, and returned to ICI at Ardeer the following year, working there until his retirement in 1981. In Ireland his focus of interest was the railways in the north of the island. He wrote nine books, covering seven of the narrow gauge lines (two in his book The Ballymena Lines), as well as The Great Northern Railway of Ireland and The Belfast and County Down Railway (two books). An updated edition of The Clogher Valley Railway, with additional text, was published by Colourpoint Books in 2004. His last book was The Castlederg and Victoria Bridge Tramway (Colourpoint 1998), published just after his death. The posthumous award of MPhil in 1997 by The Queen’s University was for his work on the industrial archaeology of gunpowder manufacture.

 ©2008 Colourpoint Books