The Northern Counties Railway, Volume 2: 1903-1972.
Author: CURRIE, J. R. L.
Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1974. 248 pages. Illustrated. Hardback.
“This, the second volume of three devoted to the history of the Northern Counties Railway, continues the story of this Irish railway from the time it was acquired by one of the most important British companies, the Midland Railway, in 1903, which ran the line through its Northern Counties Committee. After the first world war the line came under the control of the LMS following the grouping of the British railway companies in 1923, until nationalisation both in Britain and Northern Ireland in 1948/9.
This was the period which saw the heyday and the start of the decline, the thriving and fairly profitable system inherited by the Midland at the turn of the century, and through the following years until expanding road services in the 1920s and 1930s began to eat into the NCC’s traffic. Yet the LMS fought back with new works programmes and the stability of an English based company which gave the NCC advantages over other Irish railways. In the second world war much of the battle of the Atlantic was fought by ships based at Londonderry to which point the NCC carried heavy traffic in men and materials.
Since then the NCC system has come under the local control first of the Ulster Transport Authority and more recently of Northern Ireland Railways and has suffered like the majority of Irish lines by extensive closures during the last 25 years, to an extent that today little more is left than the main lines from Belfast to Londonderry and Belfast to Larne.”
ISBN: 0715365304