Antrim railway station

Antrim
Location	Antrim Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
Coordinates	54°43′06″N 6°12′41″W / 54.7182°N 6.2115°WCoordinates: 54°43′06″N 6°12′41″W / 54.7182°N 6.2115°W
Owned by	NI Railways
Operated by	NI Railways
Platforms	3
Construction
Structure type	At-grade
Key dates
11 April 1848	Station opens
1871	Station renamed Antrim Junction
by July 1922	Renamed Antrim
1965	Goods traffic ceased
2008	Refurbished
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Antrim railway station serves Antrim in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

The station currently serves trains on the Belfast to Derry line via Bleach Green and Yorkgate station. Until 2003, Belfast-Derry trains reached here by means of the Lisburn-Antrim railway line, however this line was mothballed after re-opening of the Bleach Green line. The possibility of reopening it as a circular route, with a halt at Aldergrove for Belfast International Airport has been discussed. The station is currently undergoing a major refurbishment to become an integrated bus and rail hub.

History

Antrim station was opened by the Belfast and Ballymena Railway on 11 April 1848.^[1] It was originally operated by the Midland Railway Northern Counties Committee. They provided sidings on the up side of the station, serving the Showgrounds. These sidings also contained a goods store, stabling block, stationmaster's house, office and weighbridge.

The station buildings at Antrim were rebuilt in 1901-1902 to designs by the architect Berkeley Deane Wise. It was built in a red-brick, mock-Tudor design. The footbridge was built by Walter MacFarlane's Saracen Foundry in Glasgow.^[2]

The main station buildings were on the down platform, and the signal box was at the Belfast end of the same platform. There was a bay at the back of the down line platform for branch line trains, and also on this side of the main line were the locomotive sheds, turntable, goods store, and sidings.

The station was run by the Ulster Transport Authority from 1948 to 1968, then part of Northern Ireland Railways. Since 1996 the station has been part of Translink.

The station itself used to also have a Station Masters House and Goods Yards. The last known Station Master of Antrim Railway Station (Antrim Junction) was a Mr Cupples. At its peak Antrim Railway Station was an important station linking many core routes now removed via its station.

Service

On Mondays to Saturdays, there is an hourly service to Great Victoria Street. In the other direction, trains alternate every hour between a service to Londonderry Waterside, and a service to Coleraine or Portrush.

Only seven trains run each way on Sundays on a two-hourly basis. All services are between Londonderry Waterside and Great Victoria Street, except for the last outbound train of the evening, which terminates at Coleraine.

See also

• Antrim railway station (Great Northern Railway)

References

1. "Antrim" (PDF). Railscot - Irish Railways. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 September 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-27.
2. The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland. William Alan McCutcheon, Northern Ireland. Department of the Environment. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1984

• Butt, R. V. J. (1995). The Directory of Railway Stations: details every public and private passenger station, halt, platform and stopping place, past and present (1st ed.). Sparkford: Patrick Stephens Ltd. ISBN 1-8526-0508-1. OCLC 60251199.
• Jowett, Alan (2000). Jowett's Nationalised Railway Atlas (1st ed.). Penryn, Cornwall: Atlantic Transport Publishers. ISBN 0-9068-9999-0. OCLC 228266687.