GONE BUT FAR FROM FORGOTTEN
Thursday, December 31, 1959, has lived for a long time in the hearts and minds of the people of Stranorlar, for at 8.21pm, the last passenger train to run over the once extensive County Donegal Railways (CDR) 3ft gauge empire drew to halt in Stranorlar station.
Local people gathered at the station, mourning the passing of a unique and characterful railway that they had loved dearly.
At the train’s head, was 2-6-4T, No. 5 D r umboe, and the arrival of that packed special from Strabane ended 96 years of local railway history. The following day, the CDR started to run its buses and lorries over its former railway routes from Strabane to Letterkenny, Stranorlar, Donegal, Killybegs and Ballyshannon. The railway era was over and no one expected a CDR train to run again in Donegal.
Personal recollections
As a boy, I had travelled from Ballyshannon to Rossnowlagh by railcar in the summer of 1959. The roar and swaying of Gardner-engined No. 18, the clank of its coupling rods, its bus seats, its friendly crew and the rural railway made a deep and lasting impression.
The CDR was something of a legend in our Donegal exile home in Glasgow, for both of my parents had travelled on the line in their own childhood and youth. My father, in particular, would tell the story of racing the train, about 1923, down through the scenic Barnesmore Gap on his bike as he cycled from Derry to Bundoran on holiday, and he would talk of seeing the little black engine pulling its coaches and wagons, slowly across the main road level crossing at Lough Eske station.
“I was always angry as it held me up at the crossing gates, and so the train beat me as it clanked past,” he would recall.
Many of our neighbours had made their last trip on Donegal soil via the CDR to reach the Derry Boat to come to Glasgow, so the railway was well known throughout our community and many people tuned in on their then-new TVs, when BBC broadcast Pat Whitehouse’s Railway Roundabout, shot in 1958, featuring the CDR. I was amazed, as an eight-year-old, to see the railway in action on our screen in
