Episode 2 Walk the Line

For me, trains are about getting from A to B,

but there are people of all ages who love the romance

of the golden age of the railway.

When the first train left Belfast for Lisburn in 1839,

it changed our lives forever.

Fast, dangerous and exciting,

the railways sped up the pace of industry,

commerce, and communication.

At one time, almost everyone in the country

lived within five miles of a station.

People who'd never been out of their home town, or village,

could take a trip to the city

or spend the day at the seaside.

I'm much too young to remember all that,

but I've spoken to people up and down the country

who can't understand

why most of our railway network

was abandoned almost 50 years ago.

I want to find out what the attraction is,

to see if there's any trace left of these old lines.

Any hidden history to be found

in some of the places they passed through.

And that brings us to tomorrow,

temperatures will rise to about 18 or 19 degrees for many of us.

Then as we look ahead to the rest of the week and into the weekend,

plenty more dry weather to come.

Well, there you are, that was the weather.

Not looking too bad at all -

perfect for getting away from the weather desk for a few days

to walk the line.

The first railway in Ireland was opened to the public

on December 17th, 1834,

and comprised a six-mile-long section of track

linking Dublin with Dun Laoghaire,

or Kingstown, as it was known then.

The next line to be built

was a seven-mile track

between Belfast and Lisburn in 1839 -

and this was extended to Portadown in 1841.

This train, run by the Railway Preservation Society,

is going all the way to Dublin today.

I'm only going a few stops down the line.

Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to it.

There's something exciting about the sight of a steam engine

blowing as it lets off steam.

This is the way to travel.

Civilised.

At one point, you could have journeyed full circle

around Lough Neagh.

Today, my challenge is to retrace that route.

Bordering five of Northern Ireland's six counties,

my walk around Lough Neagh will take me through unspoiled scenery

and secluded countryside.

I'll follow the once-bustling railway routes

through Vernersbridge up to Cookstown and over to Crumlin.

My first stop today is Portadown

where I'm going to meet former railway employee,

photographer, raconteur and railway enthusiast,

Fred Cooper.

Now in his eighties, Fred is still

a familiar sight on the roads.

He's spent a lifetime chasing trains

and capturing the glorious age of steam on cinefilm.

Fred travelled by motorbike

the length and breadth of the land,

sometimes 500 miles in a weekend,

just to get the right shot.

Thankfully for us, Fred did have the foresight

to film trains like this

before they disappeared forever.

I'm honoured, today, to be invited into Fred's shed,

which is a workshop, museum,

private cinema and treasure trove of movie magic.

You have thousands of hours' worth of material.

What made you want to go out and make films about the old railways?

As a young lad, there, I used to...

..sit and watch the trains go past up at a place, in Portadown here,

called Junction Row.

I just sat there for hours

and my maw always knew where I was.

She used to come up and I'd been sitting on top of the railway pylons

watching the trains up and down the Dublin line.

It was great.

I never lost the love of the old steam trains.

And when Fred grew up, he bought a camera.

All the better to watch, and film,

those steam trains go by.

Apart from filming the children growing up,

I was walking on the railway

and I used to bring the movie camera down into the works

and the boys that I was walking with would say,

"Sure, Cooper, we know you've no film in the camera."

They just acted naturally

and I was filming away at them -

and this is how I got the movies of them.

And as well as the railways, you were also into your motorbikes.

Yes. I had that BSZ 250 motorcycle.

That was a great wee bike.

And I would have chased the steam trains here, there and everywhere.

You had your bike and your camera

and, some days, you would have travelled hundreds of miles

just to get some footage.

Actually, if there was going to be a certain run of trains out,

the week before, I used to do a dummy run.

I would go round where I knew the train was going to be going,

the different locations,

so as I would have knew the following week what roads to go up.

It's no use on the day of the tour saying,

"Oh, it's at this road or that road,"

because the steam train's still moving on

and, if you can't catch it again, that's just too bad.

Was it difficult keeping up with the train?

You would have slid yourself back slightly

on the dual seat of the bike,

and, streamlined, you got 3-4mph quicker

if you were lying down on it

than if you were sitting up where you were touching all the wind.

Some people may have thought you were a bit of a mug

going out and filming in all sorts of weather

but you have the last laugh,

you've got all of this material.

Some of the boys in the movie club and stuff would have said to you,

"What are you filming them old steam trains for?

"Sure, nobody wants to see them."

I said, "Aye, maybe they don't want to see them but I want to see them

"and my young lads will want to see them again."

And I said, "That's why I'm taking these steam trains."

I've had a great time over the last 50 years

going out here and there on the motorcycle

and filming these steam trains

and I would do it all again

if I was younger,

but I've enjoyed it very, very much.

I could spend hours chatting with Fred

but there's walking to be done

and a challenge to be met.

And, as I leave Portadown, I'm heading to another railway line,

but this time it wasn't for passengers.

This is Peatlands Park,

part of the once-beautiful estate of the Verner family.

There is no sign of the family mansion known as Churchill,

but what people might remember is the little three-foot gauge railway

that once crossed the Portadown-Dungannon road.

It also went below the M1 motorway in a special little tunnel,

transporting freshly cut turf.

TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

There's now a similar sized railway and engine

that runs through the park.

It doesn't follow exactly the same route

but it does take you along some of the original railway

and there are places where the old track is still visible.

I travelled by steam train earlier

but the track I'm on now was designed for a diesel engine

and the reason... Well, look around.

A steam train gives off sparks

and could have easily have started a wildfire on the boglands.

A narrow-gauged line has been associated with this area since 1901

when the Irish Peat Development Company purchased the land.

Over eight miles of track was laid to transport cut turf

from bog to the processing plant near Maghery.

From there, it was shipped by barge along the Blackwater river

to Lough Neagh and then down the Lagan Canal and river to Belfast

and onto England.

Up to 300 people worked in these boglands,

cutting, footing and stacking the turf.

I'm back on track now

and heading to a station which also has connections with Peatlands Park.

The station house here at Verner's Bridge opened in 1862

and was named in honour of local landowner William Verner.

Now, he didn't want a standard station

so, at his request, Verner station

was built to match his own house, Churchill,

hence some of the unusual architecture.

And, along with the station house,

the goods shed survives too,

gentle reminders of a bygone era.

There was once a massive bridge over the River Blackwater

with the trains carrying passengers from Belfast through Portadown

to places like Dungannon, Omagh, Strabane and Derry.

Today, only the stanchions remain.

There's something almost regal about these columns.

They remain steadfast on the riverbed.

I can still just about make out the railway track

as I follow its route through the barley field.

I'm walking alongside the old railway track

which takes me to my next stop, Trew and Moy.

It was important in the export of horses

from the famous Moy horse fair.

Moy, or, as it's known locally, the Moy,

is on the west bank of the River Blackwater.

The former station is now a mushroom distribution business

and the main building an office.

The station house is still a family home.

Kieren's father Kevin Hughes was stationmaster here in the '50s

and he feels it's important to keep not only family

but railway memories alive.

We've great childhood memories of the railway.

We played here on the lines and the tracks watching out for the trains.

In the early days, it was all steam engines.

So, this is your railway collection.

What exactly do we have here?

This was the money bowl, and it's for all the loose change.

There were three of them in a drawer

which was in the office just here behind us.

This is the original ticket hatch from 1857. We've kept it the same.

All the passengers would have come here and got their tickets

-and then...

-Yeah. All the passengers had to get a ticket for the platform.

The ticket was something like this.

And how much would that have cost?

Maybe from 9p 6d to half a crown.

And you've got a few old coins with you?

We have a few here, yes.

We have a halfpenny.

And we have a penny.

And we used to put the halfpennies on the line

to try and make pennies

but, most of the time, we ended up like this.

It's just really flat.

I'm assuming that you weren't able to spend this anywhere.

No, it was a business idea that just didn't work, but we're still trying!

At least you tried.

And a few other things here. This is the staff.

I'm presuming, for health and safety.

The staff and the tablet always meant that, whenever a train came through,

this here's from Annaghmore, to Trew and Moy

so, when a train was leaving Annaghmore, it had to have a tablet

and that ensured that, from Annaghmore to here,

the line was clear.

When it came to Trew and Moy, it had to leave the tablet,

pick up a staff

and that meant that the line was clear from here to Dungannon,

but there always has to be one or the other.

Do you remember when it closed and what it was like then?

Yeah, it closed on a Sunday night

and a lot of people were here

and the bangers on the track,

the last train to leave here to go towards Dungannon,

it was a very sad day.

It's important to keep it the way it was for the children, really.

This was a railway station and the significance it had at the time...

This station is two miles outside Moy village at Trew,

hence the name.

Former head teacher Jim Donaghy is on hand to give me a history lesson.

So this was the original?

This was the original shelter but it was on the platform.

That's for trains going towards Portadown and Belfast.

And people would have sheltered there on a cold winter's night.

They bought their tickets in the main building,

crossed by the footbridge which was up here

and then the shelters until the train arrived.

This was the original station here at Moy.

This was the original station at Moy

as built by the Portadown, Dungannon and Omagh Junction Railway

but, as you may have noticed,

it was changed to Trew and Moy.

I was just about to ask why Trew and Moy.

Well, the reason was because, you know, the station was built

to serve the Moy fair

and there would have been lots of people coming

from all over England, from Europe,

to buy horses for the various armies,

but this particular day when a dealer arrived at the station

and he come out through the door and he said,

"It's a very small village, Moy. I don't see any houses."

It was explained to him that Moy was about five miles away.

He said, "Hold on, I bought a ticket to Moy,

"not to this wee place in the country."

So he threatened to bring the railway company to court

but the company changed the station to "Trew and Moy".

The railwaymen themselves, drivers, firemen,

refer to the Moy station.

It was never Trew and Moy.

And we had some interesting shipments

that travelled here from Moy all the way to England.

During the war, they had rationing in England

so there was very little food,

and I found in his book here a record

of dead rabbits being sent from Trew and Moy

from a firm called Dobson Brothers in Moy.

And here it says "two crates of dead rabbits".

Two crates of dead rabbits, yes. And they're going all the way,

as you see there, to Harper and Co. in Farringdon Street in London.

In those days, there were no fridges.

I wouldn't have liked to have been eating the rabbits.

I'm branching off here at Dungannon

and travelling northwards through Coalisland and Stewartstown

towards Cookstown.

It's not difficult to appreciate the transforming effect of the railway

on these small rural communities.

Through a chain of small villages and towns,

Verner's Bridge, Moy, Coalisland, Cookstown,

working life and leisure were bound

by the precise regularity of the train timetable.

Cookstown railway station opened in 1879 and closed in 1956.

In 2003, it was bought by Cookstown Hockey Club

who have done a great job renovating

and retaining some of the original features,

and it's here I'm meeting a man

who's doing his bit to keep railway history alive.

James Swan has always loved history.

His grandfather was a driver for Belfast city centre trams.

He used to show James his badges and tickets and that stayed with James,

so, when he came across old train tickets at a car-boot sale,

he couldn't let these little pieces of history go to waste.

Ever since I can remember, my grandfather has always driven

for some kind of transport.

Back in the early... Must've been '50s,

I remember him driving for the Belfast City Tramways.

I suppose that's always stuck with me.

I was actually at a car-boot sale one day,

I'd come across a few of these tickets.

I got chatting to the guy and I said, "These would be lovely framed up."

He put me in touch with a few friends of his.

It turned out I was in possession of up to 10,000 of these tickets

and I just thought, "You know what? These would make great gifts."

And you have some unusual tickets here.

Having a look at this one, it actually says it's for a dog,

so you used to have to have a ticket to bring your dog on the train.

Yes, basically, back in the day, you had to have a ticket with your dog.

You couldn't just bring your dog onto the train.

It had to be paid for as well.

And it wasn't only your dog.

You actually had to have one for a bicycle.

A bicycle as well, yeah.

It was a very expensive morning if you were heading out for the day

and you had a dog and a bicycle.

You know, you had to pay a fortune back then,

but, unfortunately, nowadays, you know, you can't bring your dog on,

-which is a shame.

-Have you had any unusual or quirky requests?

It was for a father who retired from his job after 40, 50 years

and his wife commissioned me to put together an eight-ticket frame.

He lived in Portadown and he worked in Carrickfergus

and I was able to put together the frame for him,

from Portadown to Carrickfergus.

So something a bit personal like that, it's a nice touch to it

and it's something he'll remember.

It's all about the romance of these tickets

because, nowadays, you get one of these, a bit of paper,

and even on your mobile phone. You've lost all of that.

It's the beauty of back then, you know,

and the whole interaction thing

between the passenger and the ticket master.

Each ticket is individual.

It's stamped with a different colour

and it's a bit more sort of appealing, you know, I think.

It's a business but it is preserving some of our railway heritage.

Absolutely. I think it's upcycling as well.

You know, all these tickets should have been binned 50 years ago

and, luckily, they were kept.

My journey so far has been on the Great Northern line

but now I have to continue my lap of the Lough trip

and it will be the Northern Counties line that'll take me onwards.

The railway line at Castledawson ran over the Moyola River,

a 27-mile waterway

which cuts its course through the heart of mid-Ulster.

Toomebridge is a small village

on the northwest corner of Lough Neagh.

It's nice to enjoy the peace and tranquillity

and rest awhile on the banks of the Lower Bann river.

My journey takes me along the top of Lough Neagh now,

towards Randalstown.

The railway line built here between 1853 and 1860

incorporated a great feat of engineering -

the viaduct over the River Maine.

In 1995, a community group was set up in Randalstown, called Arches.

Their first project was renovating the viaduct.

The imposing Charles Lanyon structure was built in 1856

to extend the railway from Randalstown to Cookstown.

The original bridge has been replaced.

This new one opens up the viaduct and old railway line

to walkers and cyclists.

'George Graham is chairman of the Randalstown Arches Association.'

Well, it had lain idle for nearly 50 years and it was an eyesore,

there was antisocial behaviour taking place, and Lanyon made such

a wonderful job of that building there, we just wanted to preserve it.

It took us about six months.

And what state was it in before you started the work?

It was overgrown - brambles, thistles, just a mess.

We got it cleared and there's now a lovely footpath up there

and we put the bridge in and that became part of the Sustrans route.

How important was the railway for Randalstown?

Well, it was the main mode of transport.

When it was opened in 1856, the junction went through to Cookstown.

In 1864, Charles James Webb came to Randalstown,

and the River Maine and the railway line were instrumental

in him setting up his worldwide-famous business

in making linen.

He exported it all over the world.

-So it really helped the town flourish.

-Absolutely.

At one stage, there had been 1,500 people employed in the mill

and all the goods went out in an electric truck to the train station.

And how happy are you with the finished product of your work?

We're absolutely delighted.

It's been very rewarding to see the number of people that use it.

What different has it made to the town?

The community now uses the viaduct on a very regular basis,

people come and go to school,

and it's an integral part of our community

and tourists and visitors come from all over to see Randalstown viaduct.

Not only can they see it, they can now go up on the top and have a view

of Shane's Castle and the town, and it's a wonderful thing to have.

'I'm not alone in my quest to get people out and about.

'This is Andrew Grieve from the Regional Development Cycling Unit.'

This is literally recycling the old railway.

Why is this so important?

Well, it's important because if you put greenways,

walking, cycleways, on old railway bed you can actually get people

out and about, walking and cycling, and adopting a more active lifestyle,

A really important thing.

If you think about sort of a grand plan, Northern Ireland Greenways

have looked at all the dismantled railways.

It would be great to convert those all to greenways.

And you've literally got hundreds of miles to play with.

Aye, There's about 6-700 miles.

It's not all available. Roads have been built on some.

What we would like to develop is what you would call like a greenway spine.

And if you get a greenway spine built,

you have a long-distance route that covers Northern Ireland,

joins to the south and from that, then, you can spread out.

And doesn't just benefit locals because you're going to be able

-to market this around the world for tourists.

-That's exactly right.

The good thing about it is that it has an economic impact locally,

it's got social impacts as well, it helps people to mingle

and meet each other, and there's tourism as well, there's recreation.

It really gets people up and about and it gets people walking

and it gets people cycling.

And I suppose, to top it all off,

you're keeping the history of the railways alive at the same time.

If you can do greenways on the old railways,

you can actually protect the line of the railway.

And Randalstown, I suppose, is a prime example of that.

I think this Randalstown scheme really shows you what you can do.

You know, look at the width, look at the surface.

This is the kind of thing that we would like to roll out.

It's something that really is marketable and it something

that could make your journey to work a more pleasant experience.

From the viaduct, it's a short walk to my next stop, Shane's Castle,

set among 1,000 acres of woodland on the north-east shore of Lough Neagh.

The O'Neill family has a long association with Randalstown.

Miles of walling are a preparation for

the medieval entrance to the castle.

I'm here to meet Lord O'Neill,

president of the Railways Preservation Society of Ireland.

And inside these impressive gates, wow, it's a stunning location.

Acres of land in which to run your own personal railway,

which Lord O'Neill did until 1995.

But when did his love affair with trains begin?

Well, I was brought up in England and during the war

I occasionally had to spend the odd night in an Anderson shelter

on the edge of London

and the owner was a member of the Model Engineering Society

and when I went down for the night

he used to hand me a copy of the Model Engineers Society journal

and that really sort of set the scene, I think.

And you've really amassed quite a collection yourself.

Well, I've rather run out of space.

50-odd years ago, I became president of

the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland

and became heavily involved in that.

And then a few years after that,

we decided to try and create a tourist attraction here.

We set up the railway here in 1971

and it kept going for 24 years.

Not everyone who is a rail enthusiast gets to

build their own railway. What was it like?

Well, it took a bit of time to collect all the bits and pieces.

One of the locomotives came from Bord na Mona in the south,

and then we picked up bits and pieces here and there

but I think mostly people thought I was stark raving mad, really,

to do anything of the kind.

But I enjoyed it and we kept it going for 24 years,

and we had various other events attached to it.

What are your favourite memories of that time?

Well, I think probably the steam rallies

when we had a more intensive service running with both engines.

And then, of course, you had a lot of visiting engines,

fairground organs and all the rest of it.

So that was probably the peak of the year.

More recently, I reactivated my model railway,

really for my grandchildren,

however their interest is very limited

and they're more interested in looking at their tablets,

but it's mostly my contemporaries who come and have a look.

This model railway is great fun,

but it's back to the life-sized tracks for me now.

The next part of my journey

takes me close to a more modern form of transport.

The original line ran from Randalstown, through Antrim,

then Aldergrove and onwards to Crumlin.

This line takes me into Crumlin and the final part of my journey

takes me along the last railway line to close in Northern Ireland.

The Knockmore Line between Antrim and Lisburn hasn't seen

a regular service since 2003

but, unlike other lines I've walked on,

this hasn't been ripped up,

and Translink hasn't lost hope of a revival.

And it's easy to see why,

with the line being on the doorstep of Belfast International Airport.

Well, there you have it. I've managed a lap of the lough.

Next stop is Lisburn.

But I'm not walking the line, I'm getting a lift.

That's us, lads. Till next time, bye-bye.

HORN BEEPS