Downpatrick and County Down Railway (DCDR) has celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its extension to Inch Abbey.

The proposal to extend the heritage railway was suggested by the Regeneration Committee formed by Down District Council around 1992.

The Railway was then known as the Downpatrick and Ardglass Railway, and consisted of just a short train ride to the Loop and Magnus’s.

Although it would have liked to extend across the River Quoile, this seemed impractical due to the size of the project.

However, the Regeneration Committee offered to secure funding for the project, which the Railway Board willingly accepted! The Inch Abbey parish and landowner John Kennedy both supported the extension.

One of the trickiest elements of the project was bridging the River Quoile.

The abutments from the original bridge were still in place, but the girders had been removed and had to be replaced. This and other work took several years, and the extension was eventually completed in 2004.

Once trains started running on the extension, DCDR’s passenger numbers soared after the line was extended to Inch.

The journey was double the length, and Inch Abbey felt like a “proper destination”. The railway describes the opening of the extension as “transformative”.

The Railway suffered serious flood damage last year, and recently welcomed Northern Ireland Infrastructure Minister John O’Dowd to witness its progress in repairing the damage.

“Looking back at 20 years since the extension to Inch Abbey was opened, it feels both like yesterday and an age ago. When I joined the DCDR in 1997, I didn’t fully grasp how expansive that time would be. We were already laying track past Magnus’s, with sleepers also set out all the way to the River Quoile. It truly felt like we were doing something unprecedented in Northern Ireland — reopening a closed railway (yes, I know, Great Victoria Street reopened in 1995, but still!).”

Robert Gardiner, Chairman DCDR