REVIEWS
Title: County Donegal Railways Bus Services
Author: Hugh Dougherty
Publisher: Stenlake Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-84033-954-3
Specification: 175mm x 240mm,48pp, softback
Price: £12.95
The County Donegal Railways Joint Committee (CDR) was a curious structure, owned jointly by the Midland Railway (later the London Midland & Scottish) and the Great Northern Railway of Ireland. By 1958, those shareholdings had passed to the state-owned railways of the two islands, British Railways (specifically its London Midland Region) and Coras Iompair Éireann.
It was a cross-border operation, but only just, with a short section of its 3ft gauge network extending into Co. Tyrone — one of the six counties of Northern Ireland — from the border town of Lifford to Strabane. All else was in Co. Donegal, served postwar on a hail-&-ride basis by bus-like articulated diesel railcars. The reach of the railway contracted in the 1930s, with the Great Northern providing replacement bus services that were integrated with the CDR’s remaining trains.
