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.
With losses mounting — the equivalent today of £460,000 in 1958 alone — its position seemed irredeemable, and the last trains ran on New Year’s Eve 1959. CIÉ by then had tak…
