Has the Northern Ireland rail network been cut by some 450 miles since the 1950s?

• There’s no one authoritative source of the changing size of the railway network.
• The DUP’s claim seems to rely on the UK Government-commissioned Union Connectivity Review which may have depended on misinterpreted figure in newspaper articles.
• The network within what is now NI was around 754 miles long in 1920, and stands at 207 miles today (though not all is used regularly for passengers).
• Some sources suggest that the network had already reduced to 542 miles by 1950.
• Translink say a reduction of 450 miles is “a reasonable estimate based on the information available to them”.

UPDATE: This check was amended on 24 and 25 July 2024 to make clear that the nationalisation of NI rail lines was a gradual process that finished in the 1950s, and make some additions and edits elsewhere, including to the table showing line closures from 1950 onwards. The rating is unchanged.

In its manifesto for the 2024 Westminster election, the DUP claimed: “Since the 1950s, the Northern Ireland rail network has been cut by some 450 miles.”

Is this the case? According to the evidence – this is broadly accurate. 

FactCheckNI contacted the DUP to ask about the source of this claim. At the time of publishing, we had not received a response. 

However, this claim seems to reference a sentence from the Union Connectivity Review: “Since the 1950s, the Northern Ireland rail network has been cut from 754 to 297 miles”. That’s a reduction of approximately 450 miles.

The review cites its source for those figures as a January 2020 Belfast Live article on the 70th anniversary of the closure of a large part of the old Belfast and Co Down. The article claimed: “The 1950 closures were the first steps in a plan which was to see the reduction of the Northern Ireland’s railway network from 754 miles to 297 miles, a decrease of 61 per cent.” You can read very similar analysis in the News Letter and The Irish News.

The figures have subsequently been quoted in Northern Ireland Assembly debates.

• History of the rail network

Early examples of “public transport” in Ireland were the General Post Office mail coaches in the early 18th century, and the use of the canal network. The first railway line in Ireland followed over a century later, south of Dublin. Initially, railway lines were constructed and managed privately.

In what became Northern Ireland, three such lines were developed:

1. Belfast and Co Down Railway (entirely in Northern Ireland from 1922);
2. Belfast and Northern Counties (entirely in Northern Ireland); and
3. Great Northern Railway (roughly half of this ended up in Northern Ireland).

There were also tramways or light rail in Carrickfergus, Ballycastle, Newry, Castlederg, Clogher Valley, Portrush and Derry (across to Donegal). However, these all closed before or during the War and are irrelevant to this fact check’s claim which refers to “since the 1950s”. The only light rail system still in use in 1950 was that within the Belfast City limits, which closed during that decade.

After the Second World War, the private companies struggled financially and were nationalised on both sides of the border and “rationalisation followed” (particularly on cross-border routes).

• Rail network in Northern Ireland

Nationalisation of rail networks in Northern Ireland occurred at various stages in the middle of the 20th Century, involving administrative bodies like the Northern Ireland Road Transport Board (NIRTB).

The Ulster Transport Authority (UTA), the predecessor to Northern Ireland Railways (NIR) and ultimately Translink, was formed in 1948 following the merger of the NIRTB with the the Belfast and County Down Railway.

Railway nationalisation was completed throughout the 1950s. At this stage, in addition to the independent sections (often of light rail or tramway), numerous sections of heavy rail had already closed down (at least to passengers).

The length of the [heavy rail] network, according to Railway Magazine (May 1958, page 321), fell from 754 miles in 1920 to 542 miles in 1950 and 336 miles in 1957 (this latter dip was caused particularly by the instruction, upon nationalisation, to close lines west of the Bann except to Derry/Londonderry). Today, according to Translink’s 2025 Network Statement, that figure stands at 207 miles, which includes the Antrim to Knockmore line which is “not normally” used for passenger services (but is maintained for testing and for diversions).

• How many miles?

The veracity of the DUP manifesto claim (most likely based on how the Union Connectivity Review interpreted a widely shared statistic in January 2020) comes down to how long the rail network was in the 1950s.

The 754 mile figure can be traced back to the May 1958 edition of Railway Magazine, and refers to 1920. By 1950, the same article suggests the network had already shrunk to 542, reducing further to 336 miles by 1957.

However, the review’s interpretation of the wording of the Belfast Times article – “The 1950 closures were the first steps in a plan which was to see the reduction of the Northern Ireland’s railway network from 754 miles …” – seems to have assumed 754 refers to 1950. This looks like a mistake that has now been extensively quoted and relied upon.

Taking Railway Magazine as gospel, and 1950 as the starting point, the heavy rail network has been reduced from 542 miles to 207 miles, a difference of 335. So, not quite 450. 

However, analysis of individual line closures suggests that Railway Magazine’s figure of 542 miles could be the figure closer to the time of publication (1958 rather than truly 1950) – and, if we add on the 132 miles of closures that occurred in 1950 (see below) that suggests a total of 335 + 132 = 467 miles of closures since the beginning of 1950.

The DUP manifesto claim seems to be based on a figure from a report commissioned by the UK Government. However, that report takes for granted an unreliable or misinterpreted statement about the length of the railway network from newspapers. Without going back to source information, the mistake has not been noticed or corrected.

• It could be more complicated!

Despite relying on the wrong figure, the length of the railway network depends on how we define “cut”.

It is arguable that the actual railway network (i.e. the length of railway track) has been reduced by a lot more than either 335 or 467 miles since 1950, because some of the network no longer used for passengers remained in place. It was not until later in the 1950s or even the 1960s that sections of this track were actually removed.

And there’s also the question of whether we include light rail, since Belfast’s tramways could be included in the “cuts”.

There are also slightly varying sources for the length of the actual network. One book – Railways of the World, Hollingsworth, Brian (1984) – suggests that the length of the network in what is now Northern Ireland was once 900 miles, not 754, as quoted in Railway Magazine. However, that figure is likely to have included independent light-rail and tramway sections, all of which were closed before 1950, and therefore not relevant to this claim.

The most detailed evidence appears in this table, the data for which is sourced from Johnson’s Atlas & Gazetteer of the Railways of Ireland (Stephen Johnson, Midland Publishing, 1997) (for wider reference, we also used Irish Railways: Locomotives, Multiple Units and Trams [4th ed.], R. Pritchard) which lists sections of lines that were closed from 1950 onwards, opening and closure dates and mileages for all railway lines in Ireland.  Only the public network has been included, i.e.  lines over which passenger or goods trains operate, whether broad gauge or narrow gauge, and harbour lines have been excluded. Antrim-Lisburn has been included as it has no scheduled trains.

UPDATE: The previous version of this article showed a total of 517 miles – this included mileage to the first station over the border on cross-border lines.  The mileages used here are to the railway feature recorded by Stephen Johnson closest to the border, and are best estimates, culminating in the updated total of 486 miles.

This table shows the dates closed to all services, and not the dates the track was lifted.  It also excludes lines such as to Great Victoria Street/Grand Central and Central Junction-Ballymacarrett which closed during the period but later reopened.

132 miles were closed in the calendar year 1950. 517 miles in total by 2003.

It should be noted that the current figure of 207 miles includes some track that did not exist in the 1950s; and includes sections which were cut and then reopened. Therefore, it is not quite accurate to take one figure, subtract  it from another to calculate the “cut”.

• 450 miles?

While the DUP have not supplied their source, it seems likely that “450 miles” comes from the Union Connectivity Review. The review relied on a 1920 figure instead of a 1950 one to calculate the reduction in line length.

However, when considering other sources of line closures, and various ways of calculating what constitutes a cut, the figure of 450 miles does not seem totally unreasonable (and may be understated).

FactCheckNI contacted the Analysis, Statistics and Research Branch (ASRB) of NISRA, who provide statistical and research support to the Department for Infrastructure. They responded that Translink had responded to our query that the 450 miles claim was “…a reasonable estimate based on the information available to them”.

Based on this, we consider this claim to be broadly accurate.We welcome all additional information on our fact checks – so if you have additional detail and sources of information about this topic, please send it through to us here.