History of Public Transport In Donegal. (BY C. A. C'ELKIN). For some years bade the sys• tern of public t1·ansport in Ireland has been · witnessing a revolution. T·he years· since the end of World War 11 have brought radical changes, nowhere more noticeable than in Donegal, where this revolution has already deprived the county of more than half of its railway system and threatens complete extinction in the 1!Vurse of another decade. A vast area of the · county fonnerly served hy the Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway is n<>w totaih- dependent on road trans11o::t·,'· the last section of this line, tl~at _.::xtending from Derry City to B1·idgeend having been closed this year by ·an Order of tlle Government in Belfast. It would be inappropriate in a wod~ of this kind to pass comment on the changes that have come, and. are coming. The purpose of this article · is to give what must necessarily be but a mere outline: .of the history of the county's transport undertakings fr;om the first hal! of the nineteenth 'century when the railway e:-a · was introduced with · the incorporation of the Londonderry & Loul{h Swilly Company. This d·evelopmcnt was brnught a.bout by a special Act of Parliament in 1853. The company at the date of 1ncorporation .found that they were unable to carry out t.tie original project in the stipulated time and. it was ten years later before the railway was actually in service. The system had its origin 'in an eigl:t mile line between Derry City and a place known as Farland Point at the Southern end of ~ugh Swilly, which was opened on Deqeinter 3lst.. 1863, on the Irish standard guage of 5 feet 3 )ns. An· account of the event at the time says that tlie incorporation of the company was promolL>d hy a group of businessmen mostly from Great Britain. ~fr. James Whyte, the .f'rusent popular and efficiQnt manager and secretary of the Company, who has very successfuHy carried through the transition from rail to road. has furnished us with a very inter-esting account of the development of the project. T-his tells us that o;!e of the promoters of the Corn~_~y was Thomas Brassey fto'frl LOndon, a leading public works ·contractor of his day, and father of the first Earl Brassey. M·r. Btn11sey hed
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