Armagh railway reopening - is Danny Kennedy having a laugh?

This chestnut comes out all the time in the Wee Country and is scoffed at by anybody with an ounce of know how about preserved railways. The first I heard of some such scheme was in 1993 and was to be build to Stephenson Gauge

In Portadown and Armagh the trackbed is totally built over with houses and roads (Notably the A 3 in Portadown) so a completely new route would be needed approaching both towns. Add to this the approximately 30 new bridges required and as many farms, homes and businesses who would either need new buildings or deviations to avoid same and it's apparent just how bird brained this is. The money would be better spent in curing the ingrown toenail if you ask me.

It's an interesting question as to whether these feasibility studies will be serious exercises. I've been watching the process with interest.

Portadown-Armagh wasn't an option that the DRD were interested in explored when the consultation came out first but the groundswell of support from respondents forced them to do so. I disagree with Losty about the feasibility of the project. It caters for one of the largest NI settlements without rail transport and would be a sensible extension of the Portadown-Belfast commuter route. It may be a relatively simple project if an alignment can be found out of Portadown - the A3 has taken up the original alignment there. Apart from that, the main obstacles appear to be farm sheds. The bridges may be gone but most of the cutting along the route remains.

Portadown-Dungannon featured in the DRD consultation with a typically inflated construction cost estimate. It's part of the old Derry Road which was shut in dubious circumstances in 1965. I get the impression that the DRD aren't so keen on this one as it could represent the first step of potential extensions to Enniskillen or Omagh, diverting money from their precious roads. In terms of alignment, it's a nasty one - it is fairly clear that the Unionist government wanted to rule out any possibility of anyone reopening the line: roads and houses are on the route while most of the earthworks and cuttings have been destroyed. Getting out of Portadown will be a challenge. On the positive side, the UTA didn't bother to destroy the river bridge abutments so that might give the project a head start.Again though, a reinstated line would serve one of the largest non-rail connected towns in NI.

Antrim - Castledawson was a new one to me. It wasn't in the consultation documents and it smacks of parish pump politics. Unlike the other options, it doesn't terminate in a major population centre - Castledawson is a small town of around 3,000 people. This is strange as extending it slightly to Magherafelt would mean that it terminated in some place with a more respectable level of population. My own horrible suspicion is that Castledawson's status as a Unionist stronghold might have influenced the decision-making process. The alignment is somewhere between the other two routes in terms of condition - some of it is in reasonable nick but some is more or less obliterated. It looks like obtaining an acceptable connection to the Antrim-Ballymena line will be a challenge given the amount of property over the old connection between the two alignments. Toome also looks like a tough place to navigate - the old alignment basically now runs through one of the main roads in the town!

My final thoughts are that was can probably assess how genuine the exercise is based upon (a) the costing matrix and (b) the assessment of the Dungannon line [the one with the largest non-Unionist benefit] versus the others.