A new book by Glasgow-based transport journalist, Hugh Dougherty, will tell the story of the County Donegal Railway bus services which ran from 1960 to 1971.
Hugh has close family connections in Donegal and spent his summer holidays in Glenties and Ballykillowen, as a teenager in the 1960s.
He became fascinated by the railway buses, started photographing them and got to know the crews, such as the Lafferty brothers, Mickey and Collins, who had been railcar drivers before going on the buses, as well as conductor Michael Boyle and the last living CDR railcar driver Michael Gallen, who died in 2019.
Sixteen year-old Hugh with one of the CDR’s Leyland Tiger Cub buses at
Stranorlar Station yard in July 1967. Photo: the late Danny Boyle
“I was fascinated by the fact that the railway company was carrying on with its own buses and lorries, even though its trains had gone,” Hugh said.
“When I was 14 in 1965, I plucked up the courage to write to Mr Bernard Curran, the general manager in his magnificent station building offices at Stranorlar, to ask him about the new buses that the railway had bought from England.”
“I was amazed to receive a reply and was delighted with the information that this busy man had taken the time to send on to me.
“I was more amazed, the day after I received the letter, when a neighbour in Glasgow, a Mr McLean, who came from Ballybofey told my mother, that he’d heard from his niece, Maureen McGilloway, Mr Curran’s secretary that a wee lad from Glasgow had been writing to the company.
“Glasgow and Donegal are like, that very closely interlinked, and in the years to come, on my visits to the head office at Stranorlar, I got to know Maureen well, and, like Danny, she always had plenty of interesting information about the CDR for me.”
A CDR bus ready to leave Donegal Diamond for Killybegs in July 1967. Photo: Hugh
Dougherty
Hugh decided to write the book to bring the story of the CDR up to date, as its days on narrow gauge rails have been well documented.
The book, published by Stenlake Publishing, tells the story of the buses from the first service run by the railway in 1929, from Glenties Station to Rosbeg and Portnoo.
It covers the years when the company’s bus routes were operated on the CDR’s behalf by Great Northern Railway of Ireland, whose blue-and-cream Gardner buses were a familiar sight on county roads, and known as the Joint Omnibus Services, to the closing of the railway, and the replacement services with the CDR’s own buses, as well as the joint routes, taken over from the GNR by CIE in 1958.
One of the first CDR buses which ran from Glenties Station to Portnoo, Maas
and Rosbeg between 1930 and 1933. Photo: Paul Savage Collection
He’s dedicated his new book to the late Danny Boyle, the last stationmaster at Glenties, and, when Hugh knew him, one of the clerks at Stranorlar CDR headquarters. Danny was one of the first people in Donegal to recognise that the county’s railway heritage was disappearing, and made the company archives available to Hugh, as well as teaching him
everything he knew about CDR trains and buses.
The crest of the County Donegal Railways Joint Committee, carried on
steam engines, railcars, carriages and buses. Photo: Hugh Dougherty
On Saturday 12th August at 1.30 pm, as part of National Heritage Week, Hugh will be giving a talk about the CDR buses and his book at Donegal Railway Heritage Centre in Donegal Town. Royalties from the book are being donated to the centre to help it in its work of preserving Donegal railway artefacts.
County Donegal Railways Bus Services by Hugh Dougherty is available from Stenlake Publishing Limited at £12.95 www.stenlake.co.uk from Donegal Railway Heritage Centre, www.donegalrailway.com and bookshops.
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