Londonderry railway station

Londonderry Railway Station, known commonly as Waterside Railway Station, is a railway terminus in the city of Derry in Northern Ireland, on the east bank of the River Foyle. The station is also used by residents of the west of County Londonderry, much of west Tyrone and County Donegal. It is operated by Northern Ireland Railways. It serves the line to Belfast, whose other terminus is Great Victoria Street.

The original Londonderry Waterside Station was opened on 29 December 1852 by Steven Alfred John Campbell, a well-known banker of the time. It closed on 24 March 1980, but the station building remains intact. A new station of the same name replaced the larger terminus in 1980, after services were reduced and track layout was severely rationalised. Following these rationalisations, the line now consists of a single track with passing loops at Bellarena and Coleraine stations.

Prior to Derry becoming the inaugural UK City of Culture in 2013, the railway line was upgraded with relaid track, a track relay and sections of continuous welded rail

The station signs now read Londonderry, as the suffix Waterside became redundant upon closure of the city's two other railway termini. Despite the nameboard inscriptions, the destination signs on Northern Ireland Railways trains read Derry/Londonderry.

In 2010, the Minister for Regional Development, Conor Murphy, mooted the possibility of building a new railway station that would connect the railway with a planned foot and cycle bridge across the Foyle, bringing it closer to the centre of the city.

On 6 October 2016, Translink confirmed that the railway would be returning to the former BNCR Waterside station which will be used as a new transport hub for the city. As part of this work, platform 2 was taken out of use in September 2018 and the block section to Bellarena converted to One Train Working operation.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Londonderry railway station" and modified on 23 July 2019 under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.