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The Downpatrick & County Down Railway is a heritage railway in County Down, Northern Ireland. The project is based at Downpatrick, on part of the former route of the Belfast & County Down Railway. The railway, which has a triangular layout, connects two local tourist attractions, Inch Abbey to the north, and a locally famous Viking site ('King Magnus' Grave') to the south, and will eventually reach an 18th-century corn mill to the south near Ballydugan. ==History== Local architect Gerry Cochrane M.B.E. was inspired to start the scheme after taking a walk along the route of the line, and by 1982 had gained support to rebuild part of the line as a heritage steam railway from the local council. Lord Dunleath, whose father had purchased the railway trackbed adjacent to his estate after the closure of the B&CDR in Downpatrick, gave the newly formed society a package of land on which to build the line and station for a peppercorn rent. This was on the approaches to the old Downpatrick station, which had been demolished in the 1970s. Work started on rebuilding the railway in 1985, with public trains finally running in the town again in December 1987,〔 making it the first Irish gauge heritage railway in Ireland to carry passengers over its own track. Track has been relaid on nearly 6 km (4 mi) of Belfast and County Down Railway trackbed, and a 1.6 km (1 mi) extension south to the hamlet of Ballydugan has been proposed. The railway began life as the Downpatrick & Ardglass Railway, as the original intention was to extend the railway to this fishing port on the south coast of County Down. This name was dropped in 1996 following the abandonment of this proposal and the railway was renamed the Downpatrick Railway Museum until 2005 when the new name, Downpatrick & County Down Railway was adopted following the opening of the Inch Abbey extension.〔 The Downpatrick & County Down Railway was the subject of a BBC1 Northern Ireland 40-minute documentary, "Raising Steam", which was broadcast on Monday 14 January 2008.〔(''Raising Steam''. )〕 It has also appeared in numerous other TV productions by BBC, UTV, RTÉ and independent programme makers, and most recently as a location for the James Gray directed film, the ''The Lost City of Z''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Downpatrick and County Down Railway」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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