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The Enniskillen and Bundoran Railway (E&BR) was an Irish gauge railway company in north-west Ireland. It linked Bundoran and Ballyshannon on the Atlantic coast of Donegal with the Londonderry and Enniskillen Railway (L&ER) at in Fermanagh. The line was opened in 1868 and closed in 1957. ==Development== In 1862 the UK Parliament passed an Act authorising a railway to link the L&ER near Enniskillen with the Midland Great Western Railway (MGW) at . Construction began in 1866 and the section between Bundoran Junction and Bundoran opened in 1868.〔Hajducki, 1974, maps 6, 7〕 The Irish North Western Railway (INW), which since 1866 had worked the L&ER, also provided the train service on the E&BR. The journey between Bundoran and Enniskillen was about . Bundoran Junction was triangular, giving the branch access northwards to and Derry as well as southwards to and Dundalk. The E&BR renamed itself the Enniskillen, Bundoran and Sligo Railway in anticipation of its extension to Sligo. This would have given stations on the E&BR a direct main line link with Dublin ''via'' the MGW instead of the INW’s indirect and rather meandering route to Dundalk where it connected with the Dublin and Drogheda Railway’s main line to the city. A direct link to Sligo would have benefitted not only Bundoran and Ballyshannon but also the considerable pilgrim traffic to , the nearest station for St Patrick's Purgatory on Lough Derg. It would also have enabled the E&BR to carry substantial cattle traffic from the west of Ireland to the north-east, both for domestic consumption in and around Belfast and for export to Scotland and England. However, construction of the section from Bundoran to Sligo was delayed, and in 1875 Parliament authorised a rival project, the Sligo, Leitrim and Northern Counties Railway (SL&NCR), which took an inland route from Enniskillen ''via'' Manorhamilton to Collooney Junction on the MGWR line about south of Sligo. In 1878 the E&BR obtained an Act allowing it to abandon its extension to Sligo, and the SL&NCR opened in phases between 1879 and 1883. The SL&NCR adopted as its company seal a picture of two steam locomotives colliding, with one derailed and the other remaining on the track. This commemorated the SL&NCR's success in reaching Sligo and the E&BR's failure to do the same. The SL&NCR route attracted the cattle traffic to the east coast but it was too circuitous to carry much of the passenger traffic to Bundoran, Ballyshannon or Lough Derg. This was to the permanent disadvantage of both the SL&NCR and the E&BR. 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「Enniskillen and Bundoran Railway」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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