NI Railways

NI Railways

Class 3000 trains at Castlerock
Overview
Main region(s)	Northern Ireland
Fleet size	47
Stations called at	54
Parent company	NITHCo (Translink)
Dates of operation	1967–
Predecessor	Ulster Transport Authority
Technical
Track gauge	1,600 mm (5 ft 3 in) Irish gauge
Electrification	Unelectrified Network
Length	333 kilometres (207 mi)[1]
Operating speed	Max Speed: 90 miles per hour (140 km/h)
Other
Website	www.translink.co.uk
Route map

NI Railways, also known as Northern Ireland Railways (NIR; Irish: Iarnród Thuaisceart Éireann; and for a brief period Ulster Transport Railways; UTR), is the railway operator in Northern Ireland. NIR is a subsidiary of Translink, whose parent company is the Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company (NITHCo), and is one of eight publicly owned train operators in the United Kingdom, the others being Direct Rail Services, Northern Trains, Transport for Wales Rail, Southeastern, LNER, ScotRail, and TransPennine Express. It has a common Board of Management with the other two companies in the group, Ulsterbus and Metro (formerly Citybus).

The rail network in Northern Ireland is not part of the National Rail network of Great Britain, nor does it use Standard Gauge, instead using Irish Gauge in common with the Republic of Ireland. Also, NIR is the only commercial non-heritage passenger operator in the United Kingdom to operate a vertical integration model, with responsibility of all aspects of the network including running trains, maintaining rolling stock and infrastructure, and pricing. Since the Single European Railway Directive 2012, the company has allowed open access operations by other rail operators, although no operator has started such a service.^[2] In 2019, NI Railways carried over 15 million passengers.^[3]

NIR jointly runs the Enterprise train service between Belfast and Dublin with Iarnród Éireann. There is no link to the rail system in Great Britain; proposals have been made, but allowances would have to be made for the different rail gauge (standard gauge) in use in Britain and Ireland (Irish gauge).