It was one of the loveliest journeys on the whole island. A series of carriages, some closed, some open in toast-rack style. And the scenery it clanked and sparked and screeched through was only wonderful: Dunluce Castle, in ruins of course, but stately ruins since that night hundreds of years ago when the dining room, and the guests with it, collapsed into the turbulent sea below. You progressed into the village of Bushmills and past the quiet little seaside resort of Portballintrae and across the river Bush, entering a couple of miles of sand dunes; and you still imagine that you heard the larks carolling even over the noise of the tram, which of course you couldn't. Then the pull up to the terminus and Kane's hotel.
A long time ago, but the Giant's Causeway Tram, driven by water power from the River Bush, does deserve immortality. The tramlines and overhead cables are gone, but a brave spirit, David Laing of Ballymoney, Co Antrim, has for years been working on a plan to revive the journey, or part of it, by putting a steam engine railway (from Shane's Castle) on the old tram route from Bushmills to the Causeway. Now, six years and four months after his decision to take on the project, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board has agreed to begin work on the scheme. Up to 40 people have been working on the project so far and with luck, by end of May or early June the train will run. A contractor is to work on car parks, engine and carriage sheds and the Causeway station. A bit of a surprise - the existing bridge over the Bush is being removed by army and RAF, using a Chinook, and may be gone by the time you read this. Its replacement will be put up by the army, under the guidance, a press release says, of Mabey Support Systems.
The new railway is funded by the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, the International Fund for Ireland and the Peace and Reconciliation Fund of the Department of Economic Development. One private donor supplied the funding to purchase the railway. The scheme has also received support, and promise of support, from several trusts. What a victory for the vision and persistence of David Laing of Ballymoney, a town that has given us several other good men: Armour, Robb. Laing is designated chief executive of Giant's Causeway and Bushmills Railway. The original tramway ran on electricity generated from the Bush river, by a most original man from Trinity College called Traill. He raised a monument which will not be forgotten.