The
Bessbrook & Newry Tramway
This
was the second narrow-gauge line in Ireland to be operated by hydro-electric
power, the Giant's Causeway Tramway being the first. It was built to
serve the Bessbrook Spinning Mills, acquired by the quaker Richardson
family in 1846 who also built housing, a church and an institute for
their workers nearby. The tramway connected the mills and settlement
at Bessbrook to Newry. Its primary purpose was to transport coal and
flax from the quayside at Newry to the mills and finished linen, damask,
towels and sheets from the mills to Newry for export.
Although originally intended to be steam worked, a hydro-electric generating station was built on the Bessbrook River at Millvale and a conductor rail of channel iron was laid in the centre of the track. At road crossings the conductor rail was replaced by an overhead power line and tramcars were equipped with a pantograph, originally rather crude, to pick up the current.
The
motor cars were all passenger vehicles and hauled either unpowered passenger
trailers or flangeless open freight wagons and vans as traffic required.
Passenger cars were bogey vehicles but trailers were both four-wheeled
and bogey stock. By 1947 there were eight return workings each weekday
but road competition from buses was drastically reducing the number
of passengers carried. When this was coupled with the considerable deterioration
of the track and tramcars caused by the heavy usage during the war,
the end was inevitable.
Tramcar no. 2 was saved after the closure and is now in the tramway gallery at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Cultra, Co. Down.
A
useful work, The Bessbrook and Newry Tramway, by A
T Newham, although a slim volume but illustrated, was published by the
Oakwood Press in 1979.