On Saturday, 10th May, the Downpatrick and County Down Railway in Northern Ireland became a pioneer in railway preservation anywhere in Ireland when it successfully operated an authentic ballast train.

The train was used to drop ballast on a siding known as the Cathedral Siding in Downpatrick station. Last Saturday’s ballast train comprised two Irish Rail hoppers and a plough van hauled by GM loco No. 146.

Although considerably shorter than a mainline ballast train, the truncated version still provided a genuine combination for this type of work.

When the siding was originally laid, it was never properly ballasted. The railway decided to rectify this by carrying out a major ballast drop, which could have been achieved using a road-rail dumper and plenty of manual labour, but that would have taken many return journeys to load and unload the dumper.

Instead, it was decided to emulate mainline practice by using Irish Rail hoppers and a plough van.

Ballasting the siding was a perfect trial, but because of the short length of the siding, it was decided to use just two hoppers, with two passes of the train dropping around 40 tonnes of ballast.

During the next few weeks, the track in the siding will be jacked and packed, which will probably result in the need to add more ballast to top it up.

In 2023, the station and yard at Downpatrick suffered devastating floods in storms, and was unable to resume operations until October 2024.

In March this year, volunteers laid a new siding in the yard at Downpatrick, which was the first new track on the railway since 2012.