Whitehead railway station serves
Whitehead in
County Antrim
County Antrim (named after the town of Antrim, ) is one of six counties of Northern Ireland and one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the county covers an area of and has a population o ...
, Northern Ireland.
![NIR 8068 at Whitehead](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/NIR_8068_at_Whitehead.jpg)
The station has two platforms with a waiting room on each and the station is signalled in both directions and remains staffed during commuter hours by a Senior Porter, a fully trained
signalman, capable of fixing points and signalling issues when they arise.
Previously the line was double towards Belfast and Whitehead was where the track narrowed to the
single track
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section to Larne. However, in the 1990s the up line was removed from here to Kilroot due to safety reasons, leaving the line Whitehead station as a passing loop.
Whitehead actually comprises two stations, due to its history as a railway excursion town. The through station is still part of the Northern Ireland Railways network, whilst the terminus Whitehead Excursion Station is the headquarters of the
Railway Preservation Society of Ireland
The Railway Preservation Society of Ireland (RPSI) is an Irish railway preservation group operating throughout Ireland, founded in 1964. Mainline steam train railtours are operated from Dublin and Belfast, but occasionally from other locatio ...
.
Whitehead station was originally opened on 1 May 1863 and the Whitehead Excursion Platform was opened on 10 July 1907. The present station was opened in 1877 and is the third station to serve the town. It has been modernised, but unlike many stations on the NIR network still retains much of its Victorian character.
Service
On Mondays to Fridays, there is a half-hourly service from . These trains alternate every half an hour between terminating here at Whitehead, and continuing on to . In the other direction, there is a half-hourly service to , with the trains alternating between being through services from Larne, or starting at Whitehead.
On Saturdays, the service still runs half-hourly in the same alternating manner, but with less peak trains.
On Sundays, the service reduces to hourly operation in each direction. Services alternate each hour between terminating here, and continuing on to .
Incidents
On 26 September 2008, part of the platform collapsed, blocking the Larne bound line. It is not clear whether this was a result of the recent construction work which had been carried out at this station,.
according to
NI Railways
NI Railways, also known as Northern Ireland Railways (NIR) ( ga, 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 (Northern Ire ...
nobody was hurt in the incident.
References
{{UK railway stations
Railway stations in County Antrim
Railway stations opened in 1863
Railway stations served by NI Railways