On other pages of this site can be found a history of railways in Great Britain and a detailed description of the complex structure of the railways in Great Britain today, together with extensive listings and links for many of the numerous companies involved. There are separate listings of station names with variants in local languages for Wales, Scotland and Cornwall.
The early history of railways in Northern Ireland is closely tied up with that of the Republic of Ireland. Main line railways are built to the Irish standard gauge of 5ft 3in (1600mm).
Unlike the railways of Great Britain, Northern Ireland Railways remain in state control. Infrastructure has not been separated from the operating company.
The island once had a rail line, initially standard gauge but later narrow (3 ft) gauge, running for 8½ miles between the capital, St Helier, and Corbière on the west coast of the island. The line closed in the 1930s, but was rebuilt using 60cm gauge material and much extended for military purposes during the German occupation of World War II. These lines were dismantled after the liberation. Several of the stations of the original line survive as public buildings, and sections of the trackbed are now footpaths. Some equipment from the original system has been preserved in a small museum.
Like Jersey, the island once had its own railways, but few traces remain today. The CIA World Factbook (and other reference works that use it as a source) lists an existing system for Guernsey, but this actually refers to the railway on Alderney, which is a dependency of Guernsey.
The island has a 2 mile long line built by the British Admiralty for harbour construction, now operating as a tourist railway. There is also a miniature railway at the line's Mannez Quarry station.
These have no railways.
There are no railways on the island today, but there was once a standard gauge railway (not narrow gauge as suggested by some sources) running for some 22 miles (35km) along the length of the island chain from Somerset to St George. Much of the trackbed is now in use as a walkway. There was also an 18 inch (457mm) gauge private railway, connecting the Astor family's estate at Ferry Reach to their own station on the Bermuda Railway.
(Also known by the Spanish name of Islas Malvinas)
In 1915, a new radio transmitter was constructed at site overlooking Moody Brook on East Falkland. Using the technology of the time, this was a spark transmitter that consumed a prodigious amount of electrical power, and hence required its own generating station. The boilers for the power station were fired by coal, which needed to be conveyed a distance of some 3½ miles from the naval jetty on the north side of Stanley Harbour, facing Port Stanley. To this end, a 2ft (610mm) gauge railway was constructed, with trains hauled by steam locomotives. Developments in radio technology rendered the huge transmitting device redundant and the railway fell into disuse in the late 1920s. A number of remains of the railway and its equipment can be seen today. The site of the transmitting station retains the name of Wireless Ridge and was the location of one of the decisive battles in the Falklands War of 1982.
A whaling station operated on New Island, off West Falkland, from 1909 to 1915. It appears to have had one or two narrow gauge railway tracks.
There are no railways in the territory, but the Spanish railway line to Algeciras was built in the late 19th Century by a British company to serve the needs of the garrison.
There are no railways on the island. Reports of a funicular railway have sometimes arisen through confusion with the mountain location of a Benedictine abbey in Spain.
There were a number of whaling stations on the north east side of the island, several of which were served by rail systems. They were operational from the first decades of the 20th century until the 1960s. Some railway remains, including a derelict locomotive, are visible.
Not to be confused with the South Georgia Railway, which formerly operated in the southern part of the USA state of Georgia.
The island of East Caicos once had a network of railways some 14 miles (22.5 km) in extent, with wagons drawn by mules conveying sisal from the plantations to the quay at Jacksonville. It was reported active in 1912. After sisal production ceased, town and railway were abandoned and the island became uninhabited. The island may be visited today and ruins of Jacksonville and the railways are much in evidence.
