Train Window

I was sitting on the train this morning, on my way to College, when I realised I’d been making this journey for almost twenty years. That was a scary realisation! So here for posterity are some of the changes that I noted today…

The car park at Moira Station exists. And has got huge. And still fills up. In 1987 approximately four cars parked on the road during the day and the land used for a car park now was then a storage area for the Historical Monuments people.

Trains that can stop at Moira, do. Back then during the daytime and evenings prospective passengers had to stand visibly on the edge of the platform so the driver would know to slow down and stop!

Bow Street Mall was Crazy Prices, Texas, a Shell Station and a near-empty car park.

Derriaghy Stewarts (supermarket) changed into a Super Crazy Prices and then a toys and pets store, finally demolished and now the land is filled with semi-detached townhouses.

The old DeLorean factory was abandoned but now a growing base for Montupet.

Malone College didn’t exist – it was a field.

The dead trains graveyard at Adelaide (Boucher Road) used to be a busy goods yard.

Trains turned a corner and went directly to City Hospital after Adelaide – now they go straight ahead into Great Victoria Street station, which is the main public transport hub for Northern Ireland.

The journey time from Moira to Botanic was 18 minutes (on a train that didn’t stop at Lisburn). Now it’s 32.

I appreciate this is probably mind-numbingly boring to those of you who care to read it! The landscape has changed greatly, and I have changed a lot too. Yet at times I don’t feel much different to that eleven-year-old getting on a train to go to school, with three bags and a hockey stick, wondering whether he would get the window pushed down and door handle turned before it was too late.