Surviving studio news reports
from this era of Ulster Television are rare in the archives. However, this is
an interesting one to have it focusses on the impending decisions being made on
cutting back the rail network in Northern Ireland.
The railways had already been savagely cut back in 1950 and would be so again in 1965. This news item followed the Benson Report (Northern Ireland’s equivalent of the Beeching Report) which recommended sweeping cuts. A tribunal was now assessing if various cuts should go ahead – the most significant of which was the line from Derry/Londonderry to Portadown.