NI Railways

NI Railways, also known as Northern Ireland Railways (NIR; and for a brief period Ulster Transport Railways; UTR), is the railway operator in Northern Ireland. NIR is a subsidiary of Translink, the Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company (NITHCo). It has a common Board of Management with the other two companies in the group, Ulsterbus and Metro (formerly Citybus). The rail network in Northern Ireland is not part of the National Rail network of Great Britain, nor does it use standard gauge, instead using Irish gauge in common with the Republic of Ireland. Also, NIR is the only commercial non-heritage passenger operator in the United Kingdom to operate a vertical integration model, with responsibility of all aspects of the network including running trains, maintaining rolling stock and infrastructure, and pricing. Since the Single European Railway Directive 2012, the company has allowed open access operations by other rail operators, although no operator has started such a service. In 2019, NI Railways carried over 15 million passengers. NIR is part of the wider rail network in Ireland and it jointly runs the Enterprise train service between Belfast and Dublin with Iarnród Éireann. There is no link to the rail system in Great Britain; proposals have been made, but allowances would have to be made for the different rail gauge in use in Great Britain (standard gauge) and Ireland (Irish gauge).