Grand Central Station in Belfast opens its doors for the general public as first bus leaves the platform
The new £340 million Grand Central Station in Belfast opened its doors this morning for the very first day of operations.
The station is only catering to bus passengers for the time being, with the first bus leaving at 5am this morning to Dublin Airport.
It was quickly followed by the airport express to Belfast International Airport.
The new station will replace Great Victoria Street railway station and the Europa Bus Centre, with all bus services which have been operating to and from Europa Buscentre moving across to Belfast Grand Central Station.
Europa Buscentre, which was operational since 1991, closed its doors for the very last time at 11:30pm on Saturday night.
Grand Central Station has 26 bus stands. There are two gigantic screens displaying bus and train times in the new station, and there are plans to open a Marks and Spencer food shop and a Pret-a-Manger cafe.
Again, there are no opening dates yet, but the Pret-a-Manger appears close to completion.
The rail platforms will remain empty until rail safety inspectors give the newly-laid tracks the all-clear. No date has been set for the beginning of rail services.
The boss of Translink, Chris Conway, told the News Letter he expects this will be “before Christmas”, but would not be drawn on a more specific date.
Mr Conway greeted Amit Kumar from Belfast who boarded the first Airport Express 300 service to leave the new Grand Central Station this morning.
Mr Kumar told BBC News NI: "When I started my day I never knew I was going to be the first guy...probably I’ll be in the history books."
Another customer heading to Dublin, Kieran Doherty, explained to the BBC that “something good is happening” with the creation of the new station.
"I'm acutely aware that this is a really historical event. I'm surprised there aren't more people here, but this is significant," Mr Doherty said.
"This is history being made in Belfast, something good is happening.
"I’m retired and every day I get the bus somewhere, to go somewhere and do something different, somewhere different. So I’ll be a regular here.
"It’s just historical, just to say that I was on the first bus out of the new station."