The 75th birthday of the Belfast-Dublin Enterprise train should be a reason to improve that railway line

When the first Belfast News Letter was published in 1737, transport was very basic.

The main way to travel the 100 miles between Belfast and Dublin was on horseback, or in some sort of horse-drawn cart or carriage. There are advertisements in those early papers for a ‘chair’ to Dublin in some such vehicle. And such travel then was in fact seen as sophisticated, and a great improvement on even the then recent past of the 1600s.

It was almost another century before the first train travel, which was the Dublin to Kingstown (now known as Dun Laoghaire) line in 1834, followed five years later by the first train in Ulster, Belfast to Lisburn.

A huge breakthrough in transport between the two biggest cities in Ireland came in 1855, when the Drogheda viaduct completed an uninterrupted railway line from Belfast to Dublin. And then, almost another century would elapse until the launch of the Enterprise service between the two Irish capitals in 1947 — 75 years ago to the day.

It has been at times a constrained service. The line was targeted relentlessly by Irish republican terrorists during the Troubles and has been the subject of countless scares and temporary closures. Then there was a period in recent decades when train travel seemed to be going out of fashion. The completion of a motorway or high quality dual carriageway between Belfast and Dublin more than a decade ago, making motoring easier, posed a fresh threat to train travel.

And yet the train route remains very popular. It is a relaxing way to make that journey.

The time taken to cover the distance is still far too long, often more than two hours. Intercity 125 trains, which emerged in England almost 50 years ago, would travel Belfast to Dublin in an hour.

The anniversary of the Enterprise should be a reason to pledge to further improve this historic railway line for business travellers, local inhabitants and tourists alike.