Belfast Great Victoria Street railway station

Great Victoria Street station stood beside the city-centre thoroughfare of the same name in Belfast. It opened in 1839 as Belfast’s first railway terminus, built where Durham Street crossed the Blackstaff River at the old Saltwater Bridge. The original building, designed by John Godwin, appeared in 1848 and later became part of the Great Northern Railway. By 1856 the station had taken its final name, Great Victoria Street, after the street itself. For a century it handled expresses to Dublin, including the famous Enterprise service introduced in 1947. During the Troubles the station suffered bomb damage on Bloody Friday 1972, when a car bomb injured seventy people and wrecked a train. The station was the busiest in Northern Ireland, with more than five million passengers in 2018–19. It served four main lines: Bangor, Derry~Londonderry, Newry and Larne, giving half-hourly departures on weekdays. A short walk across the concourse linked travellers to George Best Belfast City Airport via Sydenham. The site also housed the Europa Buscentre, opened in 1991, which handled Ulsterbus Goldline services to towns such as Enniskillen and Banbridge. In 1995 a new station rose behind the Great Northern Tower, yet by 2024 the original Great Victoria Street had closed for good. Visitors found a compact station with two island platforms and four platform faces. Platforms two and three stretched the full length, while one and four were shorter. The main concourse opened onto these platforms and carried the weight of daily commuters. Beyond the glass doors lay Great Victoria Street itself, lined with shops and offices. The Europa Hotel, built on part of the old site in 1971, still overlooks the spot where trains once stood.