Photographs of the train derailed at Adavoyle, printed in the Daily Mirror, 27 June 1921
On 24 June 1921, during the Irish War of Independence, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) derailed a British military train near the station. Four British soldiers were killed and twenty wounded. The attack was carried out by volunteers of the IRA's Fourth Northern Division, led by Frank Aiken. The soldiers had been returning from the opening of Northern Ireland's new parliament, which took place in Belfast two days before.[1]
The building is in ruins. A dwelling house has recently[when?] been built in the grounds of the station.[4] The Dublin-Belfast railway line, including the Enterprise services, still passes the former platforms.[5]
Modelling
Tony Miles' Adavoyle Junction in 1963 was an important early model railway using the P4Finescale standards. The desire to model a local broad gauge prototype, without commercial model support, meant that scratchbuilding was necessary anyway and so the adoption of P4 was less of a change than was seen by British standard gauge modellers.[6]
The railway was somewhat fictionalised, as a larger junction with two GNR branches added to it: one running north-west to Monaghan, and the other south-east to a LNWRpacket port at Greenore. A typical Irish 3 foot gauge narrow gauge line ran South to Inniskeen.[6]
