Railway mourns the passing of stalwarts

HERITAGE railway enthusiasts have been saddened by the deaths of two well known and influential members of the Downpatrick and County Down Railway.

Michael Collins (pictured left), who was chairman of the body for the last 10 years, passed away on Wednesday after a short illness and the next day veteran honorary life member, Desmond Coakham, died at the age of 91.

Michael was born in 1949 and came from a transport background. His grandfather joined Belfast Corporation as a tram conductor before World War I and retired as an inspector in 1947. In the same year his father joined the Northern Ireland Road Transport Board as a driver, became a conductor and later an inspector under the Ulster Transport Authority and Ulsterbus.

In 1967, whilst a student, Michael’s father arranged for him to join the newly formed Ulsterbus as a conductor attached to Smithfield depot in Belfast. Michael returned to this holiday job each summer until 1972.

He graduated from Queen’s University, Belfast, in that year with a BA in geography and political science and a post-graduate Diploma in Business Administration, later upgraded to an MBA. On graduation he was offered the post of personal assistant to Werner Heubeck, Ulsterbus’s charismatic Managing Director.

After two years in this job, he moved to a management post in the health service before eventually taking up a lecturing position in business and management at the College of Business Studies in Belfast, finally retiring as a Principal Lecturer at the Belfast Institute of Further and Higher Education.

Since his Ulsterbus days, he retained his interest in transport and was involved with the fledgling railway in Downpatrick from the late 1980s, serving on its board for many years before taking up the position of chairman in 2003, which he held until his death with the exception of one year. He was hoping to continue in the role for one more year to oversee the development of two extensions.

He was also the Company Secretary of Irish Transport Heritage, which is dedicated to bus preservation, and had recently become involved in the Charles Shiels Charity Houses in Killough.

Our deepest sympathies to his daughter Aoife, sons Michael and Aodhan and all the family circle, Mike was a valued friend and his vast experience and wise council will be sadly missed by us all.

Desmond Coakham was a well-known authority on the old Belfast & County Down Railway, completing his life’s ambition of a comprehensive history of the BCDR last year. He was always incredibly modest about the fantastic wealth of photographic archive he compiled of the old railway.

Desmond was an honorary life

member of the DCDR and was as regular a visitor as he could be given his age. He was always on hand to advise on historical details to help with the restoration of the two BCDR carriages, even up to very recently, with livery details for the BCDR Railmotor.

He was a retired architect who was also a life-long railway enthusiast. His professional career led him to becoming a regular commuter on the Belfast & County Down Railway in the 1940s, and he developed an intimate knowledge of the BCDR as a living entity.

He was a respected and long-standing member of the Irish Railway Record Society, to whose Journal he contributed many articles.