Danger on Dublin-Belfast Express : Bombs, Threats Vex Ireland’s Rail Riders

Even veterans of the Dublin-Belfast railway, like Sister Marian Taggart, admit to getting a little nervous at times like these, when the line is clearly a priority sabotage target.

“There’s a certain danger to it,” said the Roman Catholic nun, who teaches in the south but regularly takes the train home to the British-ruled north to visit her family. “But what can you do? You’re in danger on the road, too.”

It’s been well over a decade since a passenger was killed on what may be the world’s most threatened railway. But the outlawed Irish Republican Army has bombed the tracks 10 times in the last seven months, and the inter-city service was interrupted a dozen more times by what turned out to be bomb hoaxes.

Denis Grimshaw, general manager of Northern Ireland Railways, said in an interview that it is “the most intensive, most sustained campaign” against the line during the last 20 years of sectarian violence here. Between real bombs and threats, service has been disrupted on an average of about one day out of four since the campaign began just before Christmas.

Late last month, saboteurs attacked another Northern Ireland Railways line for the first time--this one running between Belfast and Londonderry, known as Derry to Ireland’s Catholics.

Bombing Motives Unclear

The motives for the railway bombing campaign are unclear. But a recent trip aboard the Dublin-Belfast train, with Sister Marian and other regular passengers as expert commentators, suggested a number of possibilities and also provided an unusual perspective on the continuing conflict that plagues this partitioned island.

The 100-mile rail link between the capitals of the independent Irish Republic in the south and the British province in the north is operated jointly by Grimshaw’s NIR and Iarnrod Eireann, the Irish rail service.

The line carried 410,000 passengers last year on the half a dozen trains that run in each direction daily.

It also carried about 250,000 tons of freight, and some say the disruptions are actually meant only to force shippers to shift their business from the railway to IRA-controlled trucking concerns.

So far this year, because of the bombing threat, passenger traffic is down 10% to 15%, according to Grimshaw, and freight traffic has also declined. Still, with no commercial airline service between the two cities and generally poor roads, particularly in the south, the line remains a popular and important link between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland.

Transfers to Buses

When the line is bombed, or a section of it is closed because of a bomb threat, passengers are transferred to buses until they skirt the danger area. It’s become almost routine, said a railway official in Dublin who spoke to a reporter on condition of anonymity. “People have come to expect that they’re going to be delayed” on what is normally about a 2 1/2-hour trip.

Several passengers on this day began disembarking at Lisburn, just south of Belfast, because of a rumored disruption there. They were pleasantly surprised when conductors escorted them back on board, assuring them that the line had been cleared for travel a few minutes earlier following what had turned out to be a bomb hoax.

The first part of the northbound journey is relaxed and scenic as the train skirts the Irish Sea, rolling past farms and vacation resorts like the Billy Britlan Holiday Camp at Mosney.

The atmosphere is symbolic of the surprising distance with which those in the south seem to view the Ulster conflict. Northern Ireland is featured relatively little in the republic’s newspapers, and it was barely even mentioned during last month’s Irish election campaign. Whether that is their aim or not, the railway bombings do remind a seemingly lethargic south about the ongoing struggle in the north.

At Drogheda, as the train crossed the Boyne River, Sister Marian pointed out the site of the famous battle where William of Orange defeated the Catholic James II in 1690--an event still celebrated with festive July parades each year by the north’s Protestant majority.

‘That Way’ and ‘That Way’

It’s a divisive time even among moderates on both sides, the nun said. “For 11 months of the year, they try to integrate. But in the ‘marching season,’ it’s ‘that way’ and ‘that way,’ ” she explained, thrusting her hands in opposite directions to illustrate her point. “You can actually feel it. Catholic parents won’t even allow their children out on ‘Orangemen’s Day,’ ” the July 12 anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne.

By Dundalk, the train is approaching the frontier of the modern conflict. “They run for cover in our area,” said a local resident about IRA activists fleeing the northern authorities. “There are whole families here that can’t go back north for fear of being arrested.”

The train crosses into Northern Ireland a little farther on, but only the most observant would ever know. There is no document check--travel between Ireland and any part of the United Kingdom requires no passports or visas. There is no fence or other physical barrier along the more than 300-mile-long border separating the republic from what before the 1921 partition were simply six more of its counties.

The heavily subsidized north does have noticeably better roads than the south. The train stations are newer, too, and the mailboxes a different color--green in the south, royal red in the north.

“They call this ‘Murder Triangle,’ ” Sister Marian said of a predominantly Catholic area not far from the border known as an IRA stronghold. “The British army won’t go in there by road,” she claimed. “Helicopter only.”

A spokesman for the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the province’s police force, said the “Murder Triangle” epithet is now obsolete. However, he conceded, “it’s certainly still very much bandit country. Patrolling is difficult--but the area is patrolled.”

Most of the bombs and bomb threats to the railway have been in this area, and another theory is that the campaign is intended largely to force the army out of its barracks, where it will be an easier target.

As the train continues its often-isolated journey, the problems of countering the bombing campaign are clear.

“We’re a very easy target,” Grimshaw said. There are 205 miles of track in Northern Ireland, he noted, and “from a security point of view, it’s almost impossible to guard it on a full-time basis.”

Through towns like Newry, Portadown and Lurgan the tracks skirt poor and middle-class areas where graffiti identify the residents’ sympathies. Also, Protestant neighborhoods are decked with red, white and blue pennants to mark “the marching season.”

In Catholic neighborhoods, graffiti extols the IRA and condemns the British army and the RUC, widely seen as a pro-Protestant force and therefore a prime IRA target.

Sister Marian’s younger brother, who still lives with the family north of Belfast, wanted to become a police officer, she said, adding: “But he couldn’t. He’d have been putting the whole family in jeopardy, you see?” The 21-year-old works as an auto mechanic instead.

In Belfast, Grimshaw hopes the worst is behind. “We carry on,” he said. “Our morale is good. We’re here to provide a public service to all segments of the community.”

Last week he was meeting with his marketing manager and an advertising agency on a proposed campaign to promote the line.

If the Irish Times is right, they may be premature.

The Dublin newspaper reported late last month that the attacks on the Dublin-Belfast railway are part of a “concerted” IRA effort to mark this summer’s 20th anniversary of Britain’s military deployment in the north. The idea is to symbolically isolate the north as a demonstration that its struggle against the British presence continues.

Sister Marian is also pessimistic. And even if there is another period of peace on the railroad, that won’t solve the larger problem, she said, because “I don’t think there is a solution.”