Omagh man publishes first ever account of Omagh’s railway history

AFTER years hunched over his desk, reading and researching, writing and drawing, Tony McGartland has finally completed the first ever published history of Omagh as a railway town.

Titled ‘Omagh Railway Station: A Journey Through Time’, the book will be launched in our local library this Monday (June 19), after which Tony’s seminal account of this previously unrecorded chapter of Omagh’s story will be available to the public.

Speaking with Tony ahead of the book launch, he told us what lies between the covers of his 112 page work.

“This book has possessed my life for the last couple of years,” said Tony, the strain of his toil still lingering in his voice. “I was waking up in a cold sweat during the night, plagued by thoughts of mistakes and inaccuracies.”

However, it is exactly this kind of obsession and fastidious attention to detail that makes Tony the right man for the job.

“I always say that the railway is in my DNA,” explained Tony, who has been interviewing Omagh’s old ‘railway men’ from as early as the 1980s. “My Granny married three times, and all three husbands were railway men.”

Through the 1980s and 1990s, as part of a project to craft an accurate model of Omagh Railway Station, Tony sat down with engine drivers, shunters and station masters, verifying the precision of drawings and gathering first hand accounts of life at the station.

“During that time, I accumulated a load of material. I stored it all in a big file and kept in the house,” said Tony.

After the model – which is still displayed in the Station Centre – was complete, Tony stowed his the file away for many years.

“When I took early retirement [from teaching carpentry at South West College], I decided to blow the dust off the file, and have a look though my old notes and scribbles,” said Tony.

Initially writing with the intention of having an article published in an annual Irish Railway Record Society journal, it soon became clear that what Tony was working on was too comprehensive to be contained within such a slim publication.

“They were looking for a few thousand words, and what I had was more in the region of 15,000,” said Tony. “It was then that I realised that I had a book in me.”

Tony intensified his research, reached out to publishers, and soon he found himself with a contract and a deadline.

“Strangely, I was actually on a train from Bangor to Belfast when I got the call from Transport Treasury Publishing to say that they wanted to publish the book,” said Tony. That was in July.

And since then, with his nose buried against the grindstone, Tony has managed to produce a 112 page book, featuring over 140 photos, many of which were never published before, with comprehensive list of over 250 railway staff and all 17 station-masters.

“Many families in the town know about their railway history and are proud of it, but many others might not be aware of their ancestors who worked our railway,” said Tony. “You could be surprised to see your surname pop up in the book.”

Go along to Omagh Library this Monday (June 19), and hear Tony and railway historian and contributor to the book, Jonathan Beaumont, as they launch the first ever published history of Omagh Railway, and the families whose lives were lived along its tracks.