As a young boy, Tom Ferris would cycle to the metal bridge on the Brookmount Road which spanned the GNR railway line linking Omagh with Derry and the north west. From there he would spend hours gazing across at the railway station where trains paused to take on passengers and supplies while below him heavy metal engines carried out shunting manoeuvres up and down the line - all part of the daily routine on the busy railway network which cross-crossed the country right up until the middle part of the last century.

These events would eventually instil a life-long interest in rail travel which culminated this week with the publication of Tom's latest book, Irish Railways – A New History, which is one of the most comprehensive studies ever on the rise and decline of the rail system in this country.

"I remember being brought along by my mother to see the toy train set which ran around the shop window at Anderson's department store every Christmas and being mesmerised by it," Tom recalled this week. "When I was six or seven, my father took me to Omagh station and onto one of the engines. I can still recall the heat and smell and it is something that has lived with me forever."

Tom Ferris's new book provides not just a detailed account of the rise and decline of the system and its current resurgence, but many insights into the social and economic effects of the railways on the country they served. Tom shows how these effects were both beneficial and detrimental to all of the regions. They encouraged social and economic mobility and had an effect in binding the country together by allowing the distribution of national newspapers, enabling sporting contests such as Gaelic games and horse racing to move from the local to the national stage and encouraged political debate and agitation with prominent figures using the trains to take their message to a wider audience than was hitherto possible.

Tom, who now lives in Shrewsbury in England, holds a Masters degree in railway history, is one of the leading authorities on Irish railways and the author of many previous books and film scripts on the subject.

"When I was at Queen's University I carried out academic research and did my Masters on the Ulster railway. Over the years I build on that and this book is the culmination of 20 or 30 years of general research on the subject. There hasn't been a general history on Irish railways since about the mid-1970s so there was a bit of a void for general readers out there."

The book looks back to over 170 years ago when the first passenger railway was established in Ireland. From modest beginnings, the railway network expanded over the next 70 years into almost every part of the country. At its greatest extent, the national network consisted of just under 3,500 route miles of track.

This era of expansion was followed by an equally long period of decline which was sparked by the rise of the internal combustion engine and exacerbated by the partition of the island and the economic problems of the interwar years. It was only towards the end of the 20th century that this decline was arrested and passenger numbers and investment levels at last began to recover.

"The demise of the railways in the 1950s is still a sore point with a lot of people," Tom says. "When you go due south from Derry, it's 200 miles until you come across a railway which runs through the town of Mullingar. There is a huge swathe running through the centre of Ulster where there isn't a single track left in existence.

"In the 1930s and 40s Stormont adopted an anti-railway stance and because the lines ran from Enniskillen and Omagh to Dundalk they probably felt 'why should we pump money into a system which benefited a foreign country'."

In contrast, since the 1980s there has been a sea-change in attitude to the rail network in the South. The Dart line was established in Dublin and passenger numbers began to rise as people commuted to the capital from towns like Drogheda, Athlone and Kildare. Massive investment was pumped into improving and upgrading the existing lines the length and breadth of the country. But in the North the story is a very different one.

Tom explains, "A report issued in the South in the early 1990s stated that the railways needed massive investment. That led to the re-opening of lines and money being poured into the system. Yet here in the North, Translink is still going around with the begging bowl and trying desperately to keep up the rail link between Belfast and Derry."

Throughout his years of research Tom has come across many people whose families have had links in the past with the railways. None more so than in his native Omagh where particular fondness still exists for a mode of transport which is fondly remembered by many.

"Over the years I have met many people who, although they are not railway enthusiasts, still hold a passing interest in the subject. The more you talk to people you find that many families have ties with the railways which go back decades. In those days it wasn't just a mode of transport but for many families it was a way of life and a job which had a certain amount of security at a time when many were forced to emigrate to get work."

Reminiscing on the decline of the rail system locally, Tom says, "Arriving here nowadays you would never know that Omagh and Strabane were major railway junctions back in the last century. One of the only reminders is the line of the new Omagh bypass which was built along the route of the old railway line which goes to show that the engineers in those days knew exactly where there were going."

* Irish Railways – A New History by Tom Ferris

is published by Gill & Macmillan and is currently

available at all good bookshops