At its peak in the 1920s Ireland had some 3,500 route miles of track, today it has less than half that amount. By the beginning of the twentieth century the list of companies included the Belfast & County Down Railway, the Cork, Bandon & South Coast Railway, the County Donegal Railway Joint Committee, the Dublin & South Eastern Railway, the Great Northern Railway of Ireland, the Great Southern & Western Railway, the Midland Great Western Railway, the Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway and the Northern Counties Committee. Then, in 1925, the various companies within the Irish Free State were merged to form the Great Southern Railways. Clarence Winchester's account, originally published in the 1930s, is combined with the best archive images in this portrait of Ireland's railways in former times.