Whitehead Excursion Station was the centre of celebrations today as the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland unveiled two newly restored vehicles from its collection. The reconditioned dining car and rebuilt guard's van will now go into service and will be used by the Society for its popular programme of steam train activities.The dining car, which was built in 1970, and the guard's van, dating back to 1945, have been overhauled and refurbished over the past two years in the Society's workshops at Whitehead. The £400,000 project has been funded by the International Fund for Ireland, administered through the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, which contributed £160,000, to the carriage modernisation scheme. The remainder of the funding has been raised by the Society, with support in kind from Translink, which made the former Enterprise carriages available to the RPSI when they went out of service, as well as £3,000 of support from the Northern Ireland Museums Council, for the guard’s van. Speaking at the event Alexander Smith, Joint Director General of the International Fund for Ireland, said he was delighted to see that the Society's activities were going from strength to strength.He said: "The Fund has enjoyed an immensely successful relationship with the RPSI since 1993 when we helped support the construction of a railway carriage shed at Whitehead. This new project, which includes the restoration of the diner and its sister carriages, will play a vital part in educating visitors about the region's rich heritage while bringing together different communities under a common interest underpinning the Fund's strategy of community relations and reconciliation."The completion of this project will enable the Society to offer people across Ireland the opportunity to enjoy a trip back in time and savour the unforgettable experience of a trip of a steam train."Siobhan McCauley, Director of Product Development at the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, said the RPSI's steam train activities were an important part of the tourism package on offer in Northern Ireland. Siobhan said; “This initiative will create a sustainable and authentic product that is well placed to serve domestic and international visitors. It will help to spread the economic benefits of tourism while also providing visitors with a unique steam train experience. “I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate everyone involved in this excellent project and I look forward to experiencing the steam trains for myself.”Catherine Mason, Group Chief Executive of Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company (NITHCo) and Translink, unveiled two plaques to mark the return to service of the two vehicles. She said: "We are proud of our rich railway heritage and many of our stations and facilities have been carefully restored to reflect this. As such we are pleased to support the work of the RPSI and very much commend their efforts to capture and nurture Ireland's railway heritage for future generations.”Lexie Scott, Chairman of the Northern Ireland Museums Council, said they had been delighted to have been asked to be a principal funder of the restoration of 'Ivan', as the brake van has been nicknamed.He said: "This project sees the preservation of a significant part of our railway heritage, but more than that, the RPSI is to be congratulated on the way it was done. "In building a team of young members to carry out the work, the Society offers a model of good practice and one I am sure will be emulated by other museums and heritage organisations." Lord O'Neill, President of the RPSI, said the return to traffic of the two vehicles was a landmark occasion for the Society, and further evidence of the skillbase which had been developed at Whitehead."We are very grateful to the International Fund for Ireland, the Tourist Board and the Northern Ireland Museums Council whose funding has helped us turn a dream into reality," he said."We are also indebted to Translink and Iarnrod Eireann who continue to facilitate the operation by our historic steam trains and manage to accommodate our trips in the busy timetable of the modern railway network. "The Society is now a major player in the tourism sector and as time goes by our trains both north and south are proving more popular than ever." "This year the RPSI has taken its steam trains to destinations from Ballymena to Rosslare, and from Waterford to Bangor, carrying several thousand passengers in all and turning many heads as they steam through city and countryside."The diner, which has a fully functioning bar and kitchen, will be used on the RPSI's Bangor Belle excursions which are due to run on August 9 and 24.The guard's van, built in Dundalk at the end of World War Two, has been restored from scrap condition to working order by the RPSI's youth wing, who christened the vehicle Ivan (short for GNR(I) van). It is the last Great Northern guard's van in existence and it will be used on the Whitehead train rides which operate on Sunday afternoons during the summer.

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