closure of all ex-BCDR lines except the Bangor branch, as part of an effort to avoid excess expenditure on railway maintenance and to divert assets towards improving the UTA's road services. The entire Belfast – Newcastle line south of Comber, including Downpatrick, was closed on Sunday 15 January 1950. The track and almost all of the railway infrastructure was removed in 1953, and the station was used by the UTA's bus division, which became Ulsterbus in 1968. Most of the trackbed along the line was sold by the UTA to private individuals who owned adjoining land: the trackbed in the Downpatrick area was sold to Charles Mulholland, 3rd Baron Dunleath, and was left largely undisturbed until the arrival of the DCDR. Although the 1929-built Quoile Bridge was dismantled for scrap, the Loop Platform and several smaller nearby bridges were left intact. The station building was demolished shortly after Ulsterbus moved to a new depot in the town in 1975, and part of the former station yard was used as a storage depot by the Department of the Environment's Road Service. Heritage Railway Local architect Gerry Cochrane M.B.E. was inspired to start the scheme after taking a walk along the route of the line, and by 1982 had gained support to rebuild part of the line as a heritage steam railway from the local council. Lord Dunleath, whose father had purchased the railway trackbed adjacent to his estate after the closure of the BCDR in Downpatrick, gave the newly formed society a package of land on which to build the line and station for a peppercorn rent. This was on the approaches to the old Downpatrick station, which had been demolished in the 1970s. Work started on rebuilding the railway in 1985, with public trains finally running in the town again in Friday 4 December 1987, making it the first Irish gauge heritage railway in Ireland to carry passengers over its own track. Track has been relaid on nearly 6 km (4 mi) of Belfast and County Down Railway trackbed, and a 1.6 km (1 mi) extension south to the hamlet of Ballydugan is planned. The railway began life as the Downpatrick & Ardglass Railway, as the original intention was to extend the railway to this fishing port on the south coast of County Down. This name was dropped in 1996 following the abandonment of this proposal and the railway was