for the War Department and in October 1915 subcontracted work on munitions for Workman Clark & Co. The war created severe shortages of permanent way materials and a number of little used sidings were lifted for the materials they yielded. It was also necessary to resort to using sleepers made from home-grown timber rather than the imported Baltic variety. Steel boiler tubes replaced copper and brass in locomotives for economy and a different pattern of uniform overcoat had to be sourced since the government had commandeered the wool crop. Greencastle, the first station out of Belfast, closed in June 1916 because of competition from the extended Belfast tramways. The NCC along with other Irish railways adopted Greenwich Mean Time in October 1916. This was 25 minutes ahead of Dublin or Irish time which had previously been used throughout Ireland. The Belfast and Portrush hotels continued to function fairly normally although they had lost their French and German employees at the outbreak of war. The Laharna, on the other hand, was suffering from a shortage of tourists and was requisitioned by the army in 1917. The steamer services were affected by the war. The Princess Victoria was requisitioned as a troop ship leaving the Princess Maud to operate the Larne-Stranraer mail service which was sometimes the only crossing available due to enemy submarine activity in the Irish Sea. The Princess Victoria returned to cross-channel service in 1920. The Heysham service was suspended in the latter part of the war and the steamer SS Donegal was sunk while on war service in 1917. Government control The railways in Great Britain had come under government control from the outbreak of war but those in Ireland had not. The trades unions believed that under control their members would achieve parity in wartime bonuses with cross-channel railwaymen and applied constant pressure to achieve this. Frustrated with a lack of progress the unions threatened to strike in December 1916 which prompted the government to agree to taking control of the Irish lines. On 22 December 1916 they came under Board of Trade supervision which acted through the Irish Railways Executive Committee (IREC). The government paid compensation to the railways to bring their net yearly receipts up to those of 1913 subject to limitations on capital expenditure. The NCC had already been affected by virtue of its Midland Railway parent having been under control since 1914. The