I was born in 1941 in the townland of Bunaman, in the parish of Annagry in northwest Donegal. My birth came one year after the closure of the Gweedore to Burtonport section of the Letterkenny & Burtonport Extension Railway which was visible from my home, so that I never had the joy of seeing a train passing by. During the years of my primary schooling, I passed over the railway twice daily and often joined with other schoolchildren in searching for little lumps of coal along the permanent way. In later years, the same track bed became one of my favourite walks and set me wondering about the story behind so large a development at a time when few monuments of progress left much impression on our local landscape. My interest in the Letterkenny & Burtonport Extension Railway was aroused. Most studies of railways tend to concentrate heavily on the locomotives, rolling stock, technical details and the accepted railway enthusiast’s cherished minutiae of locomotives, timetables, horsepower, manuals, specifications, signalling, gradients and memorabilia. Little reference to any of the above will be found in this study for the simple reason that this author is not a railway enthusiast, has little knowledge of such detailed items and has set out a different analysis of the chosen subject.