NI Railways, also known as
Northern Ireland Railways (
NIR) and for a brief period
Ulster Transport Railways (
UTR), is the
railway operator in
Northern Ireland. NIR is a subsidiary of
Translink, whose parent company is the
Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company (NITHCo), and is one of two publicly-owned train operators in the
United Kingdom, the other being
Direct Rail Services. It has a common Board of Management with the other two companies in the group,
Ulsterbus and
Metro (formerly Citybus). The rail network in Northern Ireland is not part of the
National Rail network of
Great Britain, nor does it use
Standard Gauge; instead using
Irish Gauge in common with the rest of the island of
Ireland. Also, NIR is the only commercial non-heritage passenger operator in the United Kingdom to operate a
vertical integration model, with responsibility of all aspects of the network including running trains, maintaining rolling stock and infrastructure, and pricing. NIR jointly runs the
Enterprise train service between Belfast and Dublin with
Iarnród Éireann. There is no link to the
rail system in Great Britain,
although proposals have been made, though allowances would have to be made for the different rail gauge (
standard gauge) in use in Britain and the rest of
Europe.