Overview
Since 2022 the top of Randalstown’s old railway viaduct has been a garden. The eight-arch structure – built from local basalt and brick, and Grade B+ listed – carried steam trains over the River Maine for the best part of a century; now its deck is a linear community garden called Elevation, planted and seated and explicitly modelled on New York’s High Line. It’s free, open at any hour, and the short walk across it is the reason to stop in Randalstown.
History and architecture
The viaduct was designed by Sir Charles Lanyon and built by the engineer William Dargan, completed in 1856 (the line opened the year before). Lanyon left his mark all over Victorian Ulster – Queen’s University Belfast, the Palm House in the Botanic Gardens, Crumlin Road Gaol – and later served as Lord Mayor of Belfast. Here his bridge carried the Belfast & Ballymena Railway, later the Northern Counties line, over the Maine and on towards Cookstown. Passenger services ended in 1950 and the line closed entirely in 1959, after which the viaduct sat unused for decades.
Conservation work stabilised the masonry and cleared the overgrowth before Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council reimagined the deck as a park. In 2022 came the planting beds, native shrubs, seating and interpretive panels. A permanent lighting scheme followed – approved in 2023, installed by May 2024, part-funded by the Special EU Programmes Body – washing the arches in warm white after dark without touching the listed fabric.
Walking the viaduct
Entrances are at Station Road and New Street, and the deck runs as a continuous paved path between them, rising gently over the river. By day it’s a green corridor, the planting softening the old rail line, with benches to sit and watch the Maine below and panels on Lanyon’s design and the railway’s part in the 19th-century economy. It photographs best from the riverbank, where the reflection doubles the arches; after dusk the lighting makes it a genuine evening stroll. Cyclists can use it too, but at a walking pace – the garden beds and seating leave one central line to keep to.
Practical information and access
Free, open 24 hours, no tickets or opening times. The main deck is broadly level, but the surface shifts between modern paving and older rail deck, and the ground can be slightly uneven where beds meet the path. Approach ramps at both ends suit pushchairs and mobility scooters, though the central span over the arches isn’t continuously ramped, so full wheelchair access is limited to the entrances. Dogs are welcome on leads, and there are bins near the town-end approach.
Getting there and nearby
Randalstown sits on the A26, roughly midway between Belfast and Derry; from Belfast take the M2 to Antrim and follow the A26 west. Free street parking runs along Station Road and New Street, right at the entrances. Ulsterbus routes 110 and its variants (Cookstown–Antrim) and the 122 (Ballymena) serve the town; check current timetables before relying on them.
Randalstown’s high street has independent cafes and shops within a few minutes’ walk. For more, the Antrim Coast and Glens are about half an hour north, which makes the viaduct a natural stretch-the-legs stop on the run between Belfast and the coast.