Editing Northern Counties Committee (section)

===World War I===
The NCC was relatively unaffected by the events of [[World War I]]. Most cross-channel traffic was carried on the principal [[Dún Laoghaire|Kingstown]]-[[Holyhead]] route.

Conscription was never applied in Ireland but 318 of the NCC's employees enlisted in the armed forces of whom 60 were to be killed during the hostilities.

In September 1914 the NCC undertook to build seventy road transport wagons at York Road for the [[War Department (UK)|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 cost of war bonuses was also met by the government.

The tremendous consumption of coal by industry meant that less was available for Ireland and in March 1918 the Board of Trade ordered the Irish railways to cut their consumption by 20%. The NCC maintained its goods mileage but reduced passenger working by a quarter.

Control did not end with the [[Armistice with Germany (Compiègne)|Armistice]] in 1918. The IREC enforced the [[eight-hour day]] for railwaymen starting in January 1919. This resulted in the NCC having to employ an additional 158 men in the traffic department.

The newly created [[Department for Transport|Ministry of Transport]] assumed the powers of the IREC which ceased to function on 31 December 1919. Negotiations between the railways and the ministry for de-control and compensation continued throughout 1920 and early 1921 and governmental supervision came to an end on 15 August 1921.