The journey started at 6.15 a.m. at Portadown railway station.
Accompanied by rail enthusiast David Boyd (20), from Portadown, The Irish Times had set out to cover the entire Northern Ireland rail network in a day. The cost was modest - the £5 ticket covers unlimited travel on the network during summer months
Like many in Northern Ireland, Mr Boyd is perturbed by the lack of investment in the railway system. "Everywhere else new lines are being opened and the services are being enhanced. You only have to look across the Border to Dublin where the DART has been extended and a new metro system is on the cards to see just how much Northern Ireland Railways has suffered from years of chronic under-investment," he said.
In fact, you only had to look at the 6.52 a.m. service from Lisburn to Derry. The train, which like most of the others featured a massive Save Our Railways sticker on its front and rear, was freezing.
More than just nippy, this was nose-turning blue. Students bound for Coleraine University shivered as they tried to revise for repeat examinations.
Asked whether the heating could be turned on, a guard said that he thought it already was. A warming drink from the trolley service to combat the Arctic conditions, perhaps? There was no trolley service, he replied.
Even more disconcerting were the stretches of line littered with speed restrictions due to badly maintained track. The train shuddered violently sideways on a particularly nasty stretch and this shake-rattle-and-roll experience was repeated later in the afternoon on the Bangor line.
"They are always breaking down on me," complained Wendy Cunningham (19), from Lurgan who was revising for her history exam. By the time we reached Derry and boarded the return train heading back in the direction of Lisburn, the sun had thankfully done the job of the ailing heating system.
These failings highlight the fact that much of the rolling stock owned by Northern Ireland Railways has seen better days. Most of the railcars are between 20 and 30 years old, Mr Boyd explained.
There are four main lines, radiating from Belfast serving Bangor and Larne in the north, Portadown and Newry on the cross-Border route in the south and Derry in the north west. A branch also diverges from the Derry line at Coleraine to service the seaside resort of Portrush but this is currently closed to accommodate much-needed track relaying. At various points regular rail users such as Leonie McCann, a student nurse from Lurgan, expressed concern that much of the network, apart from the Belfast to Dublin route, could be closed as part of a future "rationalisation" process but also complained that the trains are dirty, noisy and unreliable.
Many sections provided a relatively smooth ride, and the trains ran, if not like clockwork, certainly with a lot more regard for the timetable than can sometimes be experienced in the Republic.
The last journey of the day was on the Belfast-Dublin line - a two hour 15 minute trek not included in the £5 ticket - where business types revelling in the luxury of first plus class and people in standard class gazed out at pastoral scenes as twilight enveloped the area around Newry.
Introduced in 1997, the French-built Enterprise trains could do with a bit of a spruce-up. However, some things never change. Graffiti in the toilets variously glorify the INLA, the IRA, the UVF and the UFF, while watching stones being thrown at the window around Lurgan is almost a rite-of-passage for cross-Border passengers.
Despite these diversions, Belfast-Dublin is arguably the most enjoyable rail service available anywhere on this island, and passenger figures show that the service has been something of a success story for partners Translink and Iarnrod Eireann.
For Mr Boyd, such co-operative measures represent the best way forward for Northern Ireland Railways. "Sometimes I think the only way to safeguard the future of the railway here would be for Irish Rail to assume control of everything, giving us an all-Ireland system," he said.