NI Railways, also known as Northern Ireland Railways () and for a brief period of time, 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 thus one of only two state-owned train operators in the United Kingdom, the other being East Coast. 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 and because of this separation, 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