A505 (Northern Ireland)

Route

The A505 is the main route between Cookstown and Omagh, forming part of the trunk T10 route.

Starting on the A29 Church Street in the centre of Cookstown the A505 heads west along Drum Road. It soon crosses the Ballinderry River before leaving town. The B4 then turns off to the left and the A505 continues ahead along a dead-straight road for a few miles until it curves around the Drum Manor Forest Park.

Towards Mountfield

There is another lengthy straight section before the terrain becomes more undulating requiring the road to be more winding. The B46 is crossed before the A505 goes over the moors and then descends past Mountfield. The road has now become much straighter again. Presently it reaches Killyclogher, now a suburb of Omagh, and skirts the southern edge of the urban area. The road does, however, take some time to become built-up. After crossing the Camowen River the road passes the hospital and crosses the B4 at a roundabout. It now heads south and soon ends at another roundabout on the A5.

History

What is now the A505 was originally unclassified, except for the two ends which were part of the B4, the original route between Cookstown and Omagh. The remainder of the route was renumbered B159 in the late 1920s, thus providing two classified roads between the two towns. The A505 came into being in the 1960s, presumably indicating that the northern route was the more used.

The original western end of the A505 was on Dublin Road, the pre-bypass A5 in Omagh town centre. That road now bypasses the town to the south and so an A505 eastern bypass has been built to meet the present A5. This means that the original western end of the B4, renumbered when the A505 came into being, now has its old number back.