Final touches are being put in place at Belfast's Grand Central Station as it gears up to open to the public.

Bus services will operate from the site from Sunday 8 September, but no date has been set for the commencement of rail services at the new transport hub.

The first bus service to depart from the new site will travel to Dublin at 5am.

Chris Conway described the development, which is expected to cost around £340million, as "a world class facility", and "a modern station fit for a modern city".

"We want to make sure we keep safety as our number one priority," he explained.

"Buses will start phasing over from Sunday, from the Europa to Belfast Grand Central Station.

"We're working closely with the safety authority to be able to announce a date for the railway opening soon.

"We hope to have over 20m passengers through these doors on an annual basis," he added.

"To put that into context, Belfast City Airport sees maybe 2m per year, while Belfast International sees about six or 7m.

"The new station will double the capacity we have on our public transport network coming into Belfast and it will increase connectivity in Northern Ireland and right across the island of Ireland.

"The important thing is that we use it to increase capacity in our bus and rail network and get more people using public transport, and for me that will be the real test as to whether this has worked," he added.

The Belfast stations were regularly hit during the troubles. Compare the then service through Melksham, with the loco and two carriages connecting two capitals; Dublin and Belfast.

The Troubles is a term used to describe a period of conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years, from the late 1960s until the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

The first passenger to enter Grand Central Station on Sunday morning was Amir Kumat.

Beginning his journey to London, he got the 05:00 BST bus to Belfast International Airport.

Speaking to BBC News NI, Mr Kumat said he was "so lucky" to be the first passenger to enter the new station.

"When I started my day I never knew I was going to be the first guy … probably I’ll be in the history books."

First train departs Belfast's Grand Central Station

Trains have started running from Belfast’s new £340m Grand Central Station.

The first departure was the 08.05 BST Enterprise service to Dublin Connolly Station.

It left on time with just over 100 passengers on board.

The driver was Derek Weir and among the first passengers were Margaret McAllister from Bangor and Chris Playfair from south Belfast.

The railway line between Lisburn and Belfast has been closed for more than three months to connect train services to the new station.

IT’S been almost six months since the Enterprise rail service between Belfast and Dublin extended its timetable to provide hourly train journeys between the two cities. As one of the main transport routes along the east coast of the island, commuters rely heavily on the rail network as a means of facilitating both trade and leisure.

The service now runs fifteen times during weekdays – between 6am and 9pm – and eight times a day during weekends. Enterprise received nearly €25 million of funding from the Irish Department for Transport in one of the first manifestations of the Shared Island Fund.

Government ministers on both sides of the border have been enthusiastic about what the new service could mean for intra-island cooperation. Speaking in the wake of increased timetable operations in October, then Taoiseach Simon Harris called it “really, really important for the all island economy, for the island of Ireland, from a public transport point of view”.

Former Northern Ireland Infrastructure Minister John O’Dowd said that the expanded service “offers opportunities to drive jobs and growth, stimulate development and regeneration and boost access to services and education… [It will also] help decarbonise transport and encourage behavioural shift to public transport”.

Environmental impact concerns have been at the heart of both Translink NI and Iarnród Éireann’s lobbying around Enterprise. Yesterday, a spokesperson for Translink said that boosting the economy and meeting climate change targets justified increasing the number of daily trains, despite any potential breach of planning rules by the service.

Translink revealed that they had been asked by the Department for Infrastructure in Northern Ireland to justify granting retrospective consent for breaching a condition that the number of services would not exceed more than eight journeys each way.

This, they said, was one of the main contingencies for receiving nearly £340 million to open a new state-of-the-art train station at Grand Central in Belfast. Residents in the nearby Sandy Row area of the city have claimed an increased level of noise and a deterioration in the quality of life. Residents in the Co. Armagh town of Lurgan – which the rail network passes through – have also claimed disruption as a result of increased level crossing closures and higher car traffic.