Busy day on the Enterprise

I was on the Enterprise this weekend. It was a reasonably good experience. I shelled out for First class.

The ride quality of the DDs at some points doesn't seem great. There are points where the carriage quite noticeably jerks around and your cup of coffee will jerk sharply across the table in front of you. I seem to recall this being mainly somewhere between Dundalk and Drogheda. The carriages really could do with a full refurb being done. In First, you can hear all the fittings squeaking and creaking all the time.

The free wifi seems a bit hit and miss. When I left Belfast it didn't work until we reached Newry at which point it sprung into life; then it worked all the way to Dublin. When we left Connolly it was working, and then died at around about the border, recovering when we reached Portadown. I don't think the issue is service coverage, there seem to be kinks in it that need ironed out.

Regarding some of the comments on the thread .. for three months in late summer 1999 the Enterprise in fact did run into GVS. There were apparently no issues with it continuously taking up a platform, unless Translink made temporary timetable changes I don't know about. When it switched back to Central there were complaints in the local newspapers with people asking why they bothered moving it back since it seemed to be working out perfectly well were it was. It's almost as if Translink didn't want to admit that Central is in a terrible location. As for the comparisons with Connolly .. well the Luas is a handy way to get to Connolly St and beyond. And it'll be even better connected once the new connecting line is complete.

Translink do indeed permit free travel onward to GVS. Trouble is, the connections aren't great. For example the Enterprise arrived this evening just after 8PM. The next service which was going to call at GVS would have been in Central around 8:25. The next bus was around that time too. I ended up doing the 15 minute walk.

Translink do have a proposal to significantly upgrade Great Victoria Street and move Enterprise services there. I imagine this would involve adding a couple of platforms and improving station facilities and parking etc (currently GVS is not at all suitable as a major railway terminus - passengers scurry like rats through a dimly-lit and rather depressing shopping mall full of tatty boutiques and then have to navigate around an often-crowded bus station). But it's terribly frustrating, as it doesn't seem like long ago they splurged a huge amount of cash on renovating Central. At the time, the entire Northern railway network was under threat of closure, but the Central refurbishment was justified on the basis that it served the Enterprise. It would have been better for them to improve GVS at that time.

The focus for Translink and IÉ seems to be to compete with the bus services, rather than the private car, with their pre-booking online services. Even this is poorly implemented (Translink's requirement to book three days in advance is unfathomable to most people who are familiar with being permitted to print off airline boarding passes - this is presumably because Translink and IÉ don't want to spend the cash on a ticketing system which would permit printed tickets to be validated).

A few years ago Translink re-upholstered the DD sets without taking them out of service. I imagine the same arrangement will be used for any major overhaul. There's one spare carriage clearly visible at York Road right now and somewhere there must be spare DVT, first class and restaurant cars from the fourth, unused set.

It arguably would have been entirely defensible - the Enterprise successfully ran in and out of it for three months, and when it was moved back to Central people complained. But this is academic at this point.