[IT letter] Sharp decline in rail freight

Sarsfield wrote:

In fairness to T21F, he does appear to treat everyone involved in railways with equal contempt

Apart from the RPA of course.

Sarsfield wrote:

In fairness to T21F, he does appear to treat everyone involved in railways with equal contempt

How dare you! I have no problem with Platform11, MeathonTrack, the Irish Traction Group and well just about everybody else involved in Irish Railways other than IRN (who don't count cos' their British, and West on track who don't really count either as they are not a railway group in any real sense) - Brian Guckian I adore becuase he is pure entertainment. Mountmellick light rail and Sligo - Donegal Town commuter and the Foyle railway bridge to Letterkenny. Gotta love the guy. He makes the world a more happy place.

The RPA are great. World class engineers and project managers who have worked on some of the biggest civil engineering projects in Europe and Asia while the CIE Railway Engineers were down at the IRRS justifying the half pointy trains because they already had a locomotive. CIE suck at public transport and deserve contempt. Even Jesus would of had them stoned to death.

neilled wrote:

My 7 day a week luas experience last year on the redline makes me feel differently to you on the RPA. Longer carriages with the extra section in the middle would have been smart, especially in the mornings. The other thing was - if one part the system went down the whole thing seemed to collapse.

However that quote is a classic!

Is that not a bit harsh on CIE? Bus Eireann have always got me where i wanted to go, in the best possible time, comfort and price!

You are 100% correct about the Red Line crush loads and the trams should all get the extra 10m sections. But to be fair the allocation and ordering of 30M trams for the Tallaght line was the fault of the CIE light rail office back in the late 1990's. The RPA unlike CIE do run a shuttle service between Hueston and Connolly and the line is busy simply because it is so successful and well, CIE have a rail line between Hueston and Connolly which should of had a shuttle service years ago. The CIE Light Rail Office also were also responsible for the lowering of the Green Line south of Renleagh to grade because they were still designing a guided busway and it was the Government who forced them to put tracks back on the Harcourt Street route.

Being too harsh on CIE? Well I don't know about that. Certainly I am repeating myself concerning them, but they are worthless muppets. Honest, they really are! Irish people have just been conditioned to accept what CIE offer - this is the real issue, not me or anybody else being harsh on them. I have dealth with them face to face - I have see more dynamic and forward thnking individuals who have had labotomies compared to some of the managers in CIE. There were times I felt like sticking pins in them to see if they even had a fully functioning nervous system. My goldfish could do a better job running Irish Rail and he is a thick as ****.

Look at the Phoenix Park route, the half-assed station at Spencer Dock when they had all the room in the world to build a serious station next to the Luas line and the Commuter Rail cars on the Sligo line and the CIE managers telling us all they were Inter-City trains and the "COMMUTER" sticker on the side was a figment of our imagination. The list goes on.

I cannot see how people who know what real public transport is could defend them. Sure they have some decent staff and do the odd thing which works now and again (and I do feel sorry for the good ones in CIE), but they are supposed to do this. We should not be using this to cover up all the other mad rubbish they get up to as we the schmucks who pay our taxes and buy the bus and train tickets are the ones who should be getting a decent service and not one operated according to the limitations of the institutionalised CIE engineers, the lack of vision by CIE managers and the strike junkie nature of the CIE unions. We do not pump milions and millions of our money into CIE for this carry on. It's supposed to be a two way system - we the public pay and they the provider present us with the best service possible. All over the world public transport providers do far more with far less public subsidies that what CIE get. That whole "lack of investment" clause which Barry Kenny whips out stopped being meaningful years ago.

They have had 60 years to develop intergrated public transport and they did things like build bus stations on one side of town with the railway station on the other. They are still up to this crap at Spencer Dock with the Luas. They spoof, they do not reply to customer complaints, they waste our money, they make constant TV ads filled with deceptive images of non-exsistent underground station and trains which are pointy at both ends. They are stagnated with the most bizzare unions culture which goes on "unoffical action" at the drop of a hat without any consideration for the ordinary joe trying to get to work. They destroyed and continue to destroy railfreight. If you compile a list of all the screw-ups and incompetence which have manifested from within CIE you soon realise that they really are as bad as I know they are.

They only way they know how to solve every problem is asking for millions more from the Irish taxpayer and then the problem only gets half sorted and they have a PR event and TV telling us how wonderful they are. There is no reason why Irish people should still be putting up with these muppets after 60 years.

The RPA on the other hand are not perfect. But they have assembled a world-class team of heavy hitters in civil engineering and transit planning who know their stuff and it is simply incredible that they have managed to make two unconnected tram lines in a small European capital carry over 22 million people a year and 90 percent of the problems have been caused by morons behind the wheel of a car hitting the trams.

Again I ask you all, apart from a CIE trade unionist or SIPTU/Labour Party/Semi-States of Fear/Armchair Socialist type, who in their right mind would trust CIE to develop urban rail transit solutions for Ireland from this point going forward? Just look at the last few weeks alone. A total fudge at Spencer Dock, purchasing a hotel chain and putting out a "radical" bus plan which contained proposals which a blind Martian who landed in Dublin 5 minutes and only saw his first BAC bus ago would tell you should have been done decades ago.

Give me the RPA over that mupperty disguised as public transport any day of the week. If this is me being a bit harsh then so be it. But I am praying for the Rapture so I can stand outside Amiens Street with a bag of rocks waiting for the second coming.

neilled wrote:

I have to say, one the most impressive systems i was ever on was the taipei MRT...... and being honest i don't think the RPA would ever be capable of producing anything that is near as good! "Because this is Ireland........."

Just wait, what's coming is pretty sensational. I think people will be very pleasantly surprised at what the RPA will deliver with Transport21's Luas and Metro projects. The RPA have the talent, know-how, the understanding of integration which CIE has no concept of, and even with being short-changed with the money allocated to the Metro in T21, the RPA will deliver the most revolutionary rail transport project for this island since Dargan's time.

After that, it'll be "endgame CIE". Mark my words.

Beeching was a genius and a saviour of the railways in the UK - he felt no obligation to be a slave to railway tradition, nor listen to the hypocracy of rural communities who turned their backs on the railways as soon as they could drive. Sound familiar?

The same people who hate him for closing down rural branch lines and wayside hamlet stations with a few passengers week - forget that he also invented the Liner Train concept which without our own Irish Rail/CIE would have gotten out of the railfreight business years ago.

Beeching revolutionised rail passenger transport in the UK and set the wheels in motion for the glory days of BR engineering in the 1970's/early 80's with the HST and then the APT which was light years ahead of anything else in the world. This was all Beeching legacy. And yet people get hung up on the fact that he closed stations in rural hamlets and consider him as the anti-christ for it as if this was the only aspect of railways which mattered.

When you look at what Beeching did, he actually saved British Railways from rural gentry types who expected a train to serve their manor house or a tiny village in the Cotswolds, were like WestonTrack, the locals who never used the train, had no intention of using the trains, but still demanded the lines be kept open as a tribute to their forefathers as long as they do not have to pay for it.

British Rail held its own in the UK during the age of the motorway expansion and until the privatisation of BR when it had passed it sell-by date and new money was needed for the UK network and only private business had that kind of capital. This was thanks to Beeching who made BR work until it was time for BR to be replaced with a more modern railway model. Like CIE, BR served it purpose for a while and then it was time to move on.

Sure, in time some of the rail lines and stations Beeching closed were reopened. But this was only a tiny percentage of the what was closed and none of them ever opened again other than lots of heritage and steam museum lines.

Most of the people who hate Beeching, have read almost nothing about him other than repeating the chinese-whispers and spittle-flying ravings of British trainspotters. The same eejits who claim that rail privatisation in the UK was a failure even though they ignore there is more passengers and freight on the UK railways since privatisation. The issue with these people is always change and their inability to view railway economics in terms of the wider socio-economic picture. People like Beeching took their fantasy world away from them whereby they assume that railways are run for trainspotter to take photos of and nothing else - he took away their favourite toy.

Just like Maggie Tatcher took away their BR from them in the years to come. What they are really complaining about is that the new rail companies are not using as many locomotive hauled trains as BR did. They want their blue diesels hauling Mk1 coaches to Hollyhead and not railcars. This is why they think privatisation of BR was a failure - no other reason. The same mindset which makes them assume Beeching was evil - these people are lost in the past and cannot grasp change and reality-based, real-world socio-economic dynamics which by their very nature are changing and fluid - nope, they want their Col Stephens Railways back and that's that.

People like Beeching represent change and a break from the tradition. Some people are terrified of change and new thinking in rail transport and prefer traditon, sameness and nostalgia for the past. (see our own homegrown anti-RPA shower for proof). The world has to move on and this includes rail transport. In terms of his rating for doing the right thing during his tenure Beeching gets fairly close to an A+

Todd Andrews on the other hand most certainly gets an A +. And forget the hyperbole guff about the Harcourt Street line as nobody was using it at the time it was closed, and cars were all the rage in the new middle class suburbs along its course. The only unforgiveable thing concerning that period, was the cynical attempted engineering obliteration of the line - but this was CIE management who did this and not Andrews.

The West Cork rail lobby campaign was a masterstroke:

Andrews: "How did you lot get up to Dublin to save you railway then?"

Courtmacsharry-on-Track: "eh, we drove..."

Gotta love the guy.