Northbound services delay

positron

Drogheda train is sitting somewhere between Blackrock and Booterstown since 1720 - about an hour now! :mad:

From IrishRail website:

Delays to Northbound DART and Commuter Services by Corporate Communications

17:45 13-03-2007

Due to a DART technical fault at Merrion Gates all Northbound DART and Commuter services are experiencing delays

tba

aye affected south bound too for some reason, I walked home, its a lovely evening.

MarkoP11

Its a lot more complex

18:15 Pearse Drogheda sat down as well
http://forum.platform11.org/showthread.php?t=2169

ixoy

positron wrote:

Drogheda train is sitting somewhere between Blackrock and Booterstown since 1720 - about an hour now! :mad:

Aye I passed your train out. I was sitting on the Maynooth train in Blackrock when another train pulled in on the Southbound Platform. Everyone legged it, despite not being told a damn thing by the driver or over the platform speakers. I'm assuming that the train appeared on the southbound line here because there's a change-over point at Dun Laoghaire?

Our train then pulled out (I got a seat \o/) and we continued down the southbound line until Landsdowne Road. We then switched back to the Northbound line but switched once more to the Southbound at Pearse. All-in-all our train must've skipped about 6 other trains waiting to head north. I am so damn happy that I decided to work a few minutes later or else I'd have been stuck on an earlier train in between stations.

Oh and not one announcement on our train as to what the hell was happening. I'm assuming they told people at stations in advance to use the southbound platform because there was a lot of people waiting to board, making it easily the most packed train that I've ever been on (it was reduced to a crawl). Still why not tell us? Our some drivers ignorant of the situation or just plain ignorant?

tba

I asked my driver, nobody told him anything.

positron

A lot of people got on the Drogheda train from Blackrock at 1713, and it reached Drogheda after eight! :eek: Yeah, nearly three hours to get from Blackrock to Drogheda!! And the official version on radio was like "a 45 minutes delay" - That woman will do well in government!

clubcrown

positron wrote:

A lot of people got on the Drogheda train from Blackrock at 1713, and it reached Drogheda after eight! :eek: Yeah, nearly three hours to get from Blackrock to Drogheda!! And the official version on radio was like "a 45 minutes delay" - That woman will do well in government!

Three hours to get from Dun Laoghaire to Coolmine. Got on the train at 5.20, walked in my door at 8.00.

Drivers intercom didn't work, even after he was told to turn it up - at one stage we started back to Dun Laoghaire to switch lines and start again We went 50 yards, stopped for 10 mins, and then proceeded on to town anyway.

This week really can't get much worse and its only wednesday.

Tom Dunne

Looks like I made a good call so.

I normally get the DART from Pearse to Connolly, then get either the Maynooth or Longford train. I saw there were masses of people on the northbound platform so I made an executive decision to walk to Connolly. Good job I did, by the sounds of it.

ixoy

There's an article on it in the Irish Independent:

RUSH-hour on the trains turned into bedlam last night after a DART failure stranded thousands of weary travellers on trains going nowhere.

Chaos struck at the middle of rush-hour when a north-bound DART failed at Merrion Gates at about 5.15pm.

North-bound trains travelling behind the failed train stacked up and as a result there was a shortage of south-bound darts.

Rail bosses began to terminate trains at Pearse station, return them north-bound and then feed them back to the south-side. They also got trains to switch tracks to get by the problem areas.

But huge queues built up on platforms across the city. The frustration of angry travellers was not helped by the lack of announcements in trains and on station platforms.

Commuter trains were also hit. The 5pm Maynooth train left Bray on time but ran into chaos at Blackrock. It finally pulled into Connolly station 99 minutes late.

A spokesperson for Iarnrod Eireann said that a maintenance crew was at the failed train within 40 minutes and remained at the scene until 6.20pm.

Glad they picked up on the lack of announcements - it's inexcusable and a right two fingers to its customers. They didn't, at any point on my train, even announce there was a problem. Woeful behaviour..

Also, I see that they were there "within 40 minutes". That seems an awfully slow response time when a train's broken down in rush hour.

positron

"... a maintenance crew was at the failed train within 40 minutes..."

That statements sounds as if its totally acceptable! Forty minutes to get a broken down train? Is this really acceptable considering it was not a tube or anything, or have I just set my expectations (which would be considered normal for a developed / first-world / nation) way too high?

Ham'nd'egger

positron wrote:

"... a maintenance crew was at the failed train within 40 minutes..."

That statements sounds as if its totally acceptable! Forty minutes to get a broken down train? Is this really acceptable considering it was not a tube or anything, or have I just set my expectations (which would be considered normal for a developed / first-world / nation) way too high?

Two points....

1) If the lines has trains travelling on them, a maintainance train would have taken ages to get across, if this was how they got to the stricken DART
2) If they drove across, they did darn well to cross from Fairview to the Port and East Link and then to Sandymount in just 40 minutes at that hour of the day.

KC61

I'd have to agree. 40 minutes would seem to be quite a rapid response.

I do think that your expectations are a bit too high - given that the tracks were blocked they weren't going to get there by rail, so I think 40 minutes in peak hour traffic is pretty reasonable.