New DART Carriage Seen ?

Ernest

Last Friday morning I saw what seemed to be a new type of DART carriage on a southbound train. It had the comfortable bench-type of upholstered seating that was on the original DARTS ( not the hard uncomfortable tilted-forward bucket-type found on the later carriages). It had windows that open with the same kind of handles as the second generation carriages just mentioned - not sealed windows with "air-conditioning" like the newest carriages before now. Above the doors was a notice about escape routes from the carriage ( a first!) The carriage looked brand new in every respect but could have been a re-furbished one perhaps in the same way as they refit the inside of airplanes and make them look new.
One last thing. I looked at the number at the end of the carriage: it said 83-07. Does that reveal anything?

mikedragon32

Was on one yesterday. I reckon it's a refurbished carriage. Those older trains are/were looking pretty dated and in bad need of reupholstering and new floors.

John R

They are the first batch of the refurbished 1984 LHB "8100" stock back in service.

Pics here.

Haven't been on them yet but they look good and thankfully they have kept the original seats which are much better than any of the seats on the new stock.

MarkoP11

8107/8307 are part the refurbished fleet. Its been in service since last Wednesday. It does look new, but quite a lot of it isn't, they cut corners on a few things which should have been replaced

Of course it was meant to go into service in June 2005

Red Alert

They look more spacious than the new ones - i think we hit a bit of a golden age in transport design a long time ago.

pclancy

Think i seen that this morning in Tara, looked way cleaner thats why it caught my eye. Good that at last they're starting to appear. Bad that it took forever.

When are the new mitsui railcars appearing? will they free up some more capacity for the maynooth lines?

John R

pclancy wrote:

Think i seen that this morning in Tara, looked way cleaner thats why it caught my eye. Good that at last they're starting to appear. Bad that it took forever.

When are the new mitsui railcars appearing? will they free up some more capacity for the maynooth lines?

The first batch are on commissioning and test runs at present, they are scheduled to start operation on the Sligo line sometime in the Autumn.

Apart from possibly allowing more commuter trains to be run as 8 car units they won't free up any capacity for the Maynooth line. Only complete re-signalling of Connolly-Pearse and ultimately Interconnector would bring major improvements for Maynooth line commuters.

John R

Red Alert wrote:

They look more spacious than the new ones - i think we hit a bit of a golden age in transport design a long time ago.

That would be before the safety nazis took hold.

MarkoP11

pclancy wrote:

Think i seen that this morning in Tara, looked way cleaner thats why it caught my eye. Good that at last they're starting to appear. Bad that it took forever.

Well they didn't repaint them, you would think for €59 million they would throw in a paint job

The weird front end is the real give away and by about the third station you will be getting very frustrated by the door closing buzzer