The Enigma that is Rosslare Harbour Circa Late 80's/Early 90's

Transport21 Fan

It is well known that 'Irish Rail' was on it's last leg in the late 80's and early 90's due to under-investment. Well except from one aspect, Rosslare Harbour.

The harbour at Rosslare got massive investment during these years. New sea walls, new channels, huge redreging programme, Wexford was made bigger by land reclaimation. A whole second harbour was built.

Now can anyone explain why money was no object at the time for the Rosslare Harbour reconstruction project, but at the same time IE was having to take old track panels out of the Midleton line to keep the Sligo and Westport trains running? Why there was no money to replace rusty relays in signals, but endless cash for jetty piers and sea walls? Why was CIE engineers and track crews made to work like Wombles, while money was no object to develop Irish Rail's marine pet project?

Bear in mind this massive investment in Marine infrastructure was being undertaken by a company calling itself Irish "Rail".

This brings up another issue. There was no major improvement to the rail infrastructure at Rosslare Harbour by Irish rail. Not for passengers and they even removed the rail freight facilities. This would be akin to Aer Lingus building their own airport and designing it so Aer Lingus themselves couldn't use it and also tailoring the facilities for RyanAir and soon.

A company called Irish "Rail" poured huge sums of capital investment, time, energy and plans into a Ro-Ro port off the south west coast while their rail infrastructure was falling apart. This all took place at a time the country was broke as well.

Did EU money pay for Rosslare? The whole episode makes no sense to me.

parsi

Transport21 Fan wrote: »

It is well known that 'Irish Rail' was on it's last leg in the late 80's and early 90's due to under-investment. Well except from one aspect, Rosslare Harbour.

The harbour at Rosslare got massive investment during these years. New sea walls, new channels, huge redreging programme, Wexford was made bigger by land reclaimation. A whole second harbour was built.

Now can anyone explain why money was no object at the time for the Rosslare Harbour reconstruction project, but at the same time IE was having to take old track panels out of the Midleton line to keep the Sligo and Westport trains running? Why there was no money to replace rusty relays in signals, but endless cash for jetty piers and sea walls? Why was CIE engineers and track crews made to work like Wombles, while money was no object to develop Irish Rail's marine pet project?

Bear in mind this massive investment in Marine infrastructure was being undertaken by a company calling itself Irish "Rail".

This brings up another issue. There was no major improvement to the rail infrastructure at Rosslare Harbour by Irish rail. Not for passengers and they even removed the rail freight facilities. This would be akin to Aer Lingus building their own airport and designing it so Aer Lingus themselves couldn't use it and also tailoring the facilities for RyanAir and soon.

A company called Irish "Rail" poured huge sums of capital investment, time, energy and plans into a Ro-Ro port off the south west coast while their rail infrastructure was falling apart. This all took place at a time the country was broke as well.

Did EU money pay for Rosslare? The whole episode makes no sense to me.

A google for Rosslare Harbour EU gave the following as its first result:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31994D0254:EN:NOT

Rosslare Harbour was one of the projects that received heavy EU funding.

Iarnrod Eireann are the port operator as it has always been a port owned/run by the railways (founded by the GSWR in 1906). Holyhead and Fishguard may be the same.

Transport21 Fan

parsi wrote: »

A google for Rosslare Harbour EU gave the following as its first result:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31994D0254:EN:NOT

Rosslare Harbour was one of the projects that received heavy EU funding.

Fair enough, that explains were they got the money from.

But can anyone explain why they never used the investment in Rosslare port to enhance it's relationship with the rail network? Was the money specificially for RoRo improvements only and not for any improved rail connectivity either passenger or freight?

Ham'nd'egger

Transport21 Fan wrote: »

Fair enough, that explains were they got the money from.

But can anyone explain why they never used the investment in Rosslare port to enhance it's relationship with the rail network? Was the money specificially for RoRo improvements only and not for any improved rail connectivity either passenger or freight?

Irish Rail don't directly own the line into Rosslare so there may have been issues or restrictions regards applying for monies for the line; perhaps there wasn't an EU grant for rail to avail of at the time. Certainly, two seperate applications would have needed to be made to get any available grant aid for same; that for the line to Wexford from Dublin and from Wexford to the harbour.

Other Irish ports received EU monies so it isn't at all unusual for Rosslare to have received cash, especially given it's importance for RO RO traffic, especially cars.

King Kelly

Transport21 Fan wrote: »

Fair enough, that explains were they got the money from.

But can anyone explain why they never used the investment in Rosslare port to enhance it's relationship with the rail network? Was the money specificially for RoRo improvements only and not for any improved rail connectivity either passenger or freight?

Transport 21 raises a valid point. There have been huge improvments to the infrastructure in Rosslare Harbour in the past 15 years. I well remember the circa 1950's shuttle bus that still spluttered out to the end of the pier up to late 80's to take passengers back from the ferries to the train waiting room. As a first impression of Ireland it was interesting!

However there has been little if no associated developement of the rail network. The same number of trains run on the Rosslare-Dublin routeas 30years ago. As anyone who used them knows the rolling stock was the left overs from other upgraded lines. At the moment passengers who disembark with luggage are faced with a "Commuter" train with little storage for the 2 1/2 hour trip to cover the 90 miles to Dublin.

My Uncle recently travelled from Frankfurt, Germany to Rosslare by train (and ferry!) via eurostar in a little over a day. Yet to visit relations in Killaloe as a train user he had to leave Wexford by train for Dublin, bus to Heuston, train to Limerick, bus to killaloe. He took to the bed after a day like that!

Surely there is justification for the upgradinging of the line, the rolling stock (next year I believe) and more importantantly the reopening of direct facilities to Waterford and the South West touruism centres

Victor

The railway and harbour was / is owned by the Fishguard & Rosslare Harbours Board (previously the Fishguard & Rosslare Railway Company).