Slán leat, a Chú na Mara

Yoda

I took the 14:25 from Westport to Heuston yesterday. Evidently this was the Cú na Mara's final journey. She will be scrapped and recycled, the ticket dude said.

I guess that explains why the toilet in the first class car wasn't repaired over the last four months. :rolleyes:

benbulbin

Tried the new Dublin - Westport train the other day. Nice to see the clean fresh interior and power sockets in some seats, toilets are a big improvement. But overall it feels a bit plastic and cramped, not the huge improvement you would have expected given the hype, was expecting something more like the Enterprise in terms of space and comfort, where as the new shorter trains have a more Ryanair feel to them. Chú na Mara was showing it's age but they were fairly comfortable. Shame they can't do something about the main problem, the SPEED! Still taking almost 4 hours to Westport. Train crawls into many stations even though the rail has been upgraded all the way.

Ham'nd'egger

The Mark 3 Internationals were a wonder of the ingenuity of Irish Rail in the late 80's and early 1990's. Faced with zero State investment and the low levels of comfort and reliability with some of the very old Park Royal and Craven carriages (slam doors and slide windows), there was little cash to source badly needed rolling stock. While cash was found for the Mark 3A to expand commuter routes, there was still more needed, and fast.

Some trade enquiries led IE to a siding in Crewe and abandoned British Rail sets from the long forgotten Advanced Passenger Train. Upon mechanical inspection, some of the disused stock were purchased (I believe the price at the time was IR£45,000 per piece) and taken over to Ireland for conversion. They were gutted of their British Rail fittings and refurnished, new bogies and air conditioning also being fitted before being tested and introduced onto the Galway line. While theoretically used stock, the carriages had little mileage and were not far off new in spite of being unused for years.

AlekSmart

Well said Ham`nd`egger and an indication that at many elvels within the CIE group there has always been a high degree of independent engineering integrity which if nurtured could have provided positive results.

However the days of Inchicore Works being able to provide any real level of high level full-scale heavy rail engineering work are drawing rapidly to a close as the miracle of outsourcing wraps its mantle around us all.

So we get to see entire rail sets being shipped to the Czech Republic and further afield for relatively simple refurb work and the remainder of our unservicable stock sometimes lying idle for months awaiting parts.....Progress is a relative thing I suppose ???

corktina

Hamndegger wrote: »

The Mark 3 Internationals were a wonder of the ingenuity of Irish Rail in the late 80's and early 1990's. Faced with zero State investment and the low levels of comfort and reliability with some of the very old Park Royal and Craven carriages (slam doors and slide windows), there was little cash to source badly needed rolling stock. While cash was found for the Mark 3A to expand commuter routes, there was still more needed, and fast.

Some trade enquiries led IE to a siding in Crewe and abandoned British Rail sets from the long forgotten Advanced Passenger Train. Upon mechanical inspection, some of the disused stock were purchased (I believe the price at the time was IR£45,000 per piece) and taken over to Ireland for conversion. They were gutted of their British Rail fittings and refurnished, new bogies and air conditioning also being fitted before being tested and introduced onto the Galway line. While theoretically used stock, the carriages had little mileage and were not far off new in spite of being unused for years.

sorry but these coaches were a speculative build by BREL not APT stock

Prof_V

They were known as the International Train and were built by BREL (the then train-building arm of BR) as a demonstrator for export customers. The train ran in normal service between London and Manchester for a while around 1986/87. As it was a demonstrator, it had a lot of oddball extras in individual coaches to show off what BREL could do (one had the seats arranged in compartments, another had vending machines, etc.). Most of these didn't survive the conversion, but I believe no two coaches are quite the same, even now, which makes the train challenging to maintain. I think the Gabonese railways bought some coaches of similar design, but other export orders didn't materialise.

There was, as Corktina pointed out, no real connection with the APT.

L1011

They're not APT related at all and I believe they were got FOC in a swapsie deal for 001/201 class locos with the scrapyard itself?

Prof_V

MYOB wrote: »

They're not APT related at all and I believe they were got FOC in a swapsie deal for 001/201 class locos with the scrapyard itself?

There was definitely a deal involving bartering old locomotives for coaches, but I think that was actually the Mk2abc (non-air-conditioned Mk2s, now all gone) from Vic Berry in Leicester a few years earlier -a former IÉ engineer told me they were delivered with "Condemned" written on the side. As far as I know, the International Train came direct from BREL or its successors.

L1011

Well, those ones did have the rusty floors...

patrickc

ah i quiet liked them have to say