Speeds on Irish Rail

donvito99

Does anyone know how fast the trains get up to on the main lines.

Ckal

Well, the old bangers went about 80-90 mph... I think. The new ones can reach up to 100 mph, but I doubt they'd actually go that speed. :P

1huge1

They never reach their full capacity (even if it isn't that fast) because the lines in general are unable to handle such speeds. They've been in the process of upgrading these lines for quiet some time now or so they say...

Davy

Didnt they have to slow down the new ones as well as adjust them because they were vibrating on the track

orbital83

I know the Sligo line is limited to 60mph Dublin-Maynooth and 75mph Maynooth-Sligo.

Of course, the end-to-end speed is more like 45mph, after all the slack has been built into the timetable to make sure the trains arrive "on time" at their end locations to boost IE's statistics.

Also don't forget the train has to slow down to 10mph to make sure it doesn't fall through Drumsna bridge over the Shannon. How old is that bridge now, at least 100 years?

Ham'nd'egger

John J wrote: »

I know the Sligo line is limited to 60mph Dublin-Maynooth and 75mph Maynooth-Sligo.

Of course, the end-to-end speed is more like 45mph, after all the slack has been built into the timetable to make sure the trains arrive "on time" at their end locations to boost IE's statistics.

Also don't forget the train has to slow down to 10mph to make sure it doesn't fall through Drumsna bridge over the Shannon. How old is that bridge now, at least 100 years?

Irish Rail is currently asking for tenders for replacement of it next year so it won't be for much longer. Part of the reason for the low speed limit on it is due to it being build as a swing span, not just it's age; there is far older bridges around the country that cope with no speed restrictions.

Highest speeds on Irish Rail are 100MPH working on sections of Dublin-Cork and Dublin-Belfast. Portarlington-Athlone-Galway is 80MPH. Athlone-Ballina/Westport is 70MPH as will be the WRC. The Sligo line is 80MPH but the old Mark 2 carriages that worked it run at 75MPH hence the limit being a little lower. It should be noted that there is parts on any line that have lower limits due to curves, level crossings etc.

AugustusMaximus

What are those new Spanish trains on Cork - Dublin capable of ?

Are the speeds going to be upped with new work on the tracks ?

Ham'nd'egger

AugustusMaximus wrote: »

What are those new Spanish trains on Cork - Dublin capable of ?

Are the speeds going to be upped with new work on the tracks ?

The trains on the Cork line are capable of up to 125MPH. As there is no loco in Ireland that can run at this speed nor is there track passed fit for such speeds, they have not been passed to travel faster in Ireland so 100MPH is their limit. The track work ongoing is concentrating on cutting down on sections of the track where speed limits are lower than 100MPH in order to make journeys quicker and to cut down on time and fuel economy used in acceleration and deceleration. When the KRC is finished, there will be savings of at least 10 minutes on times into and out of Heuston with some Irish Rail insiders pushing for up to 20 minutes saved on current times!

There is also serious research ongoing between Irish Rail and Translink to look at increasing speeds and rolling stock between Dublin, Cork and Belfast and likely costs involved but it won't be improved upon for the next few years.

T Corolla

Can anyone answer me as to why a train journey from Galway to Dublin is the same length of time as a train journey to Sligo considering Galway is nearer to Dublin than Sligo. Has it to do with the drivers

Red Alert

They pad their timetable so much so that they get 'on time' statistics... the trouble is that the train then has to wait at the intermediate stations until the scheduled departure time. Another reason to fire Barry Kenny & friends.

fh041205

T Corolla wrote: »

Can anyone answer me as to why a train journey from Galway to Dublin is the same length of time as a train journey to Sligo considering Galway is nearer to Dublin than Sligo. Has it to do with the drivers

Could there be more stops to Galway? I'd say its due to the fact that Galway bound trains must pass through kildare which tends to have quite low speed limits due to all this kildare route project.

dowlingm

Hamndegger wrote: »

Athlone-Ballina/Westport is 70MPH as will be the WRC.

Source?

T Corolla wrote: »

Can anyone answer me as to why a train journey from Galway to Dublin is the same length of time as a train journey to Sligo considering Galway is nearer to Dublin than Sligo. Has it to do with the drivers

Are you quoting rail distance here? The Galway line curves significantly between Athlone and Dublin through places like Tullamore and Portarlington whereas the Sligo line is a fairly direct route. It has nothing to do with "the drivers".

Ham'nd'egger

T Corolla wrote: »

Can anyone answer me as to why a train journey from Galway to Dublin is the same length of time as a train journey to Sligo considering Galway is nearer to Dublin than Sligo. Has it to do with the drivers

Dublin-Galway is about 2 hours 45 minutes for 129 miles; Dublin-Sligo is about 3 hours and 5 minutes for 134 1/2 miles. There is circa 25 minutes difference in timings though it can vary from service to service depending on allocated stops and crossing of trains on single line sections.

marmurr1916

We need to take railways much more seriously in this country. I hope that in the not too distant future we see the same level of investment in the main inter-city rail routes as we're currently seeing on the main inter-urban roads.

I don't see any reason why we can't have inter-city trains running at a top speed of 200 km/h (125 mph) given enough investment in track, signalling and rolling stock.

This should be the main priority for whatever transport development plan follows on from Transport 21.

Current speeds are far too low to allow train services to compete with the non-stop coach services between major cities that'll be operating on the completed motorway/HQDC within a few years: 2 hours 45 minutes to travel 129 miles is ridiculously slow for a train service (it's an average speed of 47 mph) and once the M6 is complete a non-stop bus service will be able to do the journey in the same time for currently 71% of the price of the cheapest (off-peak) train tickets.

IE need to get the average speed up to at least 65 mph on this route in the medium-term (a 2 hour journey) and hopefully they can get the average speed up to 100 mph giving a journey time of 1 hour 17 minutes.

Speeds like that would make a huge difference to rail travel in Ireland but we need to take the decision to invest in our railways to make this possible - if we can build a network of motorways/HQDCs we surely can improve our railways to this standard.

MOH

Well, making IE accountable to somebody, and making them pay a penalty for failing to meet realistic performance standards as assessed by an outside agency would be a help. But that's never going to happen.

marmurr1916

Well it's up to us to put pressure on politicians to ensure that it does.

Start putting the pressure on now to make sure that the follow-up plan to Transport 21 makes investment in rail and public transport its highest priorities.

In the meantime, we need to get the politicians to ensure that the padding is removed from IE's timetable and they start to run train services at the best possible speeds.

fh041205

marmurr1916 wrote: »

We need to take railways much more seriously in this country. I hope that in the not too distant future we see the same level of investment in the main inter-city rail routes as we're currently seeing on the main inter-urban roads.

I don't see any reason why we can't have inter-city trains running at a top speed of 200 km/h (125 mph) given enough investment in track, signalling and rolling stock.

This should be the main priority for whatever transport development plan follows on from Transport 21.

Current speeds are far too low to allow train services to compete with the non-stop coach services between major cities that'll be operating on the completed motorway/HQDC within a few years: 2 hours 45 minutes to travel 129 miles is ridiculously slow for a train service (it's an average speed of 47 mph) and once the M6 is complete a non-stop bus service will be able to do the journey in the same time for currently 71% of the price of the cheapest (off-peak) train tickets.

IE need to get the average speed up to at least 65 mph on this route in the medium-term (a 2 hour journey) and hopefully they can get the average speed up to 100 mph giving a journey time of 1 hour 17 minutes.

Speeds like that would make a huge difference to rail travel in Ireland but we need to take the decision to invest in our railways to make this possible - if we can build a network of motorways/HQDCs we surely can improve our railways to this standard.

You make a lot of sense there marmurr, very good post. I agree with most of that but I would worry about where the money is going to come from for us to invest in IR. The ecomomy has experienced its most successfukl period in recent times and money has been heavily invested in the national rail system but after all this interconnector etc. is finished it could be a while before we see any further big changes. I'm not saying this is definately going to happen but it could be the case unfortunately.

dowlingm

MOH wrote: »

making them pay a penalty for failing to meet realistic performance standards

which then comes out of the "surplus" IE "make" every year... once you take the Eur300m or so subsidy the State pays every year into account.

Here's my prescription: sack the board and tell the replacements to put a boot under management or face the sack themselves. Sadly the unions have been able to get away with their wildcat actions because the IE management has been so poor that the unions can point to that as justification (such as the new timetable / roster fiasco)

KC61

T Corolla wrote: »

Can anyone answer me as to why a train journey from Galway to Dublin is the same length of time as a train journey to Sligo considering Galway is nearer to Dublin than Sligo. Has it to do with the drivers

It has nothing to do with drivers, but rather the number of stops and the number of crossings with other trains on single track sections, along with additional time added to the schedule for works between Heuston and Hazelhatch. I'll try to give a technical explanation in simple terms:

The fastest train from Dublin to Galway takes 2 hours 26 minutes, with stops at Athlone, Ballinasloe and Athenry, substantially less than the time on the Dublin/Sligo route, typically it is 2 hours 40 minutes, but other trains can take up to 2 hours 49 minutes (the slowest is timed for slower push/pull rolling stock). All times on this route include a temporary 6 minute additional buffer added into the schedule to cover for temporary speed restrictions that can be introduced from time to time from Inchicore to Hazelhatch due to the Kildare route project during the period of the timetable.

Trains on the Dublin/Galway route are timetabled for operation with Mark 3 hauled stock, which in general requires 3 minutes for every stop that the train makes at a station (2 minutes at the station and 30 seconds for acceleration and deceleration). The Dublin/Sligo route is operated by and timetabled for 22000 Class railcars which have faster acceleration/deceleration and only stop at each station for 1 minute. However, some of the benefit of this is lost on the Sligo route by the fact that every train has to pass at least three other trains en route (and some four!), which adds additional time to the trip, explained below.

Depending on the number of stops, of course a train can take longer to complete its journey. Where two trains pass one another on a single track railway (either at a station or at a remote passing loop), one of the trains will have extra time (typically 6 minutes) added to the schedule to allow for potential delays to it or the other train - this is common practice and is necessary to deliver reliability on a single track railway.

Apart from this, there are approximately 6 minutes built into every standard train schedule to allow for delays en route, which is usually built into the last section of the timetabled journey. The exception to this is the Dublin/Cork service which has about 10 minutes recovery time.

The introduction of the 22000 Class on the Galway route will deliver some journey time improvements, which should be seen when the next timetable change takes place, but if frequency increases this may be diminished due to extra crossings with trains going in the opposite direction. The only long term solution to counteract this is to extend the amount of double track on the route.

KC61

The other point to note here is that virtually all of the investment heretofore in infrastructure has been in delivering a safe and reliable railway, rather than delivering real improvements in journey times.

Some routes have now reverted to their pre-1997 journey times (when the Knockcroghery derailment took place) or are faster, such as Mallow-Tralee, Portarlington-Galway/Westport, and Kildare-Waterford. Other routes still have improvements ongoing, such as Dublin-Cork with work to be carried out at Limerick Junction later this year and other points that will allow for trains to operate at or near the full line speed. The effect of the Kildare Route Project (KRP) has to be allowed for - it has extended all journeys into/out of Heuston (temporarily) by 6 minutes.

The investment has focussed on eliminating level crossings, resignalling with mini-CTC, resiting signals etc. Now work needs to focus on delivering real improvements in journey time, which is why we are now seeing a proposal for a complete relay and upgrade of the Dublin/Cork route to deliver faster line speeds.

However, delivering real improvements in journey times will get more and more difficult on single track routes if frequency increases. The more times that trains have to pass or cross another train, the longer the journey will be, which means that longer stretches of double track are probably the only solution. For example, I would suggest that Portarlington-Athlone and Athenry-Galway will become totally congested in the medium term unless some double-tracking takes place.

trellheim

some double-tracking takes place

some re-doubling rather ?


and maybe run a few trains via Connolly-Mullingar-Athlone

marmurr1916

fh041205 wrote: »

You make a lot of sense there marmurr, very good post. I agree with most of that but I would worry about where the money is going to come from for us to invest in IR. The ecomomy has experienced its most successfukl period in recent times and money has been heavily invested in the national rail system but after all this interconnector etc. is finished it could be a while before we see any further big changes. I'm not saying this is definately going to happen but it could be the case unfortunately.

Thanks - we really do need to improve the railway infrastructure to get speeds up and allow for more frequent services.

In the long-run we'd save money by investing in railways due to reductions in the negative environmental impact of roads and road traffic which costs hundreds of millions every year.

In the future, I'm only going to vote for parties that have decent policies on railways/public transport.

KC61

trellheim wrote: »

some re-doubling rather ?


and maybe run a few trains via Connolly-Mullingar-Athlone

Indeed....it should be re-doubled!

While I think that Connolly-Athlone via Mullingar will reopen eventually, work will still be needed on the track on the Portarlington-Athlone route, as service levels will need to increase to a minimum hourly frequency on that route.

Remember also that while Connolly-Athlone is shorter, it does not have the benefit of the 100mph line speed that Heuston-Portarlington has (albeit restricted in many places), and there is also a far more intense suburban operation in place and planned between Connolly and Maynooth using a two-track railway, thus potentially slowing down services to/from Athlone.