Western Rail Corridor (all disused sections)

bk

steamengine wrote: »

If you are talking about speeds then for the umpteenth time, your beloved coaches have a top speed of 62.5 mph and the train 100 mph. Apples and oranges on the Cork route as the train stops at the various stations along the way and still has a shorter journey time to Cork.

Sure, the train might have a higher top speed, but again in the real world people don't care about that. They just care how long it takes to make the actual journey.

Previously to get to O'Connell St the bus was faster. Now with the new schedule it should be about 10 minutes slower, but still more convenient (no dragging my bag off the train, walk to luas, wait for it, pay for it and get on it to take me to O'Connell St, the bus takes me direct). Certainly not a massive difference in times and with a price difference of between 2.7 and 4 times cheaper, well worth it.

Certainly it isn't anything like end of the road described slow and rickety. Anyone who seriously believes that is just fooling themselves and showing themselves to be a pure rail fanboy.

Sponge Bob

bk wrote: »

Sure, the train might have a higher top speed, but again in the real world people don't care about that. They just care how long it takes to make the actual journey.

Previously to get to O'Connell St the bus was faster. Now with the new schedule it should be about 10 minutes slower, but still more convenient (no dragging my bag off the train, walk to luas, wait for it, pay for it and get on it to take me to O'Connell St, the bus takes me direct). Certainly not a massive difference in times and with a price difference of between 2.7 and 4 times cheaper, well worth it

This is exactly what has happened Galway - Dublin. The bus picks you up and drops you around O Connell bridge where IE leaves you to brave the vagaries of the Luas Red line to O Connell street and back. The NEW IE timetables make it possible to do Galway-O Connell street in around the same time as the bus....and including a luas transfer. For the past 3 years trains were slower than the buses.

The point really is that WRC 'fans' keep telling Galway people that buses are substandard and not an adequate substitute for trains. Galway people simply ignore them and use the bus. If you cannot win over the Galway people to the rail that already exists then what is the business case for the WRC again pray tell????

corktina

just for interest, i'll post what happened to me the other day.... we were in Cork City and daughter was to catch the 4.20 train back to Dublin. Trying to cross the city, we realised we wouldn't make it in time so being on the Christy Ring bridge at the the time we headed for Mallow, passed the Brewery at 4,20 and she caught the train in Mallow....thing is, I didn't (couldn't cos of traffic) exceed the speed limit all the way. Just because a train is RATED at 100mph doesn't mean it DOES anything like that over a distance.

foggy_lad

steamengine wrote: »

If you are talking about speeds then for the umpteenth time, your beloved coaches have a top speed of 62.5 mph and the train 100 mph. Apples and oranges on the Cork route as the train stops at the various stations along the way and still has a shorter journey time to Cork.

In my experience the train is more ....etc - we can go round in endless circles on that one.

All trains on that line would have a top speed of maybe 40-50Kph because the line would be so desperately bad if it was ever relaid and opened.

The only 100Mph stretches on Irish railways are on the Cork line and those are only a few miles long before sinking back into bog and poorly maintained track. Also travelling at 80-100mph for a few miles is fantastic until you are stuck then at the next station because the line is blocked by the oncoming train because your train is early.

Trains will never beat bus transport in Ireland or indeed in England Wales or Scotland!

foggy_lad

steamengine wrote: »

I'm one of the few around here old enough to know what the old view of Irish Rail is. I think most peoples experience including my own would have been that in general Irish Rail and formerly CIE were indeed reliable train operators.

Now you're just taking the piss!

The Idyl Race

foggy_lad wrote: »

Trains will never beat bus transport in Ireland or indeed in England Wales or Scotland!

Oh Jesus. :rolleyes:

The Idyl Race

bk wrote: »

You clearly have never been on any of the bus services like Aircoach, Citylink, GoBus, etc. Because they certainly aren't slow or horrid.

Most are the same speed or faster then the train.

In my experience they are also more comfortable then a train. They have far more comfortable seats, that actually recline and are partly or fully leather and have more leg space. The ride of these coaches is often far smother and far quieter then the train.

I can actually sleep on the bus to Cork, but I could never sleep on the train.

You keep saying buses are slow and horrid, when they clearly aren't and it simply weakens all your other arguments.

So, why then are buses slow and horrid on routes that have no train competition? Dublin to Derry and Dublin to Donegal come to mind and we're talking about decent roads on big chunks of the journey as well. Could it be that private buses and their apologists want to take the railways out so that they can fill their boots?

You'll get no beautiful toasted rolls in Monaghan or Cavan for your wee-wee stop. That's the future you want. Cars for those who can drive them, buses as residual for the rest

steamengine

foggy_lad wrote: »

Now you're just taking the piss!

I am quite prepared to let others judge !!! Guffaws in the form of thanks don't interest me or indeed posts composed of wild or inaccurate imaginings such as trains breaking down all the time and buses ferrying people.

foggy_lad

The Idyl Race wrote: »

So, why then are buses slow and horrid on routes that have no train competition? Dublin to Derry and Dublin to Donegal come to mind and we're talking about decent roads on big chunks of the journey as well. Could it be that private buses and their apologists want to take the railways out so that they can fill their boots?

You'll get no beautiful toasted rolls in Monaghan or Cavan for your wee-wee stop. That's the future you want. Cars for those who can drive them, buses as residual for the rest

Dublin to Derry, Donegal and Letterkenny now have the best of Bus Éireann's fleet operating on their routes and do it a dam sight faster than any Thomas the tank engine could ever do it!

As for your Beautiful toasted rolls, not everyone wants to feed their face on a journey bit for those who do they can always visit their favourite shop beforehand and buy all the cold drinks and sandwiches and rolls they want without having to re-mortgage the house to pay for them! Irish Rail never really did catering and certainly don't do any now and Rail Gourmet is more like prison tuck shop fare.

foggy_lad

steamengine wrote: »

I am quite prepared to let others judge !!! Guffaws in the form of thanks don't interest me or indeed posts composed of wild or inaccurate imaginings such as trains breaking down all the time and buses ferrying people.

You should follow Irish Fail on Twitter and take note of the delays and cancelled services, mostly on intercity services which people rely on most and those on board are usually captive in the stranded trains without even an apology or a free cup of tea. If they were on a coach a replacement can be sourced locally within minutes and have people back on the road ASAP something that is not in the Irish Fail vocabulary.

steamengine

foggy_lad wrote: »

You should follow Irish Fail on Twitter and take note of the delays and cancelled services, mostly on intercity services which people rely on most and those on board are usually captive in the stranded trains without even an apology or a free cup of tea. If they were on a coach a replacement can be sourced locally within minutes and have people back on the road ASAP something that is not in the Irish Fail vocabulary.

It's up to you to back up your posts with data not me. You've said the same about the Enterprise - forever breaking down, yet when I go out to photograph them, they always turn up more or less on time. But heaven forbid that rational observation disturb the continuing national rail network bashfest.

The Idyl Race

steamengine wrote: »

It's up to you to back up your posts with data not me. You've said the same about the Enterprise - forever breaking down, yet when I go out to photograph them, they always turn up more or less on time. But heaven forbid that rational observation disturb the continuing national rail network bashfest.

Indeed. That is the real purpose of this thread. Trains are bad, mmm'kay?

foggy_lad

steamengine wrote: »

It's up to you to back up your posts with data not me. You've said the same about the Enterprise - forever breaking down, yet when I go out to photograph them, they always turn up more or less on time. But heaven forbid that rational observation disturb the continuing national rail network bashfest.

Well it is obvious that when they break down you get a call from some friendly CIE person to stay at home where it's warm as the train is broke down/late.

Here is the address for the twitter feed,

https://twitter.com/IrishRail

there are daily delays and cancellations but todays calamity is the 3d secure on the website and people losing money to TVMs.

eastwest

galwaycyclist wrote: »

Think I better deal with this. The key target market for the Greenways will be cycling tourists. The old Bord Failte did a study on activity tourists back in the 1990s and found that cycling tourists spent more per capita than golfers, anglers or equestrians.

This is from a briefing note from the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs

www.cbi.eu/system/files/marketintel/2011_Cycling_tourism_in_Germany.pdf



So the political leaders on the Western Seaboard would happily turn their noses up at a slice of a market worth €9 billion in one European country alone?

This is absolutley true, but is very often misunderstood and may well account for the antipathy that is shown to leisure tourism by councillors.
Cyclists and walkers typically spend 20% longer in a country and spend 30% more than other tourists. Most of the sector is drawn from the higher earning/highwer spending categories and far from being the bottom of the pile, these are the most profitable tourists that can be attracted to an area.
In addition, such tourists must spend on accommodation and food & drink locally, unlike motoring tourists who can and often do come to an area to view an attraction and then leave without spending any money. Leisure tourism has the highest distributive effect of any industry and typically brings prosperity to any area that develops it properly.
For examples, look at the Mulranny in Mayo, or any of the towns along the Camino de Santiago, or along the Hadrian's Wall path in Britain, or the New Zealand rail Trail. These places are booming with this kind of tourism, a sector that is growing every year.

steamengine

foggy_lad wrote: »

Well it is obvious that when they break down you get a call from some friendly CIE person to stay at home where it's warm as the train is broke down/late.

Here is the address for the twitter feed,

https://twitter.com/IrishRail

there are daily delays and cancellations but todays calamity is the 3d secure on the website and people losing money to TVMs.

Point proven re your posting style - a totally false assertion !!! Add that to your dataless suppositions and wild imaginings !!!

foggy_lad

steamengine wrote: »

Point proven re your posting style - a totally false assertion !!! Add that to your dataless suppositions and wild imaginings !!!

You have been told where the details of delays and cancelled trains appear, bar wiping your backside for you what else can people do?

now back to the normal slow WRC service:D

steamengine

foggy_lad wrote: »

You have been told where the details of delays and cancelled trains appear, bar wiping your backside for you what else can people do?

now back to the normal slow WRC service:D

Charming post - losing are we ???

steamengine

foggy_lad wrote: »

All trains on that line would have a top speed of maybe 40-50Kph because the line would be so desperately bad if it was ever relaid and opened.

The only 100Mph stretches on Irish railways are on the Cork line and those are only a few miles long before sinking back into bog and poorly maintained track. Also travelling at 80-100mph for a few miles is fantastic until you are stuck then at the next station because the line is blocked by the oncoming train because your train is early.

Trains will never beat bus transport in Ireland or indeed in England Wales or Scotland!

Absolute tosh !!!

foggy_lad

steamengine wrote: »

Charming post - losing are we ???

Every taxpayer in the country is losing each week because rail fan-boys and enthusiasts were and still are allowed to dictate railway policy in this country, it makes no difference where they are from or what their previous experience is, when they force the likes of the Western Rail Corridor to proceed without any real evidence of demand or social need they are crippling the country and more importantly ringing the death knell for rail transport across the whole island!

The Idyl Race

Talk to the hand wrote: »

The WRC is but one railway line in the state. However we still just about have a good density of railway lines in the Island, apart from the entire North West. Whole counties like Fermanagh, Donegal and Tyrone have not had railway connections for over 50 years now due mostly to NI/RoI government policies of favouring road development over rail.

The spatial strategy of successive Irish governments has always been to favour one-off housing in rural areas and to effectively scatter the population.

This policy has not encouraged any form of sustainability as the rural landscape across Ireland has changed from a primarily agricultural one to a semi-suburban one with the onset of one off houses across the land.

Billions of Pounds then Euro have been spent of taxpayers money to sustain the semi-suburban approach. Consultants from the US have been imported at great expense to endorse the one off model.

Concepts such as an integrated transport system where road compliments rail services are almost alien in Ireland and even the state-owned bus company runs services not complimentary to the rail service, but in competition with it. Bus connections are timed to leave in many cases just before a train arrives, and in the case of the Irish Rail owned port Rosslare, a train to Dublin leaves just as the ferry arrives, ensuring no ferry passengers can use it. Insane isn't it? But no, this is Ireland.

The railway line from Athenry to Claremorris and onto Collooney is in place but could be re-instated as part of a wider link across the West of Ireland. The so-called Western Rail Corridor could be extended north to Derry via Donegal Town and Letterkenny. A new alignment however would be needed to run as heavy rail never connected these towns before. Likewise the Claremorris-Collooney section itself was a light railway with several crossing points. A more sensible approach would be to plan a dualling of the N17 and bring with it a railway along the central reservation, linking Derry to Donegal to Sligo and down to Galway and onto Limerick and Cork.

The calls for a greenway on the route appear in part to be motivated more by a desire by the protagonists to stop the restoration of the railway dead in its tracks. Having said that the route as it stands is not ideal and might require more expense to rebuild as is rather than a completely new route. But CIE own this land. A sensible approach might be to agree with landowners the transfer of land as appropriate to allow a combined rail and road route to be built in a more appropriate place.

Serious state investment in infrastructure is one way in which we could get ourselves out of the recession. But in addition to the infrastucture spend we need to think our way out of the one off house mentality. Towns need to be planned with sustainability in mind.

Those towns need jobs, they need roads and yes, they need rail. Shannon new town in the sixties was an example of how investment could be brought into an area with the right tax breaks. Industry is what brings real wealth. Tourism is important but it is a service rather than an industry. We have to make a choice. Are we going to generate wealth in the future or are we going to hope wealth visits us once a year and buys the odd bainin jumper and a cup of tea?

There is no easy answer to Ireland's economic problems but short term destructive policies designed to encourage rural scatterment will not work. We need to think out the right spatial strategy to encourage development in the west, and then act on it.

This is the most sensible post I have read on this thread in quite some time. It is interesting how in the United States in particular a line seems to be have been drawn between those in favour of sustainable development and those who want to encourage sprawl - short term gain for private enterprises but long term atomisation of communities. Back on the hobbled future rail development thread I cited the example of Letterkenny as a sprawled development, unconnected to the rail network but spread as far as the eye can see, but the pro-sprawlers here cried like babbies to the mod over the conclusions drawn, that a proper spatial strategy which included rail transport as one element of sustainable rural development could be a more European like refocusing of how and why we develop as we do.

A handful of connected people sell land to the State and sell land for development. As one letter writer to the Irish Times said a number of years ago, don't be surprised if tourists don't want to see your endless vistas of bungalows and industrial estates masquerading as shopping centres. A purely road focused strategy coupled with hobbling what's left of the railway network will destroy what is good about this country, not only for visitors but for the rest of us.

The Idyl Race

foggy_lad wrote: »

Every taxpayer in the country is losing each week because rail fan-boys and enthusiasts were and still are allowed to dictate railway policy in this country, it makes no difference where they are from or what their previous experience is, when they force the likes of the Western Rail Corridor to proceed without any real evidence of demand or social need they are crippling the country and more importantly ringing the death knell for rail transport across the whole island!

I think now, laddie buck, after reading your constant quick on the draw posts, that you have an extremely fast mouth but without any kind of analytical brain to back it up. You have never moved one iota from your incessant rattling on about buses being superior to trains, or from your wild assertions that never have any substance to them, other than your own apparent constant progress around the country by bus at the taxpayers' expense.

Westtip and Corktina, the two most articulate opponents of the WRC are interesting and thought provoking, even though I disagree with many of their conclusions. You however contribute nothing of any value to this thread except to be some kind of barky dog that wades in with yaps of Me Too-ism.

corktina

foggy...fyp..

LOCAL Trains will never beat bus transport in Ireland or indeed in England Wales or Scotland!

Intercity and suburban are a different matter.

Idyl thank you for your courtesy, you are welcome to disagree with me.

bk

As pointed out by foggy, the Derry, Donegal and Letterkenny routes are all serviced by pretty nice, brand new BE coaches *

* However I would say BE made serious mistakes with their recent coach purchases, leg room is pretty tight on them and no toilet. The spec doesn't match the current reality on the ground of the competition they face. BE made some mistakes similar to IR, over estimating the growth of their service and usage and underestimating the competition. But the mistake is much smaller impact then IR's.

Catering has never been great on Irish Rail, too low quality and too expensive. Having spent 9 years travelling Dublin to Cork once a month by rail, I only got a meal twice on it and it wasn't very nice and way too expensive for what it is. My strategy quickly became buy a much nicer, cheaper food before hand and take it on board. I do exactly the same on Aircoach now, but have an even better selection of food to buy before the journey due to the stop location on Westmoreland St.

Reliability, you must be kidding, IR's reputation has been awful for most of it's history. Train break downs like the cravens were regular occurrences. I have no idea how someone can say they historically had a good reputation!!!

In fairness, IR has vastly improved over the last 10 years and now they seem to be very reliable. The Mark 4's while being very noisy and bumpy ride at least seem to be reliable and the 22000 are fantastically reliable, due to their DMU design. The enterprise trains continued to be pretty unreliable over the past 10 years, with lots of break downs and cancellations, but in fairness it looks like they might have this finally licked this year with the introduction of Gen Vans on the route.

This is one area I will certainly praise IR, they have definitely come on leaps and bounds. But then it shouldn't really be surprising given the relative young age of their fleet. But historically, you have to be joking, they were very unreliable.

BTW I'll say it again, I'm not anti rail, I'm a very big supporter of rail where it makes sense. Services like DART, Luas, Commuter rail in a large, relatively densely populated city like Dublin all make sense.

However building very expensive rail lines across an area with the lowest population density in Europe just makes zero sense. Running decent bus services at a much lower cost makes much more sense to provide for public transport for these areas.

I agree that in Ireland, we have a very car dependent, spread out, low density society and yes I would love to see that change. But building trains across empty fields won't change that.

If you want to change this, you have to do something like the CAPS project in Cork. Where they laid out a 30 year plan, to build up certain areas of high density towns around locations of possible train stations and then over a period of 30 years actually enforcing planning laws to make it happen until they got to a stage where it made commuter train a sustainable reality. Now that is the way you do it.

So my suggestion to improve the future possibility of the WRC is to:

1) Turn the unused lines into a greenway to protect the line right of way.
2) Put together a 30 year plan to set up high density housing and towns along the route and actually make that plan work by real planning enforcement.
3) In 30 years come back and actually extend the WRC if the population density and other circumstances (price of petrol, quality of roads, etc.) justifies it.

eastwest

wrote:

BTW I'll say it again, I'm not anti rail, I'm a very big supporter of rail where it makes sense. Services like DART, Luas, Commuter rail in a large, relatively densely populated city like Dublin all make sense.

However building very expensive rail lines across an area with the lowest population density in Europe just makes zero sense. Running decent bus services at a much lower cost makes much more sense to provide for public transport for these areas.

I agree that in Ireland, we have a very car dependent, spread out, low density society and yes I would love to see that change. But building trains across empty fields won't change that.

If you want to change this, you have to do something like the CAPS project in Cork. Where they laid out a 30 year plan, to build up certain areas of high density towns around locations of possible train stations and then over a period of 30 years actually enforcing planning laws to make it happen until they got to a stage where it made commuter train a sustainable reality. Now that is the way you do it.

So my suggestion to improve the future possibility of the WRC is to:

1) Turn the unused lines into a greenway to protect the line right of way.
2) Put together a 30 year plan to set up high density housing and towns along the route and actually make that plan work by real planning enforcement.
3) In 30 years come back and actually extend the WRC if the population density and other circumstances (price of petrol, quality of roads, etc.) justifies it.

That's far too sensible, I'm afraid. There's no way that a minister could understand that kind of logic.
Much better to abandon the route and let it be taken over, while agreeing with everybody.
You'd never make it as a politician!

steamengine

bk wrote: »

Reliability, you must be kidding, IR's reputation has been awful for most of it's history. Train break downs like the cravens were regular occurrences. I have no idea how someone can say they historically had a good reputation!!!

It's a pity you don't read posts accurately as I never mentioned their reputation. I was expressing a personal opinion about their reliability in the old days that Foggy referred to. I travelled to Cork on a weekly, sometimes two weekly basis, back in the late sixties over a three year period - I remember the lates actually - about 2. Breakdowns NIL - ! No shows Nil !

I travelled to secondary school every day in the mid sixties for five years and over that total period there were only a few lates and no breakdowns - that is reliability in my book.

I would argue that the reputation you refer to is justified in certain cases, but not overall. Where it's justified well and good - where the pudding is over-egged then the net effect of that is detrimental to the future of the railway system and in fact irresponsible. I think coming from a railway family background and having worked for a while in Inchicore further entitles me to express a somewhat informed opinion about what is truth and what is fiction.

pigtown

bk wrote: »

If you want to change this, you have to do something like the CAPS project in Cork. Where they laid out a 30 year plan, to build up certain areas of high density towns around locations of possible train stations and then over a period of 30 years actually enforcing planning laws to make it happen until they got to a stage where it made commuter train a sustainable reality. Now that is the way you do it.

Ya the Cork Area Strategic Plan is one of the few examples of sensible locally led planning in Ireland. A similar one for the Mid-West, MWASP was commishioned last year.

bk wrote: »

So my suggestion to improve the future possibility of the WRC is to:

1) Turn the unused lines into a greenway to protect the line right of way.
2) Put together a 30 year plan to set up high density housing and towns along the route and actually make that plan work by real planning enforcement.
3) In 30 years come back and actually extend the WRC if the population density and other circumstances (price of petrol, quality of roads, etc.) justifies it.

That all sounds very sensible. My question to you and others on the thread is what you think should be done about the existing WRC? Not many posts on here about the part if the line that already exists.

serfboard

steamengine wrote: »

I would argue that the reputation you refer to is justified in certain cases, but not overall. Where it's justified well and good - where the pudding is over-egged then the net effect of that is detrimental to the future of the railway system and in fact irresponsible.

Whatever it is about train travel, but when someone is on one, and it's late, they tend to make sweeping generalisations as if it's always the case.

I remember being on trains in the UK in the 80s - pre-privatisation - and the Brits whinging and moaning about British Rail. I bet they wish they had it back now, given the extortionate prices they're being charged currently for peak-time journeys.

I had a similar experience in Ireland in the mid-noughties. I travelled by train every week from Galway to Dublin for about 3 years. The amount of times the train broke down was none, the amount of times it was (very) late you could count on one hand. Then, one day I'm on it and it's 10 minutes late leaving and a fellow passenger says "It's typical .... ".

And despite what some posters think this thread is about, I think bk most accurately represents my views when he says:

bk wrote: »

I'm not anti rail, I'm a very big supporter of rail where it makes sense. Services like DART, Luas, Commuter rail in a large, relatively densely populated city like Dublin all make sense.

To this I'd definitely add Intercity to Belfast and Cork (with improvements in terms of journey times), and probably Intercity to Waterford (serving the large towns of Carlow and Kilkenny), Galway (Tullamore and Athlone) and possibly Limerick. The Sligo line past Longford, and the Mayo and Kerry lines I'm not so sure about.

bk wrote: »

However building very expensive rail lines across an area with the lowest population density in Europe just makes zero sense. Running decent bus services at a much lower cost makes much more sense to provide for public transport for these areas.

I agree that in Ireland, we have a very car dependent, spread out, low density society and yes I would love to see that change. But building trains across empty fields won't change that.

+1.

eastwest

pigtown wrote: »

Ya the Cork Area Strategic Plan is one of the few examples of sensible locally led planning in Ireland. A similar one for the Mid-West, MWASP was commishioned last year.



That all sounds very sensible. My question to you and others on the thread is what you think should be done about the existing WRC? Not many posts on here about the part if the line that already exists.

I reckon that the part of the line that already exists, from Ennis to Athenry, should be given (say) a year to get to break-even or close to break-even, and given the tools to do that in the meantime, i.e online booking, special one-off discounted fares etc. It needs a real push to drive business to it.
If it doesnt get any better in twelve months it means one thing -- people are not going to use it and it should be mothballed until such time as it makes sense to run trains on it. In the meantime, it could maybe be given to a railway preservation society to run steam trains on it. It should certainly not be abandoned to allow the whole cycle of land-grab and compensation to start again on that section.
The rest of the route north of Athenry needs to have a greenway laid on it as a matter of urgency, but should have ownership retained by CIE. As others have suggested, use of this greenway should be by way of permissive access, so that CIE could revert to rail use without having to ask anyone if rail became the optimum use for the asset at some time in the future.
While the various sides squabble about the rail v tourism argument, the asset is being eroded before our eyes, so somebody needs to get the finger out and do this, quickly. If it only meant a thousand jobs in the north west, that would still be a thousand people who could continue to live, work and pay taxes in Ireland.
The scrap rails are unsuitable for a new railway and would need to be lifted in any case, so why not sell them off and use the money to create a cycleway/walkway? There is a bed of stone ballast all along the line under the sleepers (most of which are rotten); this needs only to be topped with code 804 and some grit, and rolled out to give a surface similar to the Mayo Greenway. It's not at all difficult, and it is very cheap to do. Others have suggested that the scrap rails are worth around €10,000/km, so this would cover the cost and leave change.
Laying a trail like this wouldn't cause a problem for CIE if they needed to lay a track on the route in the future. The ballast and track on the section north of Claremorris isn't suitable for heavy rail in any case, and would have to be removed and re-done to a higher standard. Scraping away a bit of 804 and grit would be no big deal in that event, and would cost nothing extra.
I heard a WOT spokesman on TV a year or two back saying that they wouldn't allow the rails to be lifted because that would be the end of the railway dream. In fact, the rails have to come up anyway, regardless of the final decision about the route. Leaving them down is just a political convenience designed to keep all sides living in hope.

corktina

i beleive the Cork plan is still being progresssed with a huge housing area earmarked between Cork and Blarney alongside the Railway and the already dual carriageway N20 section.

bk

pigtown wrote: »

That all sounds very sensible. My question to you and others on the thread is what you think should be done about the existing WRC? Not many posts on here about the part if the line that already exists.

Very good question and to be honest I'm not sure there is much that can be done to be honest.

Allowing online bookings might help a very small bit. I assume this will come with the expected overall upgrade of Irish Rails online booking system that is supposedly coming this year and which is badly needed. Seemingly it will allow for far more routes to be booked and far greater flexibility in managing your booking, changing times, etc. At least I hope so.

More advertising of it seems pointless. I'm certain most people who live within a usable distance of it already know about it.

The trains used on the line are perfectly fine, totally reasonable for such a low usage line. Newer trains wouldn't make any difference.

You might be able to make further minor adjustments to the schedule which might help.

But non of this fixes the fundamental problem with the WRC. Too low population density along the line, while being more expensive and slower then the competing bus service.

And little can be done to fix this fundamental issue.

The truth is even phase 1 of the WRC should have never been built, at least not in this way.

Instead a much more direct route should have been identified, the land reserved and a 30 year plan like the one I mentioned above put in place. And then a few years later, when the population density is there to support it, then build it.