Western Rail Corridor (all disused sections)

mayo.mick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfv0EGFjxK0

corktina

end of the road wrote: »

how is it. many of our lines have motor ways. motor ways should have no place deciding whether a line should be opened or not. build it properly, put a toal on the motor way, and then lets see

you'll have to wait a long time by the looks of it. The Motorway will be well established by the time anything changes.

monument

end of the road wrote: »

how is it. many of our lines have motor ways. motor ways should have no place deciding whether a line should be opened or not. build it properly, put a toal on the motor way, and then lets see

How many of those lines have (a) Dublin on one end and (b) a large city at the other end?

eastwest

cgcsb wrote: »

I disagree up to a point. There is a case for connecting the regional cities by rail, in the future perhaps when they reach a certain size. But the rail connections should be built properly and be designed with a journey time FASTER than road in mind. It does no good to reopen victorian era railways that cannot physically compete in the modern world.

That's part of the problem -- towns like Sligo aren't going to reach that kind of size anytime soon.
I agree though that the so-called WRC is an even worse idea when routed on an unsuitable alignment. A lot of that route is only suited to leisure and tourism, as well as broadband cabling.
Still no reason to allow it to be lost to squatters though; it's currently a publicly-owned asset, and politicians who oppose a greenway so as not to upset squatters are doing us all a disservice.

Carawaystick

end of the road wrote: »

how is it. many of our lines have motor ways. motor ways should have no place deciding whether a line should be opened or not. build it properly, put a toal on the motor way, and then lets see

If there's a motorway, then you can run comfortable coach services on it, at 100kmh.
You can then have have comfortable public transit running in 2 directions at a time, while a train will be one way at a time.

corktina

Carawaystick wrote: »

If there's a motorway, then you can run comfortable coach services on it, at 100kmh.
You can then have have comfortable public transit running in 2 directions at a time, while a train will be one way at a time.

That's exactly why rail needs to be uprated to 100mph (UK went to 125 40 years ago in many cases to combat Motorways) minimum and have more flexibility built in.

end of the road

Carawaystick wrote: »

If there's a motorway, then you can run comfortable coach services on it, at 100kmh.

thats if you find coaches comfortable, which i and many others don't and never will. 100 kmh is what? 70 MPH? or around it? hardly anything to shout about in this day and age is it.

Carawaystick wrote: »

You can then have have comfortable public transit running in 2 directions at a time, while a train will be one way at a time.

you can have a train running in 2 directions at a time if you build the line to double or quadruple track.

eastwest

end of the road wrote: »

thats if you find coaches comfortable, which i and many others don't and never will. 100 kmh is what? 70 MPH? or around it? hardly anything to shout about in this day and age is it.



you can have a train running in 2 directions at a time if you build the line to double or quadruple track.

The western rail route closed forty years back, essentially because nobody was using it. Since then, roads have greatly improved, car ownership has increased by a country mile, bus services have been liberalised and vastly improved as well as becoming much cheaper in real terms.
The chances of ever opening a rail line on the route are pretty much nil. The chances of a double track being laid are zero at best.

end of the road

eastwest wrote: »

The western rail route closed forty years back, essentially because nobody was using it. Since then, roads have greatly improved, car ownership has increased by a country mile, bus services have been liberalised and vastly improved as well as becoming much cheaper in real terms.
The chances of ever opening a rail line on the route are pretty much nil. The chances of a double track being laid are zero at best.

my post still stands in general terms. WRC or no WRC

eastwest

end of the road wrote: »

my post still stands in general terms. WRC or no WRC

In general, maybe. But where a line is built for purely political reasons, with no other rationale, a single track is more than enough.

westtip

More great press coverage in the west of Paschal Donohoes decision to end the Western Rail Corridor debate.
http://connachttribune.ie/new-confidence-for-athenry-tuam-greenway-lobby-344/

Carawaystick

end of the road wrote: »

thats if you find coaches comfortable, which i and many others don't and never will. 100 kmh is what? 70 MPH? or around it? hardly anything to shout about in this day and age is it.



you can have a train running in 2 directions at a time if you build the line to double or quadruple track.

I thought this thread was about the wrc?
What speed do the trains run at on the last opened section?
Is that section double triple or quadruple tracked?

westtip

Carawaystick wrote: »

I thought this thread was about the wrc?
What speed do the trains run at on the last opened section?
Is that section double triple or quadruple tracked?

The thread is called Western Rail Corridor (all disused sections), but here is an answer to your specific questions

It takes about 50 minutes to get from Athenry to Ennis on the train, tops I would say this about 40 miles.
It is single tracked the whole way. The full journey from Limerick to Galway takes just under two hours timetables vary but its about 1 hr 55 mins. (the xpress bus x51 takes one hour twenty minutes) The bus is 35 minutes quicker and runs 10 times a day.

It cost 110 million to re-engineer and re-open this track. Each train carries an average of about 9 (nine) passengers per train, the original forecast was for an average of about 40 passengers per train.
Subvention per journey has been estimated at about €85 per passenger journey.

Markcheese

Ah but it'd all connect into place ,and run seamlessly and profitably if the old narrow gauge track bed was replaced with a Japanese style bullet train -giving the 5 or 6 OAP customers no chance to get their sambos and tea out.

corktina

i don't know where you get narrow gauge from here

Markcheese

corktina wrote: »

i don't know where you get narrow gauge from here

Neither do I really, thought I'd heard somewhere that it was light rail line- and then mixed stuff up - :-)

corktina

ah well that's xmas for you....what will you be like at New Year? :-)

mayo.mick

corktina

oh dear "potential for rail freight" again....what potential? there is no industry at all as far as I can see.

mayo.mick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfv0EGFjxK0

eastwest

Geuze wrote: »

I am a supporter of public transport, and large subsidies towards it.

But even I admit that the Claremorris - Collooney section will never reopen.

So turn it into a greenway, yes, while preserving the possibility of a future railway line.


Now, about the line from Claremorris south, I would not turn that into a greenway.



One reason the Ennis-Galway section isn't that successful is due to bus competition.

German / French / UK railways are often more successful as they don't have a sister bus company competing against them.

When the G[URL="file://\\gort-Tuam"]ort-Tuam[/URL] motorway is finished, the private bus operators will wipe the floor with Irish Rail, delivering a far faster and cheaper service than the railway ever could.
It's all over for this politically-inspired railway route that never had any basis in reality. Time for everyone to move on.

eastwest

Geuze wrote: »

I travel on the N17 weekly.

The volumes of traffic south of Tuam leads me to believe a Tuam-Galway service could be viable.

Not a chance. The motorway will kill this stone dead, but even before the motorway project the Tuam-Galway rail option was a dead duck.
Put in simple terms, if I lived in Tuam and wanted to commute to a job in Galway, would I use a slow forty-minute train that took me to Galway city centre where I would have to wait for a bus to take me another twenty minutes to my job, or would I take a direct bus (or drive) from Tuam that would drop me at the door of my work in twenty minutes?
Most of the employment in Galway is concentrated on the outskirts, apart from the hospital and university which are still a bus-ride from the station.
The western rail corridor (so-called) closed because of lack of use. since the closure of various sections, car ownership has increased, bus travel has been liberalised and become much cheaper, roads have vastly improved and work and leisure patters have changed utterly. We don't live in the 1950s any more, and infrastructure that did the job then won't do it now.
A Galway-Tuam rail link is a nonsense, the stuff of fantasy. It is now clear that government understands that, and is no longer willing to pander to a handful of rail enthusiasts with no grasp of economics, or reality.

TINA1984

Opportunistic Wannabe western TD's decrying Enda's comments and promising to move heaven and earth to get the Northern WRC built in 3,2,1....

L1011

Markcheese wrote: »

Neither do I really, thought I'd heard somewhere that it was light rail line- and then mixed stuff up - :-)

It was - but Irish gauge light rail.

corktina

Here's a pic I lifted from fb. The width of the formation is truly amazing, there is plenty of room for rail and greenway. Even if there isn't enough clearance under that bridge to slew the tracks, I'm sure a greenway could be accomodated with a small deviation up that slope and across the road, a stretch of gauntletted sharing of space or simply building a new bridge

There's surely no question that a Greenway means no rail line ever.

Grandeeod

corktina wrote: »

Here's a pic I lifted from fb. The width of the formation is truly amazing, there is plenty of room for rail and greenway. Even if there isn't enough clearance under that bridge to slew the tracks, I'm sure a greenway could be accomodated with a small deviation up that slope and across the road, a stretch of gauntletted sharing of space or simply building a new bridge

There's surely no question that a Greenway means no rail line ever.

How poorly built was that!

Grandeeod

westtip wrote: »

However, I wouldn't call the greenway a by-product. I was writing on the old thread about the economic benefits of the greenway idea long before even the Great Western Greenway was opened and before greenways became part of the public consciousness. My original thought for a greenway on this route came when I was driving on the N17 between Tubbercurry and Charlestown one day and looking to my left saw the old railway and thought that is never going to re-open why on earth don't they put a cycle path on it, I was unaware of the word "greenway" at the time. A friend of mine sent me in an article in the Irish Times back in 1997, 17 years ago, written by Tourism Economics Lecturer Felim O'Rourke, Felim had mapped out all the old railways in the West saying they should be a network of cycle paths.

Im not dissing the idea of a Greenway. I'm merely referring to it as a by-product of a disused railway. That's what it is.

westtip

corktina wrote: »

Here's a pic I lifted from fb. The width of the formation is truly amazing, there is plenty of room for rail and greenway. Even if there isn't enough clearance under that bridge to slew the tracks, I'm sure a greenway could be accomodated with a small deviation up that slope and across the road, a stretch of gauntletted sharing of space or simply building a new bridge

There's surely no question that a Greenway means no rail line ever.

What a great cycle ride that is going to be, WOT said it was "disingenuous" to compare the Great Western greenway with the route of the Claremorris/collooney line - I think they used the phrase no scenery along the route - this will be a truly beautiful greenway route!

L1011

Grandeeod wrote: »

How poorly built was that!

Very. Lowest cost construction possible - which is why it isn't practical to even consider it as a modern railway, route speed wise. If they wanted a road-competitive railway from Sligo to Galway they'd need to build a new alignment.

corktina

The open bit of the WRC can still be improved by a chord at Athenry. Missing it out shouldn't cause too many problems, with inventive connections at Oranmore Parkway.

I'd prefer to see a modest investment in this than continuing to waste the 100 million+ already spent.