Waterford/Rosslare Strand Railway reaches the buffer stops (again)!

Judgement Day

Well it's an ill wind but you don't really think the morons in Govt. and CIE are going to retain the Waterford/Rosslare line in case there is another volcanic eruption at some unspecified date in the future? :rolleyes:

steamengine

Judgement Day wrote: »

Well it's an ill wind but you don't really think the morons in Govt. and CIE are going to retain the Waterford/Rosslare line in case there is another volcanic eruption at some unspecified date in the future? :rolleyes:

The post was about what the Icelandic President advised and he should know as he lives beside these volcanoes. What I think is irrelevant - please don't shoot the messenger ! :rolleyes:

Judgement Day

From today's Irish Times (21/4/10) Letters to the Editor page.
http://www.irishtimes.com/letters/index.html#1224268770758

Joined up thinking down the tracks
Madam, – With this island’s utter dependence on external connectivity never having been more clearly exposed, we might do well to look at how our internal surface transport system feeds into our international linkages.

Since last Thursday, record numbers of weary travellers returning to or visiting Ireland have unexpectedly yet gratefully found themselves rerouted via Welsh and French ports through Rosslare Europort. In response, in a bid ‘’to facilitate ferry passengers’’ (according to the Iarnród Éireann website), Monday’s 17.55 Rosslare-Dublin train was exceptionally held back to 18.45.

The national rail company is to be congratulated on this sensible decision.

Normally, those catching this sailing arrive back in Ireland a galling five minutes after what is the day’s last train northwards has already left.

However, this sudden flexibility begs the question why a joined-up scheduling arrangement is not already permanently in place across the system? Could it be that rail timetables are not designed primarily to suit the travelling public? One might have imagined that having the hugely valuable resource of a pair of national rail lines terminating at a port within Iarnród Éireann’s ownership would logically mean that train and ferry times might correspond in order to attract a steady stream of patrons. This is standard practice elsewhere and was the case here some years ago but is now apparently only something to be reconsidered upon completion of IE’s track renewal programme.

Perhaps the company is waiting for the ferry companies to change their schedules to suit it? With recent media reports revealing that over 100 modern train carriages are lying idle, it is good to know that there is clearly no operational reason why this particular later service, having been pressed into action in extremis, cannot be retained. The next step is that the 19.30 Wexford-Dublin service might also commence at the port in order to serve those arriving on the final daily service from Pembroke (18.45).

Passengers heading from Rosslare towards Waterford, Limerick and beyond over the past few days at least had the comfort of a train waiting for them.

That’s assuming that they happened to be on the red-eye sailing from Pembroke (except the Sunday crossing) and could sprint the almost 1km to the train platform within 15 minutes of scheduled 6:45 docking. They won’t have that facility in a few weeks’ time when that line is closed. Little wonder, given institutional efforts to discommode potential passengers. – Yours, etc,

RONAN GINGLES,
Avenue Michel-Ange,
Brussels,
Belgium.

Southsider1

my thoughts precisely!;)

Cookie_Monster

Spot on, that man!

Judgement Day

The facebook campaign spearheaded by Labour County Councillor, Joe Ryan, is continuing to build up a good head of steam - sorry - with plenty of coverage in the local papers this week. I will post here tomorrow. In the meantime here is a You Tube video of a recent protest at Rosslare Euroshack. More than 2,300 members on the Facebook campaign - are YOU on it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HCfN8-VjeM

GM071class

Judgement Day wrote: »

The facebook campaign spearheaded by Labour County Councillor, Joe Ryan, is continuing to build up a good head of steam - sorry - with plenty of coverage in the local papers this week. I will post here tomorrow. In the meantime here is a You Tube video of a recent protest at Rosslare Euroshack. More than 2,300 members on the Facebook campaign - are YOU on it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HCfN8-VjeM

I wonder how many of them travelled to Rosslare yo-yo-port by Train??

Judgement Day

GM071class wrote: »

I wonder how many of them travelled to Rosslare yo-yo-port by Train??

That comment is unworthy of you and is straight from the Todd Andrews school of spin. It's a bit like people who say nobody uses the train but neglect to say that the useless service provided makes it virtually unuseable.

FlameoftheWest

Judgement Day wrote: »

That comment is unworthy of you and is straight from the Todd Andrews school of spin. It's a bit like people who say nobody uses the train but neglect to say that the useless service provided makes it virtually unuseable.

Just proves that trainspotters don't really care about the rail network. Straight from the horses mouth - there you have it. They take a million photos of the same loco they are madly in love with and could not care one bit about the rail network.

No wonder CIE/IE management look after the locosexual's every whim.

lord lucan

FlameoftheWest wrote: »

Just proves that trainspotters don't really care about the rail network. Straight from the horses mouth - there you have it. They take a million photos of the same loco they are madly in love with and could not care one bit about the rail network.

No wonder CIE/IE management look after the locosexual's every whim.

You couldn't be further from the truth. Despite the anorak cliche that goes with trainspotters,most live in the real world,not in some sort of Steam&Diesel wonderland. Many people i talked to last week on the IRRS tour were as annoyed as people on boards.ie/facebook groups etc. about the shennanigans of IE in relation to the South Wexford line. None want to see it closed,most reckoned it was deliberately sabotaged by IE with the sole aim of closure.

I don't think GM071's question was loaded with spin,just the realism that it's the sort of thing that Barry Kenny would throw back at the protesters in the media,"how many got the train to Rosslare" for the protest?

GM071class

FlameoftheWest wrote: »

Just proves that trainspotters don't really care about the rail network. Straight from the horses mouth - there you have it. They take a million photos of the same loco they are madly in love with and could not care one bit about the rail network.

No wonder CIE/IE management look after the locosexual's every whim.

Also I was trying to show that its practically impossible to get the train down there to anywhere!!

FotW, I'm not your normal 'spotter',
I do go for a day out on the tours, however, I also use the rail network right across Ireland, NI, and the U.K.
And particularly, I've used Rosslare Europort more times than I care to remember, and only once was that as a 'trainspotter'..

I now have to get the bus down (great service by BÉ) to Rosslare because the trains are designed not to suit the ferry passengers.

Not everybody who enjoys railways as a hobby, is a herd liner Locosexual, however you do appear to be suffering from internalised locophobia

Judgement Day

This interesting half page ad from this week's Wexford Echo.



and this full page of editorial - a slightly eccentric piece which labours under the illusion that railways were built to transport people rather than make a profit. :rolleyes: Still it all helps keep the story in the news and may make Noel Dempsey choke on his cornflakes.

GM071class

I might be thinking out loud here, -well with my keyboard- but I was pondering over lunch about how to stop, or at least delay, the line closure.

As we all know Petitions don't work, IÉ just ignore them, even political intervention seems not to hold no water at all either.

'Flash mobs', albeit with a twist, came to my mind. If everybody when they were down in the Waterford/Wexford region were to take the train in one direction or the other, it'd make the line profitable and they couldn't push the closure through.

It seemed like at least an idea, but then I started roughly crunching the figures.

According to IÉ; 12.5 passengers use each train per operating day.
They also said that it gives 2% of the total operating cost.
So taking simple maths, that's 625 passengers a day each way, and that's just to break even! :eek:

That's never possible, However this is the burning question for the management, If 1 railway line can't sutain itself, should it be scrapped altogether?
The more logical way to think of it is not as a separate entity at all, Why can't the Dublin-Wexford, Dublin-Waterford, and Rosslare-Limerick Jcn be all considered as the same network section?
This way losses, and gains, can be shared between the 3 lines.

I think the approach to take by the local Politicians, and support groups, should be to change the way IÉ's management think about the line.

This is what happens when businessmen run a railway in a low-density country, It's only considered in figures, not the sometimes all to vital links to local communities.....

Transportuser09

GM071class wrote: »

Not everybody who enjoys railways as a hobby, is a herd liner Locosexual, however you do appear to be suffering from internalised locophobia

+1

Transportuser09

FlameoftheWest wrote: »

Just proves that trainspotters don't really care about the rail network. Straight from the horses mouth - there you have it. They take a million photos of the same loco they are madly in love with and could not care one bit about the rail network.

Thats a very narrow and misinformed view.

FlameoftheWest

Transportuser09 wrote: »

Thats a very narrow and misinformed view.

I freely admit I want to make love to a certain A Class locomotive. There is just something about an original bogie coil sping nuts which get me hot.

But even though I enjoy destroyingthe centrefold spread in Traction Magazine, for me the railways as a functioning piece of infrastruture comes first.

I would gladly give up my jar of GM axle greese to save Wex-Rosslare.

Transportuser09

FlameoftheWest wrote: »

I freely admit I want to make love to a certain A Class locomotive. There is just something about an original bogie coil sping nuts which get me hot.

What ever does it for you.

There are enthusiasts out there who would have some knowledge/interest in locomotives and such but would still have a clear head to see the railway as a piece of transport infrastructure. Whether or not I would personally class myself as an enthusiast these days is not certain - I'd rather see the network run by semi-frequent efficient railcar stock than have old loco hauled trains a few times a day. I'm sure that most enthusiasts and/or spotters would like to see the Rosslare-Waterford line kept open. I'm not into it myself but if they want to take photos on a railtour thats their hobby and isn't harming any one or inhibiting the development of the network.

Like others on this board here I believe IÉ should try to develop services along the South Wexford route before writing it off. But sniping at trainspotters and enthusiasts is not going to achieve anything.

lord lucan

Transportuser09 wrote: »

Like others on this board here I believe IÉ should try to develop services along the South Wexford route before writing it off. But sniping at trainspotters and enthusiasts is not going to achieve anything.

An ideal solution would be for IE to re-draft the timetable for the south Wexford line,make it more suitable for commuters,connect with the ferries etc. and then put it into effect and give it a year to see if the passenger numbers increase.

If a year down the line the passenger numbers are still crap,then IE can say that they gave it a shot and the people of Wexford/Waterford obviously don't want to use the service. Then with some justification they can say they'll look at closure. Sabotaging the line by running chronic timetables which favour no-one is not the way to do it. How they've gotten away with it up to this point is beyond me.

If on the other hand passenger numbers increase dramatically then IE will have no choice(in theory anyways!) but to continue service on the line and who knows,maybe it could see a resurgance of traffic and a brighter future for the south Wexford.

Of course,this all involves common sense,something IE seem to lack. If they're allowed run roughshod over the south Wexford then i fear for the rest of the network in the coming years.

DWCommuter

GM071class wrote: »

This is what happens when businessmen run a railway in a low-density country, It's only considered in figures, not the sometimes all to vital links to local communities.....

They aren't businessmen running the railways in this country. Whatever gave you that idea?

Ham'nd'egger

DWCommuter wrote: »

They aren't businessmen running the railways in this country. Whatever gave you that idea?

In all honesty, if businessmen ran most of our public transport routes they'd have closed most of them a long time ago; especially the rail services in Wexford so if anything thank Irish Rail for keeping it open this long;):p

DWCommuter

Hamndegger wrote: »

In all honesty, if businessmen ran most of our public transport routes they'd have closed most of them a long time ago; especially the rail services in Wexford so if anything thank Irish Rail for keeping it open this long;):p

A rather simplistic view and out of context.

Businessmen working under the same remit as the current IE management would do a better job. You are confusing the term businessmen with privatisation. Thats a different argument.

Ham'nd'egger

DWCommuter wrote: »

A rather simplistic view and out of context.

Businessmen working under the same remit as the current IE management would do a better job. You are confusing the term businessmen with privatisation. Thats a different argument.

You will find that it isn't, even though it was somewhat tongue in cheek.

DWCommuter

Hamndegger wrote: »

You will find that it isn't, even though it was somewhat tongue in cheek.

We won't find out until actual businessmen are put in charge of IE. Considering its semi state nature and subvention, its an easy ride for a management team with brains in their heads. Dick Fearn is a "railwayman". He told me that in 2006. One of the other managers he brought over with him, went back to the UK because he wasn't a "railwayman". He was a "businessman". When Dick Fearn stops organising railtours and schmoozing UK enthusiasts and charities and faces the hard realities, then he might just stand a chance. Personally I think he came for the pension.

Ham'nd'egger

DWCommuter wrote: »

We won't find out until actual businessmen are put in charge of IE. Considering its semi state nature and subvention, its an easy ride for a management team with brains in their heads. Dick Fearn is a "railwayman". He told me that in 2006. One of the other managers he brought over with him, went back to the UK because he wasn't a "railwayman". He was a "businessman". When Dick Fearn stops organising railtours and schmoozing UK enthusiasts and charities and faces the hard realities, then he might just stand a chance. Personally I think he came for the pension.

Yes, he left highly paid executive roles in private UK railways (that are run by "businessmen" given their privatised nature) and he moved to Ireland along with his family so he can organise a one off charity event here instead of the UK and a pension in 20 years time because you don't have pensions i the UK.

:rolleyes::rolleyes: and :rolleyes:

DWCommuter

Hamndegger wrote: »

Yes, he left highly paid executive roles in private UK railways (that are run by "businessmen" given their privatised nature) and he moved to Ireland along with his family so he can organise a one off charity event here instead of the UK and a pension in 20 years time because you don't have pensions i the UK.

:rolleyes::rolleyes: and :rolleyes:

Less of the :rolleyes::rolleyes: and :rolleyes:.

Are you saying that he came here for the challenge?

The charity event wasn't a one off. He's organised at least one before.

Dick Fearn is an ex BR dinosaur, like his buddy that runs the Railway Children Charity. He's here because the set up is like the old days in BR. He has offered absolutely nothing to the development of the rail network in this country. In fact in his first media interview, he went on about making it his job to have clean trains! He failed. The man is nothing more than a blast from the past. Ive met him, spoke to him and thats the conclusion Ive drawn. He put his feet under the desk in Amiens Street when the money was flowing and he'll be drawing the pension long before 20 years.

Transportuser09

DWCommuter wrote: »

Less of the :rolleyes::rolleyes: and :rolleyes:.

Are you saying that he came here for the challenge?

The charity event wasn't a one off. He's organised at least one before.

The two events were five years apart, hardly smacks of it being part of his personal agenda.

DWCommuter

Transportuser09 wrote: »

The two events were five years apart, hardly smacks of it being part of his personal agenda.

I was correcting the "one off charity event" comment by another poster. I don't recall mentioning agendas, personal or otherwise.

Ham'nd'egger

DWCommuter wrote: »

Less of the :rolleyes::rolleyes: and :rolleyes:.

DWCommuter wrote: »

Are you saying that he came here for the challenge?

I don't know why he came here but if you feel he moved country along with his family for a pension on a fixed term contract then believe away

DWCommuter wrote: »

The charity event wasn't a one off. He's organised at least one before.

One in 2005 and one in 2010; that's about one every 2,555 days. That gives us about 1,825 to save up for the next one

DWCommuter wrote: »

Dick Fearn is an ex BR dinosaur, like his buddy that runs the Railway Children Charity. He's here because the set up is like the old days in BR.

There are a great many people who consider BR to be a far better set up than private railways that replaced them, bad and all as they were. For the record, he worked in the private industry in the UK after BR's break up at management level.

DWCommuter wrote: »

He has offered absolutely nothing to the development of the rail network in this country. In fact in his first media interview, he went on about making it his job to have clean trains!

Or he could have told the media about greasing axle boxes, interlocking and working timetables; which sound bite is the average hack going to use?

DWCommuter wrote: »

He put his feet under the desk in Amiens Street when the money was flowing and he'll be drawing the pension long before 20 years.

Just for you....:rolleyes:;)

JHMEG

Interesting question: just why is Dick Fearn here. Maybe deserving of it's own thread.

His salary is €256,000. Add in his pension and bonus and his total package is worth €400,000.

Personally I don't think he's doing a great job and I'd say he's here for the money mainly.

KC61

DWCommuter wrote: »

He has offered absolutely nothing to the development of the rail network in this country.

That is somewhat unfair.

The introduction of clockface timetabling and the hourly Dublin/Cork service came from Mr. Fearn's instigation, as did the 22000 Class order.