Rosslare timetabling of trains... WTF!?!?

Irish Steve

It's my understanding that while there may have been customs and immigration issues with the old station, there was a much more fundamental issue with it in relation to road access to and from the ferries, the period of time that the train got priority for was too long in relation to the effect on road movements, which was impacting on operating schedules for the ferries. It wasn't like a level crossing, and the train wasn't as such moving, so the total closure time was much longer, and required a lot more safety staffing to operate it.

Hungerford

Irish Steve wrote: »

the period of time that the train got priority for was too long in relation to the effect on road movements, which was impacting on operating schedules for the ferries.

There is a novel solution to this issue: it's known as resignalling.

Losty Dublin

Hungerford wrote: »

There is a novel solution to this issue: it's known as resignalling.

The gate keeper at Rosslare Harbour released the protecting signals entering and leaving the station so resignaling would have made no difference.

Irish Steve

From memory, the problem was that the crossings were closed several minutes before the arrival or departure time, and for departures particularly, the train didn't necessarily move at that point, and when it eventually did, the time to clear the harbour area was slow due to the lack of speed in the harbour area, so the links from the ferries to the roads and parking areas were closed for between 10 and 15 minutes, which was a big problem if the ferries were still unloading vehicles, as they backed up from the crossing, and prevented the clearing of the boats.

Don't think it was so bad for arrivals, as they didn't close the roads till the train was almost at the harbour, and it moved into the station soon after, albeit still at a slow speed compared to line speeds or the sort of speeds that are normally seen on crossings in places like Dublin on the Dart.