Trains be getting quicker

bk

end of the road wrote: »

actually their would have been enough mark 3 carriges to both cover an hourly service to cork and along with the de-deitrick carriges an hourly service to bellfast, the rest could go to 22 k operation as it wouldn't have been long until the 141 and 181 locos were being retired anyway so their would be enough locos then to do the freight runs and other work along with operating the cork and bellfast services.

Well that makes it even worse so.

So we could have had a much faster service AND still had the same level of service, just with slightly less shiny new trains. Madness!!

Hungerford

Temp101 wrote: »

As an aside, the modern Mini-CTC signalling is apparently not deemed suitable for 75 mph plus as it doesn't have CAWS. We must have been living dangerously in the era of ETS and semaphores.

In fairness, Iarnrod Eireann's speed restrictions with regard to signalling are a joke. The 50 mph maximum restriction on lines with semaphores being a case in point.

By such logic, NIR are gambling with passengers' lives on a daily basis by running trains at 70 mph on the Portrush line and have been doing so by running services at 60 mph between Derry and Coleraine.

sligotrain

It would be interesting to see what might now come of Varadkar removing Ireland's exemption from the EU directive that encourages the splitting of track and infrastructure from the operational side of the railway.

I would really like to see the breaking up of IE into Infrastructural and Operational companies and it would be great to see some competition getting out into the InterCity network.

At the heart of IE's problems are its inadequate infrastructure. It would be great to see the Cork line electrified but really the Galway and Sligo lines need to be doubled and more express trains could then run on these lines.

dowlingm

The other difference from the 70s etc. is the health and safety and accessibility changes. Look at Roscrea for instance - even with the loop still in place the second platform there can only be used by trains to pass rather than to alight passengers because an accessible overbridge would cost half a mill plus the cost of rehabilitating the platform itself, or at least 90m of it. Reopening closed lines is no longer simply a question of alignment relay but of platform reprofiling and where there is a passing loop of access to the far side platform.

end of the road

bk wrote: »

Well that makes it even worse so.

absolutely, all the new trains over the years and some end up awaiting the cutters because theirs no work for them, in an ideal world heads would roll but this is ireland so whoever was in charge of such operations would probably get a pay rise.

bk wrote: »

So we could have had a much faster service AND still had the same level of service, just with slightly less shiny new trains. Madness!!

absolutely, their were 123 mark 3 carriges, 93 non-pushpull, and 30 pushpull, their would have been enough to operate an hourly service to cork and with the de-deitrick carriges an hourly service to bellfast, their may have been even enough to operate limited or even non-stop services to waterford galway and limerick on their most crowded peak time services the most crowded morning and the most crowded evening service. in saying that we would have to operate other services behind to the nearist town to try and have it so nobody loses out if possible.
anyway we are where we are and it sickens me what we could have had but what we never will have.

The Idyl Race

foggy_lad wrote: »

So they are going to reduce the times for one train per day by having it stop in as few stations as possible lol that is not an improvement in real terms just more creative massaging of figures. Paint it up like a tart but it's still only an apple turnover.

Jesus foggy_lad much and all as I like trains I never envisaged them with make up on.

Until now. :eek:

kieran4003

20th January 2012 is the date for the timetable change.

Getting tight though for the Heuston change with no draft timetables published yet.

Interesting discussion regarding MK3's. They were a fine train, but the ICR has one major advantage. The ICR's have great power due to excellent braking and acceleration, The more stops in a service, the bigger the gain over a MK3. The new timetable will be fully adjusted for this.

Similarily, an ICR will beat a MKIV on a Dublin - Cork run. They can get up to 100mph much faster and take more benefit from the higher speed limit.

A 6 ICR now operates the 09:30 Cork-Heuston & works back later.

end of the road

kieran4003 wrote: »

the ICR has one major advantage. The ICR's have great power due to excellent braking and acceleration, The more stops in a service, the bigger the gain over a MK3. The new timetable will be fully adjusted for this.
Similarily, an ICR will beat a MKIV on a Dublin - Cork run. They can get up to 100mph much faster and take more benefit from the higher speed limit.

nobodies disputing such or at least i'm not, my point has always been and always will be that IE cannot just buy rolling stock and throw it away when they get board of it or they have bought to many of another type of train which in turn leaves rolling stock which is not that old with no work so it ends up facing the cutters, its just not good enough regardless of the benefits. i don't buy that refurbishing the mark 3s would have cost more then the mark 4s, don't and never will, had they been kept they could have operated the hourly cork dublin and their would be enough to suplament the bellfast services turning it into an hourly service with a couple of the stored 201s fitted with the required equipment. the rest could have been 22 k operated, the 2800s could maybe do the long distance commuter services such as longford and so on. we now have gone from commuter railcars operating long distance services to ICRS operating short haul services such as parkway to docklands, thats just not acceptable seeing as rosslare and sligo passengers have to still in this day and age put up with 29 ks on some services, IE made a balls of it as usual, its just not good enough, yet for all the shiny new trains speeds are slower then the 1980s apparently, again not good enough.

CIE

kieran4003 wrote: »

20th January 2012 is the date for the timetable change.

Getting tight though for the Heuston change with no draft timetables published yet.

Interesting discussion regarding MK3's. They were a fine train, but the ICR has one major advantage. The ICR's have great power due to excellent braking and acceleration, The more stops in a service, the bigger the gain over a MK3. The new timetable will be fully adjusted for this.

Similarily, an ICR will beat a MKIV on a Dublin - Cork run. They can get up to 100mph much faster and take more benefit from the higher speed limit.

A 6 ICR now operates the 09:30 Cork-Heuston & works back later.

Don't agree. What Mark 3s are/were capable of is purely based on the locomotive, and there are high-horsepower/high-starting-tractive-effort engines out there that would help a rake of Mark 3s out-accelerate a DMU.

And on an intercity service, the more stops, the less popular the train. Even a DMU making frequent stops would not make a timely schedule, never mind maintain any semblance of popularity (unless of course the fares are cut to the bone).

There are also the comfort and noise factors where Mark 3s win against DMUs.

dowlingm

No matter how much power in a loco there's only so many driving wheels and so much power you can apply before wheelslip kicks in - unless of course you want to have unrealistically high loco axle weights to keep the wheels in contact.

murphaph

I'm not saying that Ireland needs high speed rail like this or this but look at the difference. German railways getting journey time Berlin<->Munich down from ca. 6.5 hours today to ca. 4 hours (with stops) by 2016 (might take a bit longer, but it'll come-it's all under construction). They could probably run some non-stop services (though this is not "the done thing" here) between Berlin and Munich in ca. 3 hours-easily beating the plane for business passengers.

We don't really need 300km/h in Ireland as the country is not that big and the advantages wouldn't be worth it, but we do ultimately need 200km/h long term on Cork<->Dublin<->Belfast and 160km/h to Galway, Waterford and Limerick as a minimum.

There's no reason, bar Irish Rail's incompetence for not having 160km/h running throughout on Dublin<->Cork today. It's totally inexcusable.

Jamie2k9

I'm not saying that Ireland needs high speed rail like this or this but look at the difference. German railways getting journey time Berlin<->Munich down from ca. 6.5 hours today to ca. 4 hours (with stops) by 2016 (might take a bit longer, but it'll come-it's all under construction). They could probably run some non-stop services (though this is not "the done thing" here) between Berlin and Munich in ca. 3 hours-easily beating the plane for business passengers.

We don't really need 300km/h in Ireland as the country is not that big and the advantages wouldn't be worth it, but we do ultimately need 200km/h long term on Cork<->Dublin<->Belfast and 160km/h to Galway, Waterford and Limerick as a minimum.

There's no reason, bar Irish Rail's incompetence for not having 160km/h running throughout on Dublin<->Cork today. It's totally inexcusable.

Dublin-Cork is 160km/h apart from three areas and one area would require a railway order to change tracks though the curraigh.

Waterford is now cleared for 160km/h apart from 20-25 milies and for this to change you would need to rebuild the line.

For Belfast NI railways won't clear there lines for 160km/h so not IE fault and you would need to build a new line at Dublin and Belfast ends to allow 200km/h due to current large volumes of local services.

Galway not sure but bog land could cause restrictions. Botton line is it would cost billions and we don't have it and won't for a long time so until IE make a profit we will see no real investment and the chances of IE making a profit are low and when political lines are kept open it dosn't help...

dowlingm

hardly fair to compare what a country of 80m and 3.5m in the capital does compared to Ireland.

Judgement Day

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

Dublin-Cork is 160km/h apart from three areas and one area would require a railway order to change tracks though the curraigh.

Waterford is now cleared for 160km/h apart from 20-25 milies and for this to change you would need to rebuild the line.

For Belfast NI railways won't clear there lines for 160km/h so not IE fault and you would need to build a new line at Dublin and Belfast ends to allow 200km/h due to current large volumes of local services.

Galway not sure but bog land could cause restrictions. Botton line is it would cost billions and we don't have it and won't for a long time so until IE make a profit we will see no real investment and the chances of IE making a profit are low and when political lines are kept open it dosn't help...

Like Cherryville Jn./Waterford? :rolleyes:

Losty Dublin

kieran4003 wrote: »

Interesting discussion regarding MK3's. They were a fine train, but the ICR has one major advantage. The ICR's have great power due to excellent braking and acceleration, The more stops in a service, the bigger the gain over a MK3. The new timetable will be fully adjusted for this.

Actually Kieran, make that two advantages.

I dropped the mother off to the 12:30 Westport train today which is served with 22000 class DMU's. She can board on and off these trains with relative ease as well as getting into and out of a seat. Were it still a Mark or 3 set, she'd have a lot of trouble getting her walking aid on board as the doorways are far narrower; likewise getting into and out of the WC is quite a bit of hassle for her. And this is somebody who has a certain degree of mobility about her.

The simple matter is that the older carriages were far less user friendly to those who have differing levels of disability or mums with kids and buggies.

dowlingm

A Chiltern style refurb would have solved that issue by bringing entrances up to standard. I think their approach where not all coaches in the set have to be accessible is reasonable. The toilets would have to be upgraded irrespective so it would be a question of the cost/benefit to having all accessible toilets to simplify the tender but that might mean loss of seats.
http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/single-view/view/chiltern-railways-puts-refurbished-mk-iii-coaches-into-service.html Still have to deal with pushpull and so forth on top of that, plus issues like power points which people have clearly come to expect as demonstrated by comments beginning to be passed about the DDs.

murphaph

dowlingm wrote: »

hardly fair to compare what a country of 80m and 3.5m in the capital does compared to Ireland.

I don't think I did tbh. I clearly said I didn't think Ireland needed to replicate what's happening in Germany.

I do think that 30 years after British Rail introduced 125mph running that it's disgraceful that not one km of Irish rail is capable of this speed.

dowlingm

I don't think one mile or even 20 of 125mph running is worth prioritising over making nearly an entire line 100mph as IE are doing now. I would have liked to see a new express rail alignment in the Rush-Drogheda M1 construction corridor though to get Enterprise and express suburban around commuter traffic.

murphaph

dowlingm wrote: »

I don't think one mile or even 20 of 125mph running is worth prioritising over making nearly an entire line 100mph as IE are doing now.

My only point is that they could and should have already achieved 160km/h throughout on all main lines. They should now be working on 200km/h. They spent their (not inconsiderable) sums of money on many of the wrong things or at least in the wrong order.

Germany has tonnes of old stock that gets refurbed. If IE weren't such a throwaway company, there would actually be a market for doing refurbs on the island of Ireland.

road_high

Judgement Day wrote: »

Like Cherryville Jn./Waterford? :rolleyes:

Why do you say this is a political line? Sees a lot of commuter traffic from Athy and Carlow especially.
Last I figure saw a few years back traffic on this line was at least on a par with Galway and ahead of Rosslare, Sligo and Mayo lines.

Judgement Day

mfitzy wrote: »

Why do you say this is a political line? Sees a lot of commuter traffic from Athy and Carlow especially.
Last I figure saw a few years back traffic on this line was at least on a par with Galway and ahead of Rosslare, Sligo and Mayo lines.

You've answered your own question.

dowlingm

murphaph wrote: »

Germany has tonnes of old stock that gets refurbed. If IE weren't such a throwaway company, there would actually be a market for doing refurbs on the island of Ireland.

Again you're not comparing like with like. Germany has access to many facilities in Germany and the rest of Europe to which stock can be easily transported and repaired. Without a steady supply of work Inchicore can no longer meet this function plus trains are arguably more complex vehicles with more solid-state electronics and so forth. Even where stock is refurbished, like the 8100 series was in Germany, this can take a long time - plus it can turn out to be a waste of time like the NIR Gatwicks+DBSO.

CIE

dowlingm wrote: »

Again you're not comparing like with like. Germany has access to many facilities in Germany and the rest of Europe to which stock can be easily transported and repaired. Without a steady supply of work Inchicore can no longer meet this function plus trains are arguably more complex vehicles with more solid-state electronics and so forth. Even where stock is refurbished, like the 8100 series was in Germany, this can take a long time - plus it can turn out to be a waste of time like the NIR Gatwicks+DBSO.

That does not demonstrate how IE is not a "throwaway company". And Inchicore cannot fulfill any function if it is not invested in and modernised, can it?

The line that Ireland's railways are unlike every other railway in the world is getting overdone, too. They are like every other railway on the planet, and comparing with other railways is certainly comparing like with like. Otherwise, how can Ireland get rolling stock and motive power from overseas?

Grandeeod

dowlingm wrote: »

hardly fair to compare what a country of 80m and 3.5m in the capital does compared to Ireland.

Why not? It's called aspiration. Sadly lacking in Ireland.

dowlingm

I wouldn't mind seeing a full scale rail overhaul facility in Ireland, don't get me wrong. However, it would entail a large capital investment and preferably at least a commitment from NIR to use it.