Sending a bike via intercity train?

david p

Hi guys, I was just wondering if it's possible to send a bike up to Dublin on an intercity train so that I could collect it at the station? Has anyone here done this before?

Hilly Bill

Its not possible unless you travel with the bike.

Judgement Day

It's not possible to send anything unaccompanied by train - even CIE/IE internal correspondence is sent by post or courier.

corktina

thinly veiled Greenway thread? that you westtip?

seanmacc

One probable reason for this is probably the same reason the ferry companies won't allow unaccompanied personal things to travel.

They don't allow it because companies like DHL, UPS, TNT ect. are rather large customers of theirs and if you require something to be transported that way they can contact them

Judgement Day

seanmacc wrote: »

One probable reason for this is probably the same reason the ferry companies won't allow unaccompanied personal things to travel.

They don't allow it because companies like DHL, UPS, TNT ect. are rather large customers of theirs and if you require something to be transported that way they can contact them

How are DHL, UPS, TNT large customers of CIE - more likely the other way round. :rolleyes:

seanmacc

Judgement Day wrote: »

How are DHL, UPS, TNT large customers of CIE - more likely the other way round. :rolleyes:

IE are not a postal service and are not equiped to be. If an Post had a contract with IE to move post to certain areas of the country, IE would be in competition with them if they offered such a service. Unfair competition at that

Del2005

seanmacc wrote: »

IE are not a postal service and are not equiped to be. If an Post had a contract with IE to move post to certain areas of the country, IE would be in competition with them if they offered such a service. Unfair competition at that

IE had a mail/parcel service on their trains until the last few years. It wasn't stopped for unfair competition.

seanmacc

Del2005 wrote: »

IE had a mail/parcel service on their trains until the last few years. It wasn't stopped for unfair competition.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0114/112707-rail/

Stopped because the new trains have no empty carriges.

Probably dead wood for them

Judgement Day

seanmacc wrote: »

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0114/112707-rail/

Stopped because the new trains have no empty carriges.

Probably dead wood for them

No, it was just IE's usual incompetence. Surprised they included seats in the specifications for the new railcars - they forgot something as basic as Selective Door Opening. Many of the staff that handled Fastrack are still employed and have little or nothing to do other than avoid roving managers. As for being deadwood - you obviously never used the service - it was almost cheaper to travel with a parcel than to send it on its own.

end of the road

anything that can be sent via rail, should be sent via rail, thats my motto, IE should only be able to send anything related to them by rail, thats what its there for, have a guard come ticket inspector come post minder, would be a lot cheeper in the long run then sending via road, if the road lobby don't like it tough s//t, but considering they can't manage to run the right type of stock on their respective services (22s on all sligo and rosslare instead of the odd 29 k or either de-deitrick stock or 22ks to bellfast instead of 29s) i can't see them managing to make use of the railway to do railway related things like this

Judgement Day

end of the road wrote: »

anything that can be sent via rail, should be sent via rail, thats my motto, IE should only be able to send anything related to them by rail, thats what its there for, have a guard come ticket inspector come post minder, would be a lot cheeper in the long run then sending via road, if the road lobby don't like it tough s//t, but considering they can't manage to run the right type of stock on their respective services (22s on all sligo and rosslare instead of the odd 29 k or either de-deitrick stock or 22ks to bellfast instead of 29s) i can't see them managing to make use of the railway to do railway related things like this

I'd go further, any State/semi-State body should be forced to use CIE/IE. It would happen in a rational world when resources are scarce. All the duplication where bodies like An Post have their own lorries now doing what the railway was able to do drives me mad.

PS I love derailing threads.

corktina

I don't fully agree but have to admit the cost involved in re-starting parcels traffic would be very small and make the passenger services more viable

Tube

Nice thing about FasTrack was same day delivery. You only had to look at the timetable to know when your parcel would be in.

yer man!

An post can be fairly resonable with large boxes and delivered directly to your door.

purplepanda

Red Star was BR's version which folded when the railways were privatised. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_Parcels.

I spent many hours as a youngster being sent around the London terminals dropping off parcels for a book publishing company or skiving

IE seem to have just given up on potential customers in comparison.

end of the road

yer man! wrote: »

An post can be fairly resonable with large boxes and delivered directly to your door.

thats all well and good but seeing as IE'S post will most likely be going to stations theirs no excuse not to send it by rail

Hilly Bill

end of the road wrote: »

thats all well and good but seeing as IE'S post will most likely be going to stations theirs no excuse not to send it by rail

Thats what they do.

Judgement Day

Hilly Bill wrote: »

Thats what they do.

They don't!

Hilly Bill

They send internal post and lost property by train.

Judgement Day

Hilly Bill wrote: »

They send internal post and lost property by train.

Since when?

Hilly Bill

Judgement Day wrote: »

Since when?

Since the price of stamps went up .

Tube

Tube wrote: »

Nice thing about FasTrack was same day delivery. You only had to look at the timetable to know when your parcel would be in.

Although now that I think of it the last time I used it was to send a mobile phone from Cork to Dublin and the cost was €24, which was very steep.

Del2005

Tube wrote: »

Although now that I think of it the last time I used it was to send a mobile phone from Cork to Dublin and the cost was €24, which was very steep.

I doubt you'd get a courier to do it for that price. Even AnPost can't do same day deliveries from all their post offices. You always pay for fast service.

Judgement Day

Del2005 wrote: »

I doubt you'd get a courier to do it for that price. Even AnPost can't do same day deliveries from all their post offices. You always pay for fast service.

Properly run - which it wasn't - Fastrack should have been far cheaper and beaten the socks off its competitors. If you think of the railway as a system of inter-connected conveyor belts running away with or without anything on them you should understand where I'm coming from. The more stuff i.e. passengers/parcels/mail etc. you load onto the system, the more profitable, or less loss making, it should become - at least in the real world. Now that system of conveyor belts has been seriously damaged i.e. the lack of capacity/staff etc. to handle parcels on the Inter-City railcars, it is nigh impossible to send anything by train.

foggy_lad

Judgement Day wrote: »

Properly run - which it wasn't - Fastrack should have been far cheaper and beaten the socks off its competitors. If you think of the railway as a system of inter-connected conveyor belts running away with or without anything on them you should understand where I'm coming from. The more stuff i.e. passengers/parcels/mail etc. you load onto the system, the more profitable, or less loss making, it should become - at least in the real world. Now that system of conveyor belts has been seriously damaged i.e. the lack of capacity/staff etc. to handle parcels on the Inter-City railcars, it is nigh impossible to send anything by train.

Ireland was just too small for Fastrack and operations were too inefficient and staff wages bonuses and perks were just too high for it to be sustainable.

Hilly Bill

foggy_lad wrote: »

Ireland was just too small for Fastrack and operations were too inefficient and staff wages bonuses and perks were just too high for it to be sustainable.

I take it that you had access to their pay slips did you?

Ireland is not too small. It can still be done on a smaller scale with no added costs. Actually its still being done on a smaller scale with no added costs.

Tube

Del2005 wrote: »

I doubt you'd get a courier to do it for that price. Even AnPost can't do same day deliveries from all their post offices. You always pay for fast service.

I'm not sure what same day costs now, though the likes of Nightline does it.

At least one courier does next day for €5 for up to 30Kg.

FasTrack didn't go door to door as part of the basic service either. That cost extra again.

end of the road

foggy_lad wrote: »

Ireland was just too small for Fastrack

bulls//t, ireland is a fantastic size for such a service, 2 to 3 hours at most and the pease of mind that your item is guarinteeed to be delivered unlike other methods where they can only deliver when they can, the idea that you can put something on the train and have a guarinteeed delivery time for a customer who will most likely want to drive to the station and pick up the item themselves is a fantastic proposition, yes it won't be for everyone but their are certainly advantages over other postal methods

foggy_lad wrote: »

operations were too inefficient

maybe

foggy_lad wrote: »

staff wages bonuses and perks were just too high for it to be sustainable.

and you have access to the accounts from when it was running to prove that yes?

foggy_lad

end of the road wrote: »

bulls//t, ireland is a fantastic size for such a service, 2 to 3 hours at most and the pease of mind that your item is guarinteeed to be delivered unlike other methods where they can only deliver when they can, the idea that you can put something on the train and have a guarinteeed delivery time for a customer who will most likely want to drive to the station and pick up the item themselves is a fantastic proposition, yes it won't be for everyone but their are certainly advantages over other postal methods

maybe

and you have access to the accounts from when it was running to prove that yes?

There is just not enough potential customers outside of Dublin who would use the service at the cost of it, I know of one company in Cork who used it for pallets of soap and detergents but this was crippling their business because the cost was increasing every few months and it used to take several weeks for delivery from the time an order was placed, ok if you can do business like that but not many can.

The issue of double handling also greatly increases costs for such a small operation, goods were collected or delivered to a local depot by truck and then had to wait for the next goods train going to Dublin where they were put onto another train for the depot nearest their destination which could then involve another truck journey.

most couriers have agents in even the smallest towns who will collect and deliver to Dublin for onward delivery to the destination, the couriers of today have far better logistical operations than fastrack.



as for the wages and bonuses, well those same staff are mostly still employed at the same rates doing the gardening and other menial tasks in many stations around the country because the company decided it would be cheaper to keep them on the books than make them redundant and fight the unions. That is just inefficient.

Judgement Day

foggy_lad it's difficult to argue with you when you're clearly not talking about Fastrack but rather the old Sundries service. Fastrack was for letters/parcels up to 50kg sent by passenger train. At the prices that were being charged towards the end, the company should have been removing bays of seats to make room for parcels as they occupied less space and cost nearly as much as a fare paying passenger. Believe me, I have looked into Fastrack in great detail (since well before it ceased) and have even considered the possibility of operating a limited service - but once you dismantle the infrastructure i.e. staff responsible for handling, depots (ticket offices etc.) for parcels to be dropped off and collected it makes it nigh on impossible for a private operator to recommence the operation. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to prove the company wrong and make a tidy profit to boot.