Irish Rail cargo

corktina

Probably the ballast train which consists of large hopper wagons to works sites on the railway...there is nothing else that fits the bill I think. Not commercial traffic if so.

Judgement Day

Losty Dublin wrote: »

Could you list these ports that have seen CIE remove rail links from?

Can't resist...the link to quayside via the old Point Depot at the North Wall, Dun Laoghaire Pier, Rosslare Harbour (more or less), New Ross, Horgan's Quay (Cork), Baltimore, Bantry, Valentia, Dingle Pier, Fenit, Foynes, Cappagh Pier (West Clare), Westport Quay, Sligo Quay, Killybegs (CIE were involved as part owners of CDRJC at the very end), Drogheda (Boyne Road)...I'm sure there are others that I've overlooked.

Jamie2k9

Why does Tesco freight work in the UK?

Just to put a few things into prospective about Tesco freight in the UK and why it works and why it wouldn't work in Ireland.

All imports for Tesco come via Dublin Port and they have a major distribution centre in North Dublin. In the UK they have lots of centres because of it's size and number of stores.

Ireland - places with a few stores
Dublin - 40
Cork - 6
Galway - 4
Waterford - 5
Limerick - 5

Outside of Dublin there is not enough stores to justify rail freight services.

The only way freight would be profitable in Ireland is if imports were processed in Waterford (just because of the rail link) and rail was used to transport to 40 stores in Dublin and probably another 10 or 20 in Kildare/Louth.

Take the West coast line in the UK, you have 13 stores in Birmingham, 17 in Manchester, 21 Liverpool, 19 Glasgow not including other towns along the routes. That's 70 stores in 4 locations and given the population density in those places the level of food required would be significant. Now I have no idea if they transport by rail on these route but the scale is much bigger in the UK to justify it.

foggy_lad

corktina wrote: »

Probably the ballast train which consists of large hopper wagons to works sites on the railway...there is nothing else that fits the bill I think. Not commercial traffic if so.

The weedspray train has large tankers of pesticides, could that be what was seen?

Losty Dublin

Judgement Day wrote: »

Can't resist...the link to quayside via the old Point Depot at the North Wall, Dun Laoghaire Pier, Rosslare Harbour (more or less), New Ross, Horgan's Quay (Cork), Baltimore, Bantry, Valentia, Dingle Pier, Fenit, Foynes, Cappagh Pier (West Clare), Westport Quay, Sligo Quay, Killybegs (CIE were involved as part owners of CDRJC at the very end), Drogheda (Boyne Road)...I'm sure there are others that I've overlooked.

Slipping up, JD; most of these are silly suggestions

The Point is about the only one you can stick down to CIE but don't forget that it wasn't used for freight in years; it was kept for loading rail stock. These days deliveries come in at Belview or Alexandra Road as they can handle deeper boats

Dun Laoghaire wasn't used as a freight line, mail boats excepted. The Port company owned the spur and not CIE. As they wanted to move the ferries to a newer berth, the port company took the decision to close the spur while the infrastructure for DART was being built.

Rosslare is still connected but it's not currently used for freight; Belview has the bulk of the container market for the region.

New Ross port wasn't connected for rail freight though it is beside the station. These days the port can't handle large container boats and it lost it's little traffic for this reason more than anything.

Horgan's Quay (Cork) lost it's container traffic when North Esk opened. It handled kegs and cement until Diagee and Irish Cement withdrew from rail haulage and not the other way around.

Baltimore, Bantry, Valentia, Dingle Pier, Fenit, Cappagh, Killybegs; you are talking about small piers on long closed lines which were used for little more than a few baskets of fish and the day of loose coupled vans and the common carrier obligation

Westport was closed as it hadn't been used by the port in years with it's freight being handled at the station, Sligo Quay is still connected if shortened and is available.

Lastly Boyne Road was a GNR siding which served the cement plant. When Platin opened, it took on it's traffic and the spur fell into disuse.

relaxed

foggy_lad wrote: »

The weedspray train has large tankers of pesticides, could that be what was seen?

Do some of the container trains running at the moment not have a few container shaped tanks, as per links below, I assume that's what he was referring to?

http://www.chassisking.com/images/products/regular/iso-tank-container-20ft-tank-container-on-tank-chassis.jpg

end of the road

Losty Dublin wrote: »

Rosslare is still connected but it's not currently used for freight

i thought when they moved the station from the old proper setting to the current dump they lifted the tracks?

corktina

end of the road wrote: »

i thought when they moved the station from the old proper setting to the current dump they lifted the tracks?

certainly the ones through the old station are gone and I think that means the dock is disconnected.

end of the road

corktina wrote: »

certainly the ones through the old station are gone and I think that means the dock is disconnected.

so it couldn't be used for railfreight then

Losty Dublin

end of the road wrote: »

so it couldn't be used for railfreight then

The pier isn't connected but then again it was never used for freight. Any freight that was handled at the port went some years ago.

corktina

surely it was used for cattle?

Losty Dublin

corktina wrote: »

surely it was used for cattle?

Just looking up some reading matter on same.

From the IRRS journal, it notes that a freight steamer left Waterford for Fishguard daily except for a Sunday, when a special running from Waterford to Rosslare on Sunday evening would take some perishables, notably beef in special chilled containers.

I'll delve in deeper over the weekend about livestock trains and report back.

Muahahaha

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

Just to put a few things into prospective about Tesco freight in the UK and why it works and why it wouldn't work in Ireland.

All imports for Tesco come via Dublin Port and they have a major distribution centre in North Dublin. In the UK they have lots of centres because of it's size and number of stores.

Ireland - places with a few stores
Dublin - 40
Cork - 6
Galway - 4
Waterford - 5
Limerick - 5

Outside of Dublin there is not enough stores to justify rail freight services.

The only way freight would be profitable in Ireland is if imports were processed in Waterford (just because of the rail link) and rail was used to transport to 40 stores in Dublin and probably another 10 or 20 in Kildare/Louth.

Take the West coast line in the UK, you have 13 stores in Birmingham, 17 in Manchester, 21 Liverpool, 19 Glasgow not including other towns along the routes. That's 70 stores in 4 locations and given the population density in those places the level of food required would be significant. Now I have no idea if they transport by rail on these route but the scale is much bigger in the UK to justify it.

Good points, I hear where you are coming from. But what I don't get is how it is more efficient to send it all by truck and multiply the labour and fuel costs, the two main overheads in transport.

Like in your example above Limerick, Cork, Waterford all have 5 or more Tesco stores, Galway has four. I've no ideas of Tescos volume but they do have 27% of the market so at a guess each store would likely shift 30+ shipping containers of stock every week. And if there are 5+ stores in each region that is connected by rail then possibly the volumes that Tesco do could in theory mean that CIE could be running a train 5 days a week to Galway, Limerick, Waterford and Cork with warehouses and distribution centres placed on CIE land and leased out to tenants.

I know I keep coming back to the Tesco example mainly because they're the biggest player. But to reiterate my point they are 27% of the market so if Tesco have the volume to be running a train for each store owned per week then so too do Dunnes, Aldi, Lidl, etc.

Now I know we're talking theoretically here since the rail link from Dublin Port is closed off. But if it wasn't and you could transport goods directly from a boat to rail and efficiently off to a distribution center would CIE doing cargo then become viable to the likes of Tesco and other retailers who need to move large volumes of stock ?

corktina

The reason why it would not be more efficient to use rail is that the rail lines do not run to each store whereas the road does, so you would have to off load at a rail depot and load onto a truck, which takes time and labour, and then take it to a depot to be sorted for each destination. The only way this might work (as in the UK) is if there is enough freight to have a sub-distribution depot serving a large population area and multiple stores, and do the picking for the various stores at that sub-depot. Don't forget that if you employ staff, you have to have enough work for them to last a whole 8 hour shift.

foggy_lad

Muahahaha wrote: »

Like in your example above Limerick, Cork, Waterford all have 5 or more Tesco stores, Galway has four. I've no ideas of Tescos volume but they do have 27% of the market so at a guess each store would likely shift 30+ shipping containers of stock every week. And if there are 5+ stores in each region that is connected by rail then possibly the volumes that Tesco do could in theory mean that CIE could be running a train 5 days a week to Galway, Limerick, Waterford and Cork with warehouses and distribution centres placed on CIE land and leased out to tenants.

I know I keep coming back to the Tesco example mainly because they're the biggest player. But to reiterate my point they are 27% of the market so if Tesco have the volume to be running a train for each store owned per week then so too do Dunnes, Aldi, Lidl, etc

You really need to look into this more, no tesco store is shifting 30+ shipping container loads per week! If that was the case people could not get into the car parks for the ques of lorries. The larger stores might get through 5-8 full containers a week but here in Ireland goods are not delivered to supermarkets by container because the population density and size of the stores does not support that.

Each store might have 30+ deliveries a week from head office and different suppliers but most of these will be a few pallets or cages of goods. This type of delivery is not possible by rail. It could never be efficient or reliable or even fast enough.

corktina

you need to think of the Tesco Irish Central distribution centre as the equivalent of the one in Scotland which has a train service. Obviously you can't have a train service to Dublin from Tesco UK and equally obviously , Tesco do not distribute FROM their Scotland centre by train, thus no more can they do that in Ireland.