Train travel today

Fendy

Does anybody know if the trains are operating today, need to travel from Kildare to Roscommon. There's no information on the Irish Rail site.

RobbingBandit

Irish rail twitter usually has up to date service info

https://mobile.twitter.com/IrishRail/status/931887554575650817

Fendy

Thanks RobbingBandit, but they only tweet live from Monday to Friday, so no up to date information there.

Fendy

Okay, I finally found a number for Heuston station ((0)1 703 2132) and was told that all trains are running normally today and that the afternoon train will be running to Roscommom.

Jamie2k9

Twitter was active today and they generally reply to comments during exception weather like today as well.

Rashers72

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

Twitter was active today and they generally reply to comments during exception weather like today as well.

It is very selective. There were delays, but only some mentioned. The Enterprise failed coming in Belfast at Malahide this morning. Passengers offloaded to later suburban train, which in turn was held an additional 30 mins at Malahide. Sounded like a lot of problems there. Darts also delayed during this. Not a single tweet about any of these delays.
The return service was a small replacement suburban train to Dundalk. IE twitter only announced the issues around 12.30, but the issues actually began with the inbound failure @ 11am. And they had posted no responses to the chaos that ensued at Dundalk as even by 2.30pm not enough buses (3 hours after the original breakdown). IE simply don't do incident mgt well. Customers always last to be considered, or that is how it feels.
Check out the Translink/Enterprise twitter account today. Lots of the delayed Enterprise passengers commenting there about what went wrong at Connolly and Dundalk, but to be fair it was IE's turf so IE should really respond. But at least the Translink/Enterprise twitter account is fully operational when the passengers need it, unlike IE.
Also look at all the delays on the Realtime App earlier today - very few of those have explanations posted to customers via IE Twitter.
You find IE twitter generally only posts about delays after customers contact them to ask what is going on.
Rant over!

Hilly Bill

Fendy wrote: »

Does anybody know if the trains are operating today, need to travel from Kildare to Roscommon. There's no information on the Irish Rail site.

No info means the train is running.

devnull

Hilly Bill wrote: »

No info means the train is running.

Not all of the time, often there has been no info on twitter but services are effected.

Jamie2k9

Rashers72 wrote: »

It is very selective. There were delays, but only some mentioned. The Enterprise failed coming in Belfast at Malahide this morning. Passengers offloaded to later suburban train, which in turn was held an additional 30 mins at Malahide. Sounded like a lot of problems there. Darts also delayed during this. Not a single tweet about any of these delays.
The return service was a small replacement suburban train to Dundalk. IE twitter only announced the issues around 12.30, but the issues actually began with the inbound failure @ 11am. And they had posted no responses to the chaos that ensued at Dundalk as even by 2.30pm not enough buses (3 hours after the original breakdown). IE simply don't do incident mgt well. Customers always last to be considered, or that is how it feels.
Check out the Translink/Enterprise twitter account today. Lots of the delayed Enterprise passengers commenting there about what went wrong at Connolly and Dundalk, but to be fair it was IE's turf so IE should really respond. But at least the Translink/Enterprise twitter account is fully operational when the passengers need it, unlike IE.
Also look at all the delays on the Realtime App earlier today - very few of those have explanations posted to customers via IE Twitter.
You find IE twitter generally only posts about delays after customers contact them to ask what is going on.
Rant over!

Tweeting every delay is not possible. As for the DD service, it wasn't exactly a failure. In fact wise decision to offload passengers to prevent possible disruption.

Rashers72

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

As for the DD service, it wasn't exactly a failure. In fact wise decision to offload passengers to prevent possible disruption.

It was due into Connolly at 11.20. The already well loaded suburban service arrived in late @ 12.20. It was stuck at Malahide for the best part of an hour. So if it was not 'exactly a failure', what happened? There is a photo somewhere of the broken down locomotive been pulled away, and also the return service was substituted with a suburban service. I could be wrong, but why pull an entire train in the middle of a service, if it was not a failure?
Also I don't expect every delay to be on twitter. With the volume of daily mechanical failures in recent months, that would be a full time job. But the IE twitter page is receiving a lot of negative feedback about communication delays, from lots of passengers.

Jamie2k9

Rashers72 wrote: »

It was due into Connolly at 11.20. The already well loaded suburban service arrived in late @ 12.20. It was stuck at Malahide for the best part of an hour. So if it was not 'exactly a failure', what happened? There is a photo somewhere of the broken down locomotive been pulled away, and also the return service was substituted with a suburban service. I could be wrong, but why pull an entire train in the middle of a service, if it was not a failure?
Also I don't expect every delay to be on twitter. With the volume of daily mechanical failures in recent months, that would be a full time job. But the IE twitter page is receiving a lot of negative feedback about communication delays, from lots of passengers.

There was a power issue but it could of limped to Connolly but always a rise it may fail. Getting buses for up to 300 passengers isn't an easy task especially on a day like today.

Rashers72

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

There was a power issue but it could of limped to Connolly but always a rise it may fail. Getting buses for up to 300 passengers isn't an easy task especially on a day like today.

I would agree on the bus front. It was 3 hours from the 1st failure to when the buses were needed. Hard to believe there was not a single 4 carriage train set in Drogheda or Belfast that could have helped.
But it's back to all these mechanical failures which seem to be keeping an increased % of rolling stock unavailable. I'd be really interested to hear the truth behind what's really going on at the moment on that front.....

Jamie2k9

Rashers72 wrote: »

I would agree on the bus front. It was 3 hours from the 1st failure to when the buses were needed. Hard to believe there was not a single 4 carriage train set in Drogheda or Belfast that could have helped.
But it's back to all these mechanical failures which seem to be keeping an increased % of rolling stock unavailable. I'd be really interested to hear the truth behind what's really going on at the moment on that front.....

On IE side it was NIR crew so finding a ICR/29 with two IE personnel available to operate would be tricky because most TPWS sets wouldn't of been there and are all Louth drivers cleared in NI.

As for NIR, only 6 sets fitted with CAWS, not sure how a non CAWS set could operate down South, it's never happened (?) so I assume not possible. There should be a spare DD set available in Belfast Sundays but could be maintenance work been done.

I am going to assume the 29 didn't go cross the border because there wasn't a second person available.

There hasn't been a string of mechanical faults in a while, they have sorted out Cork issues, ICR's are not having issues. The term mechanical fault is widely used but in reality an ICR with a mechanical fault could operate for a week o more before the "issue" is fully fixed if not fixed by your standard inspection daily.

Tomorrow morning might be a test for sum ICRs through, we shall see how much of past lessons have been learned.

Hilly Bill

devnull wrote: »

Not all of the time, often there has been no info on twitter but services are effected.

But still running.

devnull

Nope, not always, I have many experiences of early services on the Malahide branch that have not run and there being no information with the excuse always because it's before 7.30am.

The staff in the station say it's not their job to announce disruption as central control do announcements but if an incident happens early you can expect not to know about it.

Irish Rail normally reply after 7.30am saying that an incident happened overnight, but didn't bother to think of their customers who were taking trains between 6:30 - 7:00

Rashers72

Twitter missed lots of delays to southbound Darts and suburban trains from Drogheda this morning. 1,000's of customers delayed up to 30 mins. Of course drivers made no announcements. Lack of accountability in IE is frightening.

Hilly Bill

devnull wrote: »

Nope, not always, I have many experiences of early services on the Malahide branch that have not run and there being no information with the excuse always because it's before 7.30am.

The staff in the station say it's not their job to announce disruption as central control do announcements but if an incident happens early you can expect not to know about it.

Irish Rail normally reply after 7.30am saying that an incident happened overnight, but didn't bother to think of their customers who were taking trains between 6:30 - 7:00

That's not in context of the op's question. The staff in the station is right.

tabbey

devnull wrote: »

I have many experiences of early services on the Malahide branch

Now we know, the former GNR main line is only a branch.