Why don't they use more electrified railway lines in ireland?

machaseh

I am from the Netherlands and virtually all of our railway lines are electrified. Only in some very rural areas do we still have non-electrified lines, places where there's only one train per hour and the like, and even many of those are rapidly being electrified now.

But why is only a small area within Dublin electrified here? Having diesel trains everywhere is super inefficient and not environmentally friendly at all. Yes, electrification costs money, but it would allow much more reliable and efficient service. Of course I understand that the most rural lines don't need to be electrified, but at least Dublin - Belfast, Dublin - Cork, Dublin - Galway, Dublin - Limerick and Dublin - Wexford should be electrified and have at least hourly service at the bare minimum.

Also why does dart stop in Malahide on one end and Greystones on the other? Why doesn't DART extend to at least Drogheda on one end and wicklow town on the other, as well as DART to Maynooth/M3 Parkway? This would seem like a very bare minimum of service to me , to serve those at least twice an hour.

I now usually find myself using the commercial coach services rather than the train, as at least the coach doesn't stop at everyone's house.

L1011

Underinvestment. There is a significant expansion planned around suburban and outer suburban Dublin but thats it

Twice an hour is already well below the current peak time service by diesel and expected service once electrificied on Maynooth and Hazelhatch

As above decades of under investment.
Broadly we haven't been relatively wealthy for that long and decisions had to be made on spending. Electrifying railways wasn't a priority when the population was falling.

Relative to the Netherlands: your population density is in no way comparable to us. There would be an extra 35,000,000 people on this island if we had the same density. Cities like Galway would have to be the population of Dublin and towns like Tuam would have the population of Galway now. The economics of electrifying would be much different.

boombang

The following comment is largely motivated by anti CIE bias of mine, but I think even if there was a sound economic rationale for electrification Irish Rail would lack the initiative to get it done.

machaseh

boombang wrote: »

The following comment is largely motivated by anti CIE bias of mine, but I think even if there was a sound economic rationale for electrification Irish Rail would lack the initiative to get it done.

Well normally one wouldn't expect the rail operator themselves to do such a major investment. It should be a conscious decision by the government, just like the plan to build all the motorways in ireland (which I learned are also very recent).

ohographite

I would love to see electrification and an hourly service on at least the Dublin-Cork, Dublin-Galway, Dublin-Belfast and Dublin-Waterford railways. I have no idea if this will ever happen, but I don't for one second accept it as wishful thinking to think it will. For environmental reasons, I think this should happen as soon as possible.

machaseh

ohographite wrote: »

I would love to see electrification and an hourly service on at least the Dublin-Cork, Dublin-Galway, Dublin-Belfast and Dublin-Waterford railways. I have no idea if this will ever happen, but I don't for one second accept it as wishful thinking to think it will. For environmental reasons, I think this should happen as soon as possible.

Yes and based on the population numbers this should certainly be possible. It would push a lot of people who now use the coaches into the train (assuming they'd offer the train fare for a competitive price now).

73bc61lyohr0mu

Closing a lot of lines didn't help. Imagine if the line from Newcastle West to Limerick was retained. The amount of traffic it would take off that road in the morning would be staggering. The traffic as it is is horrendous.

AngryLips

ohographite wrote: »

I would love to see electrification and an hourly service on at least the Dublin-Cork, Dublin-Galway, Dublin-Belfast and Dublin-Waterford railways. I have no idea if this will ever happen, but I don't for one second accept it as wishful thinking to think it will. For environmental reasons, I think this should happen as soon as possible.

I thought there was already an hourly service on Dublin-Cork?

L1011

Cork is hourly clockface for a while now and it has delivered increases in passenger loadings.

We don't have the stock currently for any more services basically. Hourly Belfast plans involve swiping a 22000 set and a 3000 set from existing stock in the short term but neither operator can free those up; plus the 3000 particularly would be a major reduction in product quality.

Galway/Waterford/Sligo all require further passing loops / double tracking as far as I know; as well as extra stock

Dravokivich

Thered be a few areas west of Carrick on shannon that'll need a lot of work to double track to sligo. Or are the raised sections already setup with room for it?

ednwireland

sligo could do with a train that gets there before 9am as well

machaseh

L1011 wrote: »

Cork is hourly clockface for a while now and it has delivered increases in passenger loadings.

We don't have the stock currently for any more services basically. Hourly Belfast plans involve swiping a 22000 set and a 3000 set from existing stock in the short term but neither operator can free those up; plus the 3000 particularly would be a major reduction in product quality.

Galway/Waterford/Sligo all require further passing loops / double tracking as far as I know; as well as extra stock

Wait a bit until the storm after Brexit settles, then cooperate with NI to electrify all of Dublin - Belfast. Then get brand new high quality electrical trains and use the remaining diesel stock to improve other services. It's not that hard.

Bonus is that you can then also have DART run all the way to Drogheda during Rush Hours, and at least to places like Balbriggan or so outside rush hour.

Yes it costs money, but everything costs money and this is something that would greatly increase the benefits for the environment and for the mobility in Ireland as a whole.

L1011

Despite the Netherlands using it extensively, 1500v DC is less than ideal for long distance electrification. That makes it quite unlikely that Belfast will be electrified any time soon

machaseh

L1011 wrote: »

Despite the Netherlands using it extensively, 1500v DC is less than ideal for long distance electrification. That makes it quite unlikely that Belfast will be electrified any time soon

Dublin to belfast is only 166 km. From Amsterdam to Groningen (north of the Netherlands) is 180 km and that also uses this electrification system, this train line goes mostly through rural area and doesn't have that many stops in between so it would be comparable and runs perfectly fine on this electrification system. The line is, of course, fully electrified.

So I call bollox.

is_that_so

L1011 wrote: »

Cork is hourly clockface for a while now and it has delivered increases in passenger loadings.

We don't have the stock currently for any more services basically. Hourly Belfast plans involve swiping a 22000 set and a 3000 set from existing stock in the short term but neither operator can free those up; plus the 3000 particularly would be a major reduction in product quality.

Galway/Waterford/Sligo all require further passing loops / double tracking as far as I know; as well as extra stock

There's a problem with profitability on most lines. AFAIK only Cork and Belfast offer the numbers.

machaseh

is_that_so wrote: »

There's a problem with profitability on most lines. AFAIK only Cork and Belfast offer the numbers.

Train lines are supposed to be a public service, profit is made only on certain lines and serves to support the public service that is a train, it is not the sole purpose of train lines.

Of course if virtually nobody uses a line then it may have to close, but this is certainly not the case on any of the routes I suggested.

is_that_so

machaseh wrote: »

Train lines are supposed to be a public service, profit is made only on certain lines and serves to support the public service that is a train, it is not the sole purpose of train lines.

Of course if virtually nobody uses a line then it may have to close, but this is certainly not the case on any of the routes I suggested.

Yes, but the cost is in the lines themselves and IE only get so much money. Electrification is planned around the commuter east coast services. It's a lot easier to do and has the numbers.

L1011

machaseh wrote: »

Dublin to belfast is only 166 km. From Amsterdam to Groningen (north of the Netherlands) is 180 km and that also uses this electrification system, this train line goes mostly through rural area and doesn't have that many stops in between so it would be comparable and runs perfectly fine on this electrification system. The line is, of course, fully electrified.

So I call bollox.

I specifically state that the Netherlands uses it despite being sub-optimal and you counter that with an example of the Netherlands using it... which does nothing to prove its not sub-optimal

It's an old system nobody would do a long distance buildout anymore

machaseh

L1011 wrote: »

I specifically state that the Netherlands uses it despite being sub-optimal and you counter that with an example of the Netherlands using it... which does nothing to prove its not sub-optimal

It's an old system nobody would do a long distance buildout anymore

I also call bollox that it's a suboptimal system in any way, as newly built train lines use the same system (such as a portion of above mentioned Amsterdam - Groningen line, between Lelystad and Zwolle, which was completed in the early 2010's).

L1011

Your aggressive posting style makes it rather pointless to debate with you

NS/prorail have an entire country of 1500v DC so they're tied to it; but they still use 25k AC on long distance new builds. It's an ancient system with efficiency problems and a very expensive buildout (vastly more substations and wiring required)

machaseh

L1011 wrote: »

Your aggressive posting style makes it rather pointless to debate with you

NS/prorail have an entire country of 1500v DC so they're tied to it; but they still use 25k AC on long distance new builds. It's an ancient system with efficiency problems and a very expensive buildout (vastly more substations and wiring required)

I believe those were only used on the newly built High Speed rail which is a different beast from a normal intercity railway line. Neither Dublin nor Belfast would be big enough to justify a newly built High Speed rail line.

Even so, why not roll out this more modern system on these mostly unelectrified tracks anyway?

ohographite

AngryLips wrote: »

I thought there was already an hourly service on Dublin-Cork?

You're right, I should've worded my post better.
I do however hope that the operating hours will be increased, until Dublin - Cork trains run every hour from 06:00 to 22:00 inclusive, instead of almost every hour from 07:00 to 21:00(what they do at the moment).

ohographite

is_that_so wrote: »

Yes, but the cost is in the lines themselves and IE only get so much money. Electrification is planned around the commuter east coast services. It's a lot easier to do and has the numbers.

I'd definitely say that there's a case for the electrification of the lines from Dublin to Belfast, Cork and Galway. I would love to see more lines than these electrified too, but I wouldn't be disgusted if more lines weren't.

Infini

Only reason they haven't done widespread electrification is of course underinvestment and too much short term thinking in goverment as well. Moving Rail away from diesil to electric power would significantly help in terms of being able to utilise cleaner power sources but of course the other side of this is more maintinence would be required for overheads as well as replacing the old fleet too. It's unlikely to happen for several decades but eventually they will have to move away from diesil as supplies as well as enviromental concerns give those in charge a big enough push to do so.

Drifter50

Huge investment needed to go down the electrification route, neither the finance or the will is there. Also with cutbacks a lot of passing loops have been lifted so increased traffic is not possible even if we had the rolling stock
There`s a bunch of 2700`s sitting in Limerick I think gathering dust and rotting away
There is a goodish proportion of commuter trains in Belgium that are both DMU and loco hauled. Belgium and Netherlands not disimiliar

Drifter50

ednwireland wrote: »

sligo could do with a train that gets there before 9am as well

At least the line survives and has gone from 3 trains per day in the 90`s to 7 per day in each direction now and 7 car sets well loaded
Gawd, I remember when the line was down to 30MPH west of Mullingar for large parts back then and reliability was not good

CatInABox

L1011 wrote: »

Despite the Netherlands using it extensively, 1500v DC is less than ideal for long distance electrification. That makes it quite unlikely that Belfast will be electrified any time soon

The new Dart Expansion looks to be using a different power supply, so at least the work will have been started on some of the lines once complete.

How much effort would be required to change over the existing system?

L1011

Theres nothing to suggest that DART Expansion is using anything other than 1500v DC.

An entirely new fleet and significant rewiring and replacement of substations would be required to change the existing network to 25kv AC. Dual-mode units that could use both could be obtained instead but this adds cost and complexity

CatInABox

L1011 wrote: »

Theres nothing to suggest that DART Expansion is using anything other than 1500v DC.

An entirely new fleet and significant rewiring and replacement of substations would be required to change the existing network to 25kv AC. Dual-mode units that could use both could be obtained instead but this adds cost and complexity

Perhaps I'm reading too much into the details of the tender for new Dart carriages, or that they just worded it weird, but it says this:

The trains will be compatible with the existing DART network overhead power supply of 1500v DC (i.e. current draw, traction profile under acceleration and re-generation) and also with the power supply for the proposed extension sections.

To me, that reads like they'll have two different power supplies.

See here.

L1011

Worded odd is still my guess. Its possible they may want 25kv AC compatible units to avoid the same problem looming again but if they want to meet their claimed rollout time I can't see them going for a mixed system.

tabbey

Drifter50 wrote: »

There is a goodish proportion of commuter trains in Belgium that are both DMU and loco hauled.

Not so many now as before. It used be fabulous to observe the Brussels rush hour, Electric locos with 13 coaches, different varieties of emu, and peak hour only diesel loco hauled trains destined to continue on branches normally served by dmu shuttles.

dowlingm

L1011 wrote: »

Theres nothing to suggest that DART Expansion is using anything other than 1500v DC.

An entirely new fleet and significant rewiring and replacement of substations would be required to change the existing network to 25kv AC. Dual-mode units that could use both could be obtained instead but this adds cost and complexity

Bombardier have trains running in France under diesel, 1.5 and 25. I doubt a straight 1.5/25 would vex anyone who can answer the tender. The principal barrier to 25kV would, I suspect, be clearances under structures, followed by freakouts by An Taisce about the visual impact of the catenary poles and feeder lines

DoctorPan

CatInABox wrote: »

Perhaps I'm reading too much into the details of the tender for new Dart carriages, or that they just worded it weird, but it says this:



To me, that reads like they'll have two different power supplies.

See here.

DART Expansion lines are to be existing 1500DC, any further expension of the network will be 25kV AC, considering the life of the existing stock, IE are wisely specing units that can be easily switched over to work any further expansion of the wires.

Drifter50

tabbey wrote: »

Not so many now as before. It used be fabulous to observe the Brussels rush hour, Electric locos with 13 coaches, different varieties of emu, and peak hour only diesel loco hauled trains destined to continue on branches normally served by dmu shuttles.

Agreed, Brussels is something else, so is Utrecht with the German bullet trains and I`ve always been impressed with Antwerp, amazing architecture mixed with a 3 tier modern railway system where a mix of intercity push pull electric locos, inter city EMU`s and local EMU`s combine with diesels. I guess they still use the diesels because of capacity issues but the trend has to be towards electric power. A large number of the more rural stations in Belgium tend to be served by diesel EMU and small loco hauled.

Dare I say the staff of Belgian Railways all seem to work to make things better unlike IE

Mezzotint

Diesel commuter trains in the Dublin area or perhaps Cork Commuter Rail really are bizarre by European standards, but our intercity and long distance rail network being diesel does make sense, given the low population densities.

We should be concentrating on getting the commuter rail systems electrified and just getting the intercity services running at the full speed the existing fleets can handle. We don't currently need to electrify any of those.

Getting the maximum number of people onto electric trains in urban areas makes sense.

ohographite

Mezzotint wrote: »

Diesel commuter trains in the Dublin area or perhaps Cork Commuter Rail really are bizarre by European standards, but our intercity and long distance rail network being diesel does make sense, given the low population densities.

We should be concentrating on getting the commuter rail systems electrified and just getting the intercity services running at the full speed the existing fleets can handle. We don't currently need to electrify any of those.

Getting the maximum number of people onto electric trains in urban areas makes sense.

I still hope the entire rail network of Ireland is electrified as soon as possible, even though I doubt it ever will.

webwayz

I think it will be a long time before IE move to electrifiy the intercity rail network. Short-termism is a diease in many bodies like IE. The bean counters would argue that electricification is not cost effective or some such excuse that they havent budgeted for it since they live hand to mouth. I can see under these circumstances that only dublin to cork or dublin to belfast has the numbers to justify it... but surely a better service to Galway would also be feasible.
You would hope that acceleration of electrifying the suburban rail lines around dublin would make contingencies for future changes of voltage etc.
Electrifying the commuter lines to Balbriggan, Maynooth, Dunboyne (and on to Navan?) as well as the south eastern commuter line and phoenix park tunnell would enable, IE to claim more green creditentials.

IE 222

Hydrail could be a better option for us and an awful lot cheaper.

Current trains are getting speeds of 90mph and a 600 mile range which will only improve further. Current fleet can be converted, by swapping the engines essentially and obviously it will remove the massive cost of and need for OHLE and all the other infrastructure and maintaince required for electrification. Fuel can be produced locally if the will is there buy using power produced from wind farms overnight when demand from the grid drops off.

Mezzotint

Cork-Dublin-Belfast also is a TEN-T (Transeuropean Networks - Transportation) route. So it's more likely to be EU funded than any other long-distance route in Ireland. However, depending on how Brexit goes, that could be called into question too, at least the Belfast bit.

It's often marked up as part of the European high speed network, albeit in a greyed out dotted line sort of way denoting that it's not high speed. It'd need to be at least 200km/h to be considered even the low end of high speed.

Diesel commuter rail is just incredibly unambitious. Even taking CO2 footprint out of the equation, diesel trains are unsuitable for urban use as they create significant local particulate pollution, you can't really build large indoor stations and they're invariably noisy if running through urban areas. I know I used to live along the DART line and you could hear a 'diesel' rumbling the kitchen windows, whereas you'd never even notice the DARTs. It reminds me of the kinds of policies you'd see in GOP dominated US urban areas.

On intercity we also set the bar very low - keeping pace with regional British infrastructure, rather than looking further afield at more ambitious projects.

webwayz

IE 222 wrote: »

Hydrail could be a better option for us and an awful lot cheaper.

Current trains are getting speeds of 90mph and a 600 mile range which will only improve further. Current fleet can be converted, by swapping the engines essentially and obviously it will remove the massive cost of and need for OHLE and all the other infrastructure and maintaince required for electrification. Fuel can be produced locally if the will is there buy using power produced from wind farms overnight when demand from the grid drops off.

Hydrail is a nice Idea, people do have misgivings on hyrogen as a fuel since the Hindenberg!

IE 222

webwayz wrote: »

Hydrail is a nice Idea, people do have misgivings on hyrogen as a fuel since the Hindenberg!

It would be well and truly tried and tested by the time it's even considered to happen here. I'm no fuel expert but I'd imagine there's been some massive advances in the 80 plus years since, which will ensure its safety.

Unless were going to upgrade track infrastructure to increase speeds considerably throughout electrifying will be a massive waste of expenses with our current sparse and small population and over supply of motorways.

dowlingm

Hydrail is promising but seems so far to be a thing for small scale regional trains which have proximity to industrial sources of hydrogen. Natural gas companies are v interested because most H2 globally is obtained by cracking CH4 but that is not necessarily in everyone else’s interest.

IE 222

dowlingm wrote: »

Hydrail is promising but seems so far to be a thing for small scale regional trains which have proximity to industrial sources of hydrogen. Natural gas companies are v interested because most H2 globally is obtained by cracking CH4 but that is not necessarily in everyone else’s interest.

At the moment yes but our intercity lines wouldn't be much different in terms of speed and capacity than regional lines in Germany, UK and France. If speed and range can be increased to 125mph and 1000 miles I think we should really consider our options here. Current fleets can easily be switched from diesel to hydrogen which is a massive advantage given our fleet is relatively young.

I don't know much about producing hydrogen other than the fact in can be made rather than having to find a source of it. Ideally if we can produce it for our public transport needs and produce more for exporting it could provide a good return to put back into our transport network.

I believe it can be made by using electricity which if were looking at building more wind farms with the possibility of exporting electricity in the coming years we could use the excess overnight electricity to produce hydrogen. This may allow us to be more competitive and produce it cheaper and more environmentally friendly via wind compared to other countries using gas.

disposableFish

IE 222 wrote: »

I don't know much about producing hydrogen other than the fact in can be made rather than having to find a source of it. Ideally if we can produce it for our public transport needs and produce more for exporting it could provide a good return to put back into our transport network.

I believe it can be made by using electricity which if were looking at building more wind farms with the possibility of exporting electricity in the coming years we could use the excess overnight electricity to produce hydrogen. This may allow us to be more competitive and produce it cheaper and more environmentally friendly via wind compared to other countries using gas.

Short answer is that it can be done but is much more expensive.
Because of this about 96% of hydrogen is produced from methane. The 4% is mostly used for particular reactions (because electrolysis produces much purer hydrogen).

Nobody has solved the transport issue and nobody has anything close to a bright idea on how to do it. Think how inefficient it's going to be to transport small amount of h2 from all these spread-out wind-farms.

And is it going to be that cheap to produce? There's going to be a couple of million of electric cars in this country before too long and they'll all be charging at night. And lets say it does become affordable, there's already a healthy demand for the stuff (producing fertiliser used massive amounts) so prices aren't going to go that low.

IE 222

disposableFish wrote: »

Short answer is that it can be done but is much more expensive.
Because of this about 96% of hydrogen is produced from methane. The 4% is mostly used for particular reactions (because electrolysis produces much purer hydrogen).

Nobody has solved the transport issue and nobody has anything close to a bright idea on how to do it. Think how inefficient it's going to be to transport small amount of h2 from all these spread-out wind-farms.

And is it going to be that cheap to produce? There's going to be a couple of million of electric cars in this country before too long and they'll all be charging at night. And lets say it does become affordable, there's already a healthy demand for the stuff (producing fertiliser used massive amounts) so prices aren't going to go that low.

I don't know much about challenges of producing it but ideally it would want to be produced in the one plant near a rail depot I'd presume and feed the electricity or gas to it.

I was reading about some new initiative of farmers been encouraged to start producing gas from slurry, something along them lines anyway. Could this be another option or do you need massive amounts to make it worthwhile producing. Seems like a great way of offsetting the farm emissions if the waste from every 100 cows provides x amount of train journeys.

lola85

disposableFish wrote: »

Short answer is that it can be done but is much more expensive.
Because of this about 96% of hydrogen is produced from methane. The 4% is mostly used for particular reactions (because electrolysis produces much purer hydrogen).

Nobody has solved the transport issue and nobody has anything close to a bright idea on how to do it. Think how inefficient it's going to be to transport small amount of h2 from all these spread-out wind-farms.

And is it going to be that cheap to produce? There's going to be a couple of million of electric cars in this country before too long and they'll all be charging at night. And lets say it does become affordable, there's already a healthy demand for the stuff (producing fertiliser used massive amounts) so prices aren't going to go that low.

What produces Ireland’s electricity to power these electrical vehicles?

tabbey

lola85 wrote: »

What produces Ireland’s electricity to power these electrical vehicles?

Mostly oil and gas, a little coal and peat,
some hydro electric power,
an increasing amount of nuclear powered electricity imported from UK and France,
and when weather conditions allow, wind and sun

L1011

tabbey wrote: »

Mostly oil and gas, a little coal and peat,
some hydro electric power,
an increasing amount of nuclear powered electricity imported from UK and France,
and when weather conditions allow, wind and sun

Very little oil.

51% gas and 33% renewables for the past month. I don't know if peat and waste are considered renewables but I don't think so as there's an Other also. Hydro is a constant element of the renewable mix

ohographite

tabbey wrote: »

Mostly oil and gas, a little coal and peat,
some hydro electric power,
an increasing amount of nuclear powered electricity imported from UK and France,
and when weather conditions allow, wind and sun

Solar cells still generate electricity when it's cloudy. Sunny weather is not necessary.

Mezzotint

L1011 wrote: »

Very little oil.

51% gas and 33% renewables for the past month. I don't know if peat and waste are considered renewables but I don't think so as there's an Other also. Hydro is a constant element of the renewable mix

Also relatively small % of electricity imports. The interconnector to Britain is more for load balancing and there's no interconnection to France and won't be until about 2025. Wouldn't really be any French nuclear generated power being consumed here.