Cork Area Commuter Rail (CACR)

bk · 11-07-2025 10:02AM

As a Corkonian, I’d have to say CART is a terrible name! It would be constantly mocked by people all over the country and in Cork too.

Plus cart invokes the idea of slowness in people’s heads, the idea of a slow horse drawn cart meandering down the road. It invokes the opposite thoughts of speed that DART invokes. There is no way Irish Rail will want to use this.

Perhaps simply “Cork Rail” or “Cork Metro Rail” or “Metro Rail Cork”. Our just “Cork Commuter Rail” like it is now. It isn’t like there is really a branded name for the current commuter rail services in Cork.

thomil · 11-07-2025 10:14AM

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it needs to be branded as the Cork Area Transit System!

bk · 11-07-2025 11:11AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123623396#Comment_123623396

LOL, you have my vote.

Though I think they may have thought of that, CMATS (Cork Metropolitan Area Transport Strategy) seems to have gone out of it's way to avoid it!

KrisW1001 · 11-07-2025 11:12AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123623355#Comment_123623355

There is a brand, albeit a very prosaic one: “Commuter”. That’s what IÉ calls its non-electric local train services.

DART would actually be a great name, except that even if you decide it’s now a generic term, everyone knows that was originally an acronym that started with the totally unacceptable (to Cork people) word “Dublin”.

I’d avoid anything ”Metro” because of what’s (hopefully) being built in Dublin.

There’s always “S Train”. Yes, this is originally German, and there it means “schnell”(fast) or ”Stadt”(city) depending on who you listen to, but it has also been used outside Germany, even in countries where the words for “city”, “frequent” or “fast” don’t start with the letter S: Copenhagen, Prague and Milan all have “S” networks.

The Irish for “arrow” is saighead, if you want a tenuous link.

cgcsb · 11-07-2025 11:23AM

C-Train or C-Traein might be a good option with C being for Cathair, but in Cork people would tell you it stands for Cork/Corcaigh and in Dublin they'd tell you the C was for the shape of the original line around Dublin Bay and Limerick or Belfast they'd say nothing at all.

Sam Russell · 11-07-2025 11:38AM

Why not call it 'Arrow' as that would convey speed and directness.

My mother was always amused by American tourist to Cork could not get their head around the buses that had the destination as 'Cob-H' as they had no idea how to pronounce the trailing H.

pigtown · 11-07-2025 11:50AM

CCR (Cork Commuter Rail), like DLR, is easy enough to say

bk · 11-07-2025 11:55AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123623645#Comment_123623645

While I wouldn't object to S-Train, I think most Irish people outside of this forum wouldn't have a clue what that means or it's history.

I get your point on Copenhagen, Prague and Milan, however I'd note they border German speaking countries (sort of in Milans case) and I suspect most people in these cities would have been pretty familiar with S-Bahn next door in Germany.

Worth noting that while DSB have never said what the S stands for, but "Stads" is the Danish word for city, so that lines up with one of the German names for S-Bahn, Stadtbahn or City Train in German, so I'd argue works quiet well for them and is very in line with S-Bahn.

Milan, they say the S stands for Surburan, "suburbano" in Italian, which fits the type of service too.

Prague the system is actually called Esko Prague, but you are correct, they use S in the symbol and for the line numbers, S1, S2, etc. I'd say it comes back more to their closeness to Germany.

In all the above examples, I think most people in these cities knew what an S-Bahn is and they came up with an excuse to fit it into their own system and language. I don't think Irish people have the same general knowledge or connection with S-Bahn/S-Train. They know what a DART is, but not a S-Bahn.

Metro, with 5 minutes frequency CACR isn't far off a Metro, more so then the Trams in Manchester, but yes perhaps best not to confuse it with Metrolink. Though plenty of examples of electrified heavy rail systems in the North America being called "Metro"!

Just to be clear, I'm just spit balling, I don't really disagree with any name other then CART, but it is clear no one has come up with a name for it yet that really jumps out.

EDIT: I do sort of like Arrow, I know it has been used before, but could be used for all the non Dublin electric commuter rail systems.

KrisW1001 · 11-07-2025 01:24PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123623827#Comment_123623827

Actually, on thinking about it, I really like what I called the “tenuous” connection to saighaid and its link to arrow/dart, but I accept that no Irish word containing a -gh- consonant could be used as a brand-name in a country that receives so many English monoglot visitors. (Every time someone says “droggeda”, a puppy dies; I’d hate to add "sag-head” to that list of shame)

However, that word’s English translation, “Arrow”, could be resurrected. It was the branding used for all non-DART commuter service in the past, and I believe the heritage-repainted 2600 DMU pair still runs on the Cóbh line today (IÉ Class 2600 in original Arrow Livery at Cork Kent.)

So, if there were a vote, my vote would be for “Arrow”, and for the lines to be numbered “A1”, “A2”, etc (I don’t see more than three in Cork) . Dublin can keep DART, of course, but Arrow should be the name used elsewhere.

__

A note on Prague: I see you’ve been reading the Wikipedia page… I should go and edit that, because it’s slightly misleading. “Esko” really doesn’t mean anything more than “the letter S” (the Czech Wiki page states this directly: V češtině slovo „esko“ znamená označení písmene S / In Czech the word “esko” means the [sign/mark/designation] of the letter S), so while they gave it a name, that name is the letter. The reason why they don’t use “S” alone is because s is already a word in Czech, meaning “with”/“accompanied by”.

bk · 11-07-2025 01:57PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123624194#Comment_123624194

The more I think about it the more I like restricting the Arrow brand. It matches well with DART, both something you throw/fire, but also invokes thoughts of speed.

"Sprinter Trains" might be another option is you want an excuse to call it S-Train. Sprinter also invokes speed and I know it is a brand name used for S-Bahn type services (sort of) in the Netherlands.

BTW I've actually spent a lot of time in Prague, I work with a great team there, been there many times and even lived there for a few months at one stage. Lovely city and people. My Czech though is very poor, so thanks for the explanation on Esko, that makes a lot more sense.

riddlinrussell · 11-07-2025 02:04PM

What about "Piléar" if we wanted to go as Gaelige?

Bullet - In theme with "Arrow/Dart"

Secondary definition as "Pillar", it's "supporting the cities"

And pronunciation shouldn't escape the Sasanachs

KrisW1001 · 11-07-2025 03:51PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123624317#Comment_123624317

”Sprint” isn’t bad either, but really I’m not wedded to “S [word for railway]”, so long as there’s a clear branding that differentiates these very regular turn-up-and-go services from the long-distance trains, and that it’s amenable to being used with a route numbering system. ”Arrow” fits that bill nicely.

On Prague, it’s a place that I love but it makes me sad to see how decades of corruption has turned the city centre into a juvenile, tacky shithole of a theme park, where you can buy fake cannabis easier than a loaf of bread, and where you’ll never hear a word of Czech spoken. Plus there’s nonsense like the endless “classic car tours” in fake classic cars, trucks selling those horrible “chimney cakes” (not Czech) everywhere, absinthe (it’s not Fernet, so it’s not Czech) or, the most incredible of all: the Red Army surplus shops.. How would we feel about shops selling British Army gear on O’Connell Street? Come in, come in, we’ve got the Black and Tan stuff at the back.. I feel sorry for anyone going there without a Czech guide: it really is the most tourist-mugging city I’ve ever been to (yes, I’ve been to Amsterdam - not even close).

But, and dragging this back towards a topic ;), the City has a really good approach to its Bus, Tram and Metro system: a full-time engineering department designs extensions to lines, so that when money becomes available, a set of projects to the value of the available funding can immediately be retrieved and fed into the legal process. TII would do well to copy the model.