Irish Rail: Solution to overcrowding

sdanseo wrote: »

Nonsense. The only stock (effectively) decommissioned on the DART system were the 8200s which are riddled with faults.
All the LHB sets were refurbished and have another decade or more left in them.
All the 8400/8500 sets are still in play as are almost all the 29k for commuter.

The issue is that demand has gone up and the chronic procrastination that is the Irish system of government would rather talk shíte about each other on twitter than actually make a decision about anything i.e. fleet expansion.

And until the people put their foot down (difficult but doable, the parish pump is a way of life especially outside Dublin, sure ah it'll be grand) nothing will change.

A lot of the DART fleeting is very old. 8100 class is 35 years old at this stage.
38 * 2 car units = 76 cars

85* classes are approaching 20 years old.
17 * 4 car units = 68 cars

As Dravokivich already mentioned the problem we have is the track gauge/spec, apart from Brazil and Australia, no one uses our gauge.

We therefore constantly have to buy new, no leasing options, no one to sell to when we're done with them, and because we're not buying an off the shelf product we've to pay more than everyone else.

Dravokivich wrote: »

We have an irish problem without an irish solution. The width of our tracks is known as Irish Gauge. Its wider then everyone elses. When we get trains, they have to be specifically made for us. They cant just get them off someone else. Purchasing second hand is not much cheaper becuase of alot of additional work that'll need to be done.

It's not just the gauge either, it's loading height, width, turning circles, banking aspects of the train lines, weight, tunnel clearance etc etc.

Dravokivich wrote: »

That I cant really answer. It was mostly english engineers that developed railways globally even outside of their commonwealth. So they would have made them to the same spec as their own, so they could sell more equipment.

But you also need to remember a lot of infrastructure was destroyed early to mid 20th century particularly through Europe. Which would have aided in getting their gauges aligned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Regulation_(Gauge)_Act_1846

Note:
There is already a thread in the transport forum on this:
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2058017343

Dravokivich wrote: »

That only references Ireland and the UK. Not the likes of Spain, Africa and South American, which was predominantly developed by English engineers and resulting in their gauge being the dominant and "standard" one.

Spain actually uses both 1600mm for their high speed rails and new stuff and 1688mm for the older stuff

The idea was to stop the French using the railway to transport troops, weapons, supplies by rail in the event they decided to invade Spain in the mid 1800's

#HistoryIsClass

Here's a novel idea: why not properly plan for, fund and deliver public transportation projects in a proper manner?

Public transport infrastructure in Ireland is shockingly poor and along with serious deficiencies in housing and health is compromising economic competitiveness and social cohesion, not to mention quality of life.