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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.

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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.

roundymac

Site identified west of Youghal, objections already being talkied about.:mad: Evening Echo. (can't link it)

Mezzotint

There's already huge power generation (by Irish scale) between ESB Aghada and the neighbouring Bord Gais Energy plant a couple of KM away from it. So there's likely already capacity to connect the interconnector to the grid there.

It's an ideal not going to be a massive imposition and produced no emissions of any type at all.

roundymac

That gas field will run out in another few years I'm afraid.

IE 222

Belfast getting hydrogen powered buses. Not rail but will be interesting to see how this works out. Fuel will be produced from an energia wind farm in the North.

We should be really exploring this option now. Our network is perfect for this and would enable zero emissions trains to operate throughout the whole country without the large expense of electrifying. This would also maximize wind farms having the ability to produce hydrogen during down time.

L1011

IE 222 wrote: »

Belfast getting hydrogen powered buses. Not rail but will be interesting to see how this works out. Fuel will be produced from an energia wind farm in the North.

We should be really exploring this option now. Our network is perfect for this and would enable zero emissions trains to operate throughout the whole country without the large expense of electrifying. This would also maximize wind farms having the ability to produce hydrogen during down time.

The trains don't exist, so it would take longer than electrification for someone to actually make them, test them etc.

They would be VASTLY more expensive than conventional electric trains, as would the hydrogen distribution and filling system. So there's your expense delta gone.

And the time for crayons is past. Eamon Ryan's crayons have destroyed Metro South, lets not let another set destroy DART expansion. The vehicle and construction tenders have to go out imminently if we don't want the city to explode.

IE 222

L1011 wrote: »

The trains don't exist, so it would take longer than electrification for someone to actually make them, test them etc.

They would be VASTLY more expensive than conventional electric trains, as would the hydrogen distribution and filling system. So there's your expense delta gone.

And the time for crayons is past. Eamon Ryan's crayons have destroyed Metro South, lets not let another set destroy DART expansion. The vehicle and construction tenders have to go out imminently if we don't want the city to explode.

Firstly I did say this should be looked into not that we should be ordering these next week. Secondly I'm talking about a nationwide fleet not as a Dart replacement. The cost of electrifying the whole network would be massive.

The trains do exist and the current technology and achievements of hydrogen rail isn't far off what our diesel fleet can achieve now. The Germans have been running these for the past 2 years and seen as their ordering more of them I'd presume their very happy with them. The French expect to have them running by 2022 and the UK are testing them.

Hydrogen production and distribution facilities is a one off cost and will repay for itself after a number of years. Adding other forms of transport such as buses will make it even more viable.

L1011

Catenary installation is a one-off cost too. Both require maintenance.

Hydrogen is not and never has been the answer, for any form of transport. Its been played around with at no significant scale for decades; electric trains have been proven for a century.

dowlingm

There could be a niche for certain places, e.g. Cobh if Marino Point was still open, or if you could pipeline across from Whitegate. But otherwise you are tankering around fuel which is not energy dense and difficult to store and work with.

Whereas: put some catenary at (for example) Cork Kent, Midleton, Cobh and throw these lads on the line and off you go:
https://www.railwaygazette.com/traction-and-rolling-stock/alstom-signs-battery-electric-multiple-unit-contract/55711.article

IE 222

Not denying the success of electric trains but I feel your knocking hydrogen before it's even been tried and tested with the latest technology. Many more operators/countries are exploring and investing into this option and in many different ways. It will cost an awful more to electrify our whole network than it would to build hydrogen production facilities.

Generating hydrogen should be a relatively easy for us to do. We are going to see more and more wind farms pop up. Using these during down time to produce hydrogen is a very effective way of maximizing our energy grid.