God, that SEUPB piece in the previous post is the most convoluted piece of corporate gobbledegook I've seen in a long time. (What is SEUPB by the way?)
The Dublin-Belfast route has congestion problems between Dublin and Drogheda and also between Portadown and Belfast, due to increasing commuter traffic. What is needed is capacity improvements on these sections to benefit not just intercity but also shorter-distance commuters. For example bi-directional signalling with frequent high-speed crossovers, quadruple tracking in some places where there space for this., end higher line speeds where possible.
Forget any fancy TGV stuff: it's hugely expensive and for the relatively short distances involved the time savings are quite small. It's not like Paris-Bordeaux or Barcelona-Madrid, for heaven's sake. Dublin-Belfast is a medium-distance corridor, with a lot of short-distance traffic as well, and a fairly modest population to boot.
No. SEUPB published the overview of their 2021-2027 PEACEPLUS programme for public consultation in March. This proposal was included:
That was at a very early stage and the programme has to be approved by the European Commission so funding wasn't (and still isn't) certain. Since then, Irish Rail and Translink have been carrying out studies to support a detailed funding application that was due to be submitted at the end of this year.
Being short, there should be less of an issue of making the carriages wider than current stock. AFAIK the LHB DARTs are 9' 6" wide. Irish loading gauge allows for up 10' 2" (Or it used to anyway). That sort of width would not be possible for longer stock but if the new carriages are to be even shorter than current DART carriages (and would probably be the shortest length passenger carriages in the country), I wonder if they would be made wider to maximise the available loading gauge?
Past UK sourced rolling stock was a maximum 9' 3" wide, that being the widest that carriages seem to be for the smaller UK loading gauge. Older Irish stock was built right up to the maximum 10' 2" width and it would be wasteful to specify that the carriages are narrower.
The X'Trapolis 2.0 trains for Australia that the Irish order is based on (correct me if I am wrong on that) are 9' 11" wide and the track gauge is the same as Ireland. Each carriage is longer than what will be in the Irish order but surely it would be relatively simple to shorten the carriages and keep them the same width - in fact I would imagine that the less changes made to dimensions would result in cost savings. The X'Trapolis 2.0 trains for Australia order will also have 5' 3" bogies plus they will run on 1,500v DC. So many boxes ticked without having to make the order such a special case to fit the Irish requirements.
The Enterprise replacement isn’t even at design stage yet and nothing is approved.
I can’t see anything happening in that regard until the strategic rail review is complete and plans developed.
Has there been any update on the procurement of the new enterprise fleet yet?
Also is work on the oranmore passing loop due to start soon?
Based on the images/videos the doors will open outside the train not like the 29000 or newer DARTs. I would say those looking after them prefer this to.
I see the post I was replying to above has vanished
As for the doors thing - what? The location of where the doors go when sliding has no impact on the required platform length.
huh?
They are short cars, 5=4 of existing length.
They are fully articulated, open tram-like structure inside.
How will the carriage doors open while the train stops at a station platform? Will the doors open outwards while being idle once the passengers enter/exit the carriage while it's at the platform.
The current DART fleet out on duty at the moment currently do not have doors that slide out onto the platform while they open on the train. The LHB DARTs do have doors that remain on the outside of the train while it opens/closes it's doors while at the platform. The Tokyo DART's however have their sliding doors kept inside the interior walls of the train at all times.
If the newer Alstom DARTs come supplied with sliding doors that go outwards from the train. I'm thinking that the these new doors will not be able to fit the current platforms as the new may become too long while the train stops at platforms.
Is there any real increase in the height of the doors on the Alstom DARTs while it's being compared to the other stock in the current DART fleet?
Remember that the new trains will be "walk through" which shortens the connection between the coaches, rather than corridor connections with doors, and the individual coaches will be a little shorter than the current ones.
The net effect is that a new five-car train will be comparable to a four-car train in length terms, but will carry more passengers due to the more open nature of the train.
The 80km range seems to be pretty much the standard range for battery electric trains technology at present.
Battery technology has improved by about 2 orders of magnitude since the 1930s. Hence my question about the very short (80km) range.
there probably would have been serious improvements since the drum train had the technology kept being developed and widely used.
Some questions on the new DART+ order:
Does the 80km range imply that a journey on batteries can only be for <40kms each way assuming no charging at the turn-around point?
Assuming charging is necessary, how long will it take? Remember existing trains can be turned around in under 10 minutes if necessary.
Why 5-car trains? Existing platforms can take 8 suburban or DART cars. However the Alsthom document refers to 83m-long trains, which implies very short cars (c 16m). Of course in this case 2 five-car units would fit existing platforms.
Are the sets articulated? This makes for much reduced weight and less maintenance on bogies. Of course it makes any deletion or addition of cars a much more difficult operation.
Finally, back to range: given the low rolling resistance of railway rolling stock, 80km looks quite short (some cars can do I would have thought that there would be much bigger improvement since the days of the Drumm battery trains of nearly a century ago.
Tell me a target Irish Rail have ever achieved, they promise a lot but rarely deliver or if they do its short term delivery before adding time back because they cannot produce a workable timetable.
There doesn't need to be trails.
Can Cork-Dublin non-stop be done in 2h yes, can it ben done in 2 hours during peak periods not reliably so 2h05-2h10m is reasonable. Its been discussed before the 2h15m (now 2h19m) is like this because IE taught they could just slot the service and screw other services. That didn't work and its ran over 2h15m late almost every single day so they added a few more minutes to make it on time.
From day one it was un acceptable to arrive in Heuston at 08.25, 08.35 or 08.40. It had to be 08.30 but they had to admit defeat. I am sure when there is a full shake up of the timetable in future they will force the 08.30 arrival again and make sure it works but other services will suffer.
There is no reason the 07.00/09.00 etc and every second train after isn't 2h20m while the 08.00/10.00 have a block time of 2h25-30m.
The current timetable is shocking, great for the poster printers of on time performance but I think its the worst timetabling casting in years by so called experts.
The proposed revisions to TEN-T suggest a min speed of 160kph by 2040.
I think TEN-T in Ireland is just Connolly to Belfast and Heuston to Cork?
Express was 2h15
Pre-covid average journey time was 2h30 with fastest non-express taking approx 2h25.
Has there been any time trials before and if so what was the fastest jt.
I thought they said on the news they were targeting a 2h30 journey time but the non-stop service is already 2h20 so knock 10 mins off that I guess.
I believe it's 266km from Heuston to Cork?
In my opinion, two hours should be the target timing.
That means 133kph average speed.
After the 94.5 million expenditure, is that achievable, assuming few stops?
Or is it achievable non-stop?
Funding is for:
https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/0c427-minister-ryan-announces-additional-funding-for-heavy-rail/
This sounds like continued track renewal and ballast cleaning. Interested to know what minor works they refer to at Limerick Junction and does this funding include the Curragh upgrade assuming not.
The Cork LC project will be separate funding and this might be the first reference to 125mph running not that it can happen anytime soon.
As for journey, presume that is just restoring the 2019 schedule before they added 8-10 minutes to Cork services.
The article doesn't actually say what the 90m will be spent on. Is it the level crossings removal project?
I doubt every DART from Drogheda will be stopping at existing DART stops. It was overcrowded enough already in rush hour at Raheny for DART's from Malahide. Imagine trying to get on one from Drogheda!
To be fair most Alstom products are very good products, the 2700s (and for example the UK 458s and 460s) of the GEC Alstom days came at a time of poor unreliable (and cheap?) builds from the late 90s/early 00s, a tradition which thankfully has not followed Alstom post the mid 00s.
A five car set will have room for 550 passengers, a 29000 has room for 819 passengers according to official figures, the DART fleet has similar capacity so a reduction in passenger capacity per set, however, service frequency and number of sets used would then need to be taken into account to see any +/- in passenger capacity.
Will there be a similar number of seats to the current 8500 fleet.
To be fair to Alstom they also built the Luas trams which are fine.
In regards to Drogheda service it's been mentioned that there will be fast(er) services which don't stop everywhere.
Does anyone have information on the models that are being ordered? What top speed? I think anything less than 160kph would be disappointing. Assume they will have DART like acceleration running connected with a pantograph. What acceleration / top speed running on batteries?
I hope they don't end up being a disaster like the 8200's as well.
