Bike On The Train

well, did you bring the bike on the train after?

There’s an entire thread on that here: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2057747877/royal-canal-on-a-road-bike/p1

In summary, it’s smooth surface as far as Maynooth.

Then a mixture of compacted gravel and dirt/grass from Maynooth to Clonsilla, doable on a road bike if it isn’t soaking wet.

Clonsilla to Castleknock is the Deep Sinking, tree roots and mud, not suitable for a road bike.

From Castleknock to Spencer Dock it’s tarmac again.

Just curious (as someone who hasn't been on an intercity train this century) are there bike spaces/disabled spaces on each carriage or do you have to find a specific carriage?

The last time I travelled by train with the bike, it went into what they called the Guard's van or mail van or something like that.

I would hope that they'd inform the cyclists that they were going to do that rather than simply throwing them onto some random platform along the way.

What a fupping baxter. Did you make a complaint, tweet irish rail, etc.. for all the difference it would make

Unfortunately adding bike carriages isn't a simple matter as the Cork train has the bike/luggage room in the engine carriage whereas all the other InterCity trains have the engines integrated under the floor of regular carriages. Refitting some of those regular carriages by removing a bank of four seats and installing more bike racks is probably the solution but IE will need to be convinced it makes economic sense. Alternatively, they need to be told to do it by the Government/Minister for Transport.

The Cork Mark 4 train:

Yeah I complained and was just fobbed off with

"Thank you for your e mail.

The 09.38 train from Maynooth yesterday was the Inter-City train to Sligo. Bicycles can only be carried on this service when they have been booked in advance. Staff have been advised that this rule must be strictly observed in the interest of customer safety as the bikes must be secured in the relevant bike racks."

I responded with

"Do Irish rail have any plans to address the lack of bike capacity? Running a near empty train on a Sunday morning and removing half the passengers because they had bikes seems counter intuitive to me? Also what's the issue with dismantled bikes in a luggage rack? They take up less space that some large suitcases! 

I'm not trying to be difficult but it seems to me that with some effort more bikes could be accommodated on off peak trains."

and got this final reply

"For safety reasons bikes must be secured in the bike storage area of Inter-City services. On commuter trains bikes are permitted at off peak travel. Please see section on our website for full details. There is no doubt that extra capacity is required since the opening of the Greenway, however as you can appreciate in order to provide extra bike capacity it would involve substantial investment from the NTA.  Under the national development plan, we are currently progressing a major order of 600 new carriages, which will increase bike spaces on certain routes where needed."

As far as Irish rail are concerned they'll wait for the new carriages which AFAIK are identical to the existing ones and are just intermediate cars so will have the same layout as existing so might add 2 more spots to the train!!

the last bit of your reply, about the new carriages is particularly galling. probably for the public transport forum but it would be good to get some confirmation on that..

That's what I feared and it's very disappointing. I raised the issue on the Royal Canal Greenway Facebook page which is run by Waterways Ireland and asked that they request Iarnrod Eireann to add additional spaces for bikes on their trains. As before on other issues, there was no reply from WI. There was a time when that site was run by local enthusiasts and it was much more proactive in pushing for improvements.

Thanks to the expertise of Mercian Pro, we managed to neatly get 4 bikes into the 2 bike space on the Rosslare train this morning. We encountered a very pleasant Irish Rail employee who was convinced it couldn't be done. He was amazed and even took his own picture for future reference. (He also warned us about cranky 'jobsworths' who are sometimes on the route).

Not mine so I'm not sure which model it is but it's a Cannondale Gravel alright. I'll have to take a closer look next time. It was on it's maiden voyage. We didn't go off road today.