Irish rail fleet and infrastructure plans

EMUs can easily last that long; but examples that old have rarely run along the sea for their entire life.

i would hope so, they certainly need to be.

but this is irish rail and managing capacity isn't their strong point so god knows.

time will tell, wait and see ETC.

Unlikely until the sets are strengthened with the new intermediate cars that are currently being delivered. They are unlikely to enter service until late this year.

Bear in mind too that the 201s (and 071s) have two stroke engines. So that could make the fuel economy and emissions even worse.

Yes the 710 engine (as in the 201s) is more or less an enlarged version of the 645 and 567 engines, the latter has its roots back to the 1930s.

The GM/EMD engines were built mainly with simplicity and reliability in mind and this had been their selling point for many years. A quote going around from GM was that their competitors' four stroke engines used one stroke to do the work and the other three to fall apart. But even they had to go four stroke with the EMD 1010 engine in recent years as they couldn't get the 710 to meet modern regulations.

Realistically I suspect that IE/NIR are just going to go all in with MUs or entire trainsets rather than continuing to replace coaches and locomotives in turn. The insane debacle surrounding the scrapping of perfectly good Mk3 cars during a capacity shortage would seem to indicate where they're going.

IR previewing the new Dart carriages. 2 questions I'd have

1. If there's someone sitting opposite you, will they have their knee jammed into your groin?
2. How long will the Passenger Information System last before it's permanently turned off - a year, 18 months?

they've applied for permission to keep them running for another few years

tech specs for the new ones are probably on Alstom's website somewhere - they're based on the Xtrapolis model.

Inchicore almost definitely, they'd end up there for commissioning anyway I imagine.

Although there's quite a lot hanging around there already - 8200s, 2700s, the new 29000 intermediate cars, beached 201 class locos etc etc; there is still a fair bit of space

Could be used as an excuse to take the cutting torch to some of the no hopers like the 2700s and non push-pull 201s also.

I wonder if they are a variation of the X'Trapolis 2.0 trains for Melbourne? Those ones will also run on 1500 DC AND use the same 1600mm track gauge as Ireland. The Melbourne carriages are much longer at almost 24.4m. The Irish ones look to be about 16m each, several metres less than the current DART stock however I see that the Melbourne X'Trapolis 2.0 trains will be just over 3m wide (9 ft 11 5⁄16" in old money).....hopefully Irish Rail will stay with this width so as to increase capacity as much as possible. c. 3m width combined with a length of just 16m would be still well within the Irish loading gauge. The Park Royals of the past were almost 18.75m long and almost 3.1m wide.

Hopefully common sense prevails and Irish Rail have not requested a narrowed down variant for no particular reason......unless there's some reason that I am not aware that would inhibit the use of 16x3m carriages on the Irish rail network when 18.75x3.1m is permitted right now?

to be honest one would think that they should have already done this, at least with the 2700s and 8200s.

it's obvious none of them will ever run again so why the wait?

i can understand with the 201s as they are in the sound barrier i believe but the rest?

It'd make more sense to keep them in the one location while commissioning surely. Maybe Bray a good idea if they can secure it better. And there is talk of a new depot going out there.