Galway Commuter Rail: Galway-Athenry

Nearly four years after this thread started, and the planning application for a simple 1km of double track still hasn't been submitted.

General rule of thumb, ignore anything uttered by a Senator.

I'm pretty sure they can just apply for a CPO of the lands and after it is granted, sort out who gets paid for the land while they progress with the project. Disputed land ownership shouldn't hold things up, particularly when the lands will just be CPOed anyway if it is determined that IÉ don't already own the lands in question.

They’d almost be better off at this stage to just apply for permission to double the whole line between Galway and Athenry… I know that this is a smaller project and much less likely to be publicly shot down, JR’d or even rejected by ABP, but the way I see it now, the 1km section of doubling and the new Oranmore platform will only be done by the time they realise they need to double the whole line as far as Athenry, so it makes more sense surely to do it as the one project immediately…!

It would save on costs too, having to appoint just the one manager, only getting crews out for the one project rather than two, etc etc

Perhaps not viable though, and I totally see the merit to doing these kinds of ‘small wins’ projects little and often, but it’s just struck me that it would probably make more sense and have much greater foresight (especially with the huge capacity upgrades they are doing to Ceannt Station at the moment) to just double the whole section of line from the get-go…

Id say a good guesstimate is its 10 years away. No joke.

It's more a list of targets for the period 2031 to 2040. Realistically, anything that's not already in planning is unlikely to be finished by 2030, but could be early 2030s.

Hopefully they will bring forward / prioritise a period of double tracking strategic sections all around Ireland. With additional train sets now coming online, the network will reach capacity in areas without sections of double track.

There are a significant number of 22000 sets currently operating services that will be operated by DART+ units

All Hazelhatch commuter

Some M3 Parkway

Some Drogheda?

Very small amount of Maynooth

Plus anything replaced by CACR down in Cork.

It's the locomotives on Cork-Dublin that will force electrification, rather than the carriages. The carriages are from 2007 or so, but newest loco is coming up to 30 years old now. Given the typical lead time on any works here, now is the time to plan for replacing these train sets with electric rolling stock. New trains for Enterprise are out for tender at present, and that's very likely to be procured as a hybrid electric/diesel-electric set, as Dublin-border will be electrified during the new trains' operating life.

Great news, that looks fantastic.

There is a thread on Boards from 2019 about this project:

With the same amount of rolling stock, will this passing loop allow more frequency of trains?

Especially in the morning?

By this I mean, without any cascade of stock from the GDA.

Yes, but is there enough stock to achieve that?

It means a buffer stop.

It means that, for operational flexibility, there will be a siding included as an extension of the loop.