Irish rail fleet and infrastructure plans

No point in tightening yet.

Yes.

A Mark IV train going from Dublin to Cork had got into some problems yesterday evening.

The train left Heuston Station in Dublin at 5pm. The doors on the train carriages had jammed shut without warning while passengers were trying to board/disembark the train at Limerick Junction. The staff eventually got the doors reopened on the train within 15 minutes.

However the passengers on the train were told at the station that if they wanted to continue their journey to Cork; they had to board another 2 trains to get there. The next train after this one which arrived at Limerick Junction was going to Tralee. The passengers going to Cork had to get the Tralee train out to Mallow to then wait for another train to get them out to Cork.

The staff told the passengers on the Dublin to Cork train which broke down yesterday that it was a failed train.

It had to go out of service and it was eventually moved onto the sidings at Limerick Junction.

However the train to Tralee was already full to capacity while it arrived at Limerick Junction. Some of those passengers already on the train to Tralee had to get off at Limerick Junction to allow the Cork passengers to get home on their commute from Dublin.

What a monumental headache for all of these passengers yesterday.

Have these issues with passenger doors being jammed shut on these trains ever happened before on the IÉ network? These Mark IV trains built by CAF in Spain are quite old now within the IÉ fleet of rolling stock. They have had a lot of mechanical issues before this incident occurred yesterday at Limerick Junction. Do IÉ have any plan to eventually replace these trains in the near future?

The article is a joke.

I assume what happened is the doors didn't open when released by the driver. Probally just a minor electrical issue.

On a 4 car 29k today, 2 of 8 doors out of order. (same side) Not great and noticed it's an increasing trend with the 29k over the last few months.

Normally IE are usually quick to fix these problems but suspect the 29k is stretched currently.

What is the cut off to remove from service 3 or 4 out of order?

Only one four car set at a time taken out for that. There's also a set taken out for the floor replacement that's happening at Connolly. New PIS giving its own share of issues too.

Takes about 10 minutes to boot up. 😂

The old one runs XP and only takes two minutes.

The 8100 and ICR PIS has been pretty good from my experience. But the original 8500 one was broken more often than it worked!

8100 and 8520 PIS is/was rock solid

The new 29k PIS is the same as that fitted to the 8500/10/20 fleet, its not a safety critical system and while it has interfaces to the train to detect doors opening/closing they are monitoring interfaces they shouldn't break anything

I used the DART 8 times this week.

There were 2 failures,

Last week I used it 8 times and there was one failure.

I don't know what exactly failed though.

DART Fleet is old, 20 years and 40 years.

Seems to be a lot failures lately. Just becuase the 8100 lasted 40 years, that doesn't mean the 85** series will.

I think in total they can run a max of 15 trains (assuming every set is working) in trainsets of 6 and 8 coaches. I don't know how many they actually run during peak periods, probably 12 as there's usually 1 or 2 at fairview depot.

I have it from a good source that getting parts (particularly for the 8100 series) is becoming increasing difficult… Light bulbs for example cant be got and they've taken them all out where they are not needed.

Something doesn't feel right, sure hope it's not the tip of a bigger problem.

that's not surprising with the 8100s due to age and the fact their original manufacturer has been no more for god knows how long having been taken over.
certainly one lot of trains lasting 40 years is no guarantee others will last the same but the 8500 series are solid trains over all similar to their 26 and 2800 brothers/sisters/whatever term one wants to use so they should last that length if not more if looked after.

Have they run out of replacment bulbs for the ICRs. Few sets this week had a few lights using what looks similar to the shade on the lighting on the IV fleet. The ICR fleet looks quiet smart so hope it's not part of a wider replacement.

https://www.stadlerrail.com/en/solutions/rolling-stock/mainline-rs-zero

Stadler is making a new version of the RS, a railcar designed to keep branch line services as affordable and accessible as possible. The new version is going to be available both in railcar and 2-car MU variants, with battery and hydrogen options. It's an interesting concept and I wonder if something like this could ever have a use case here?

On one hand I could see it as something to replace the 2800s operating on the Ballina and Nenagh lines, maybe even be used to free ICRs from some other shorter regional services such as Tralee-Mallow (not Tralee-Cork or -Dublin) or Waterford-Limerick Jnc. It could also be used for future regional services to supplement RT/IC services such as Claremorris-Galway/Athenry, Limerick-Foynes, Waterford-Wexford, etc. I think these services would at least somewhat match the ideal use case for them, shorter services with a lower frequency (at least compared to regional commuters), demand that in theory a 2-car unit could meet. Some of the lines also have line speeds matching the capability of the model (120km/h).

At the same time, the point of units like the RS would be to make it easier and/or cheaper to serve some of these lines. But with our loading gauge and small scale of operation, could it still be easier and/or cheaper to serve them with commuter and IC units? The Limerick and Galway based services might be easier served with the future 2800 replacements. Especially if routes like Limerick-Foynes and Galway-Claremorris, instead of lower frequency regional services (maybe 2-hourly at most), they have service patterns like Dundalk or Greystones services. Longer and still somewhat frequent services, but less frequent than Adare, Tuam, Drogheda, or Bray services are/would be. For the other regional services IE may just prefer 3- or 4-car IC units because that's how they currently run them and would keep the fleet more standardised. The only exception is Ballina, but I can't see why if a unit is available, they would be against allocating a 3-car set for it. Especially since post-2800 retirement, what else would they put on the branch line?

I am curious to hear people's thoughts about using the RS zero (or similar units) on our network. Do you think it would be a good investment? How would you like to see them used? Do you think there are better options? etc.

It's difficult to say without knowing what the final line speeds would be. Though I think the Foynes line should give us a good idea what standard new lines are being laid to. Athenry-Claremorris is about 50-55km making Galway-Claremorris 70-75km. It wouldn't be unresonable for this journy to be 60-90 minutes. However if they chose to extend this service all the way to Westport (something I didn't even think of, but would make a lot of sense) it would make it closer to 115km and would likely need to be served by an IC set. However I do agree that just because these could be served by something like the RS, doesn't mean they should be.

I fully agree that units like these should never be put on Limerick-Galway services, the service is begging for more capacity and I think these units would be a slap in the face to anyone using them. I think it is best served with IC sets as with its currently possible to complete the service in just over an 1h50m, and with some improvements could potentially be brought much lower.

Along side the Nenagh line and Limerick-Ennis, Waterford-Limerick Jnc is one of the only lines limited to 80kmh, and I think its a shame because I think if it had a higher line speed it would be great for an expansion of non-Dublin IC services. Looking at the last census it does seem like Waterford-LJ services are seeing decent patronage with >200 across 4 services(not even counting LJ because Im not sure how many were to/from Waterford). I am hoping that as the national ETCS rollout continues, they will look into giving the line a proper signalling system.