Cross-border review of rail network officially launched

I would day Heuston needs a radical expansion in terms of space if its to handle the dramatic increase in passengers proposed, it's a glorified shed at the moment with only 6 platforms in the station proper and a few more further out. How that's achieved is a matter of creativity, it could mean a wider station on stilts over the liffey or building an upper level over St Johns road, either way it needs to be done. And there's no room for the housing development that was proposed a year or 2 ago, all the space is required to expand rail services. Look at Belsfast Station now, a cathedral with feck all trains.

Not really, Heuston west is a small outdoor station. Dublin needs a large station with lots of platforms. There isn't even a plan to connect Heuston West with the main concourse

Could they not just expand in to the car park and use it for extra platforms. Its not like down the country were if you want to get the train you have to drive to it in places unlike in dublin you can get public transport right to the door.Instead of a nice development and new apartments should Heuston not be a focus to get as many people from other parts of the country in and out.

I think a lot of Mitteleuropa cities developed a slightly different pattern of heavy rail - lines coming from different directions “spiral” around the fringe of the city coming together into one main station/Hauptbahnhof. This allows relatively easy intercity transfers and so clock-face timetabling works. But you need a huge number of platforms and tracks in such a main station. But the Dublin model (separate smaller terminal stations at the fringes) is probably more common globally.

What city are you thinking of here? This isn’t true for anywhere I’ve been, and I had a look at other middle-European cities, and didn’t see the pattern, either.

Starting with personal experience: Munich still has three disparate peripheral stations with no through services (Munich South is used for freight, but the only passenger connection between Main and East is via S-Bahn). Until 2010, Prague had three (Holešovice for northern routes; the Main station for west and south, Masarykovo for East): they’re now joined together by tunnels, with the main station becoming the primary terminus. Budapest still has three separate stations: Nyagati, Keleti and Déli (if Hungarian wasn’t such an unusual language, there’d be more of a hint that this is the case: these names literally mean “Western”, “Eastern” and “Southern”).

Vienna’s Hauptbahnhof only opened in 2015, replacing two disconnected South and East stations.

Zürich and Bratislava are perhaps the closest to what you describe. In Zürich, the eastern Stadelhofen station used to take a roundabout way to the Zürich HB, via Letten, but that was replaced in 1990 with a more direct tunnel. Bratislava’s western and Northeast approaches swing around and come into the city from the northwest, but so does everything: the presence of the Small Carpathian mountains (“small” compared to the main range) make it really hard to do otherwise.

Warsaw’s rail approaches are along a single east-west corridor, and Berlin’s history as a divided city makes any analysis pointless.

It very much looks like railways were built much the same way in Central Europe as in the British Isles: bring the tracks to the edge of the city, so you don’t have to buy and knock down expensive properties. The greater number of destinations reachable from a point in the middle of a continent is what led to more platforms being provided. Over the following century and a half, some of these stations have been joined up, but many are still either completely separate, or connected only by means of a separate high-frequency local service (i.e., S-Bahns).

The most joined up I can think of (if i remember correctly) is Brussels where 3 main stations run along a single north, central, south line.

I would agree that I am not particularly a fan of sending IC services onto the line when by this point there would have been such a large investment to remove all IC services from the Maynooth line. Especially if the DART W-S line is operating as 3 branches (Maynooth, Navan, and PPT) merging before Connolly, I would want to keep IC and regional services away from the lines. I think the better long term solution is having DU also be built to act as the connection between Heuston and SD/Connolly (where ever Northern line IC services are sent).

However setting my thoughts aside and looking at the feasibility for the sake of discussion, I don't see any major reason why it couldn't work, although I have two concerns.

More generally relating to any service from PPT is that there will may need to be improved seperation of the up and down lines such as a flyover/tunnelled Jnc to allow for more effecient switching of lines otherwise frequency improvements would be limited post-DU. This is not exlusive to Glasnevin Jnc however, it is just the most complicated as it is 2 lines on either side of the junction where as most others are 2 lines merging into 1 line. However being that it is a more general problem with the line it will likely have to be sovled anyways, so it shouldn't really effect the possibility of IC services. However if a grade sperated junction isn't possible here I believe it could lead to PPT services operating as a shuttle service from HW to Glasnevin, like with D+ Howth services. If that does become the case than that would mean the IC services to SD wouldn't be possible, at least during peaktimes which I am assuming is the idea.

A problem I can specifically see with IC services is platform lengths at both Glasnevin and SD, however this entirely depends on what length the Enterprise/IC replacements will be. IE may choose longer MU sets than the 22Ks to replace the Enterprise and Cork-Dublin fleet. Increasing to 8-car sets for example their capacity would be more in line if not greater than the loco hauled sets while still being shorter than DD or Mk4 sets, and it could be a good boost in capacity to services without requiring platform modifications. However depending on the length they choose any new IC sets could be too long for Glasnevin and SD, and extending their platforms would be difficult. This of course isn't a problem if they continue with comparable 6-car sets, but I am not sure what IE's plan is at the moment. We hopefully should find out later this year when the Enterprise order is placed.

The Cork-Belfast thing is a fantasy honestly.

The ability to make a decent counterweight to Dublin will only happen by focusing on things that improve connectivity in the SW in particular.

In terms of the politics of it all, a UI will entrench Belfast and Dublin further (I think it’s inevitable that this develops further anyway but probably not at the same pace) and develop a full blown powerful economic corridor. There’s actually a bit of an opportunity with prioritising the right things in the SW with this review to improve things markedly.

I actually find it a bit odd the way there’s such a clamour in some quarters to connect Dublin Airport to mainline rail services. If you want even more traffic to go to Dublin, that is one way to do it. Or at least that is one way to do it if you are going to prioritise that over various other rail projects.

Well the new CEO of IR is ex Shannon Airport, so naturally she will immediately build the Shannon link she has constantly called for.

Cynical... Me?

Not sure a rail link up to Cork Airport would be possible?

A full Limerick commuter rail network is called for by the strategy including rail to shannon airport. Her position in irish rail has nothing to do with whether or not that will happen. It's very much a low priority project if it ever becomes a project. With only 2.1 million annual passengers it would be about the smallest airport in the world by passenger numbers with a direct rail connection, excluding Kerry Airport which has a rail station at some 1.6km walk from the terminal. Belfast City Airport is very slightly larger than Shannon and has a 800m walk to the train and NIR could very easily build a new station to directly serve that airport without laying any new track.

Yes, Shannon Airport is really only a secondary reason to built a rail link. The bigger one is Shannon town, plus the Shannon Free Zone industrial area, which have 10,000 inhabitants and 8,000 employees, respectively.

The route from Limerick to Shannon could probably also serve Bunratty, which gets 300,000 visitors a year.

In my experience a lot of the people locally who go on about the train to Shannon wouldn't use it anyway and wouldstill drive. It's just one of these pretend fix all things like GLUAS. The airport is well served by buses that locals mostly spit at.

It's just a bullsht "I would use public transport if only they done this".

The town and industrial estate which has big commuter numbers from Limerick would be the real target. The airport is just good clickbait.

Oh I have no hope that IR are gonna pick that project to finally start building new non Victorian lines.

No point explaining that to people who make it a political point locally though.