Cross-border review of rail network officially launched

The broad gauge railway never went further north than Sligo, and the Donegal narrow-gauge railways never went further south than Bundoran (here’s a nice map of that network: Interactive Donegal Railway Map | Donegal Railway Museum ), so while it might be theoretically possible to reinstate something on the Donegal side, there’s still a big gap.

The only realistic way of crossing the gap between the two is alongside the N15, because the rest is the Dartry Mountains, otherwise known as Yeats’ Country.

Even if you could find a way, you’d also have to get a railway from one side of Sligo to the other, which would be really hard to do.

Ah, I thought all of the Donegal railways were narrow-gauge. Clearly not. Still, it’s a really nasty territory for building anything in, especially a railway that needs nice flat ways with no sharp bends.

What we currently have is a bit of a mish-mash where some "no-hope" projects have happily made the AIRR and some places (Carrigaline?) barely get a mention.

Just want to add some clarification to this. Many of the towns over 10K that aren't covered in the review were left out because they need a commuter service and that unfortunately falls out of the scope of AISRR which is for IC and regional connections. Carrigaline one of the best example of that in the review given its size, being the largest town in the ROI with no active project or reccomendation under AISRR. Ashbourne and Tramore are the same. Additionally Dunshaughlin/Ratoath is shown in the AISRR as out-of-scope, but it will potentially be connected by the Navan line depending on the alignment chosen.

The real stand out from all of this is Dungarvan which isn't even mentioned in the review, and I believe is the only town in the ROI over 10K and is in the scope of AISRR but has no reccomendation. The review does mention that a more direct Waterford-Cork line isn't feasible, which does somewhat imply that Dungarvan-Waterford isn't feasible. However because it doesn't even mention the town's name I am not 100% convinced they considered a line just between Waterford and Dungarvan. That said I would have been surprised if they found the line to be feasible, but considering it is in the scope of the review I believe they should have explicitly stated if it wasn't feasible like they did with Enniskillen and Cookstown (Downpatrick was also barely mentioned).

Honestly I wouldn't think too much about what it said about Carrigaline, what was said feels more like a throw-away line trying to send the message that "Carrigaline doesn't fall within the scope of this review." Because it just isn't in the scope of the review, again it needs a commuter connection not a regional/IC connection. It isn't even a case of priority in its case, the scope of the AISRR would have had to change for them to consider it. It also would have added much more work as they would then need to consider connections for Ashbourne, Ratoath, Tramore, etc as well.

It does bring up a bigger problem and my main gripe with the review, that I think it is inconsistent in how it treats commuter networks along side its suggestions. Part of that is of course because it is just focused on the IC and regional networks, but also at the same time I think its reccomendations for DU and Limerick commuter rail feel as though they didn't really consider how the commuter networks would work best.