Irish rail fleet and infrastructure plans

I get that, issue here is could you make this work without disrupting the main demand flow of Limerick/LJ which is connections to Dublin.

Best solution is Galway/Limerick J medium term.

probably how a lot of cork Galways train journeys are done? Quicker and better trains

The WRC is the problem. It's so slow and meandering that it barely makes Limerick to Galway worth doing never mind all the way to Cork.

Extending the route to Cork as you say would be great but more because it would mean direct Cork to Limerick which would be a good and relatively efficient service.

It might look that way on a map but it's a very slow route.

I believe closing a number of the LCs alone would go along way. My understanding is that the number and quality of LCs is one of the biggest reasons for the 80km/h speed limit, not the alignment itself.

When you say it's slow, do you mean due to issues that would cost huge amounts to change?

Or could speeds / timings be improved by lower-cost solutions like passing loops, etc.?

Honestly I think there is a decent chance Limerick-Athenry will be electrified, although it wouldn't take priority over the Dublin IC routes. I think there are good reasons to.

It is technically an IC corridor. It will be the primary rail link from Galway to Cork, Limerick, and maybe also Waterford (even with improvements I'm not sure how close Waterford-LJ-Galway and Waterford-Kildare/Heuston-Galway times would be). That makes it a very important corridor and I think it will become quite busy in the future.

It will be both a reasonably busy and comparatively short (<100km) section of unelectrified rail to upgrade. Between Ennis commuters, WRC IC services, and if it ever gets built the Shannon commuter link there could be a fair bit of traffic on it.

Then lastly, I believe it's likely Limerick-Ennis will be electrified as part of the Limerick-Shannon commuter rail programme. Which if it is then it wouldn't even be 60km to electrify, and combined with the previous reasons I think would make sense to upgrade.

edit: Forgot to add, there is of course a question of the timeline of all the upgrades, even the electrification of the core IC network. I would be surprised if they jumped to electrifying Athenry-Limerick (or Athenry-Ennis) right after they finish the core lines, so an interim solution may be needed. However there will be hybrid units anyways, as the core network will be electrified in phases so I don't think that would be a problem.

Waterford-LJ and Limerick/Ennis Jnc. - Ennis are two of the slowest lines on the network, both are limited to 80km/h. My understanding is this is largely due to the number and quality of LCs. However, things such as track quality may also be a problem, and for Waterford-LJ the manual signalling might not help either. However, the alignments while not capable of mainline speeds, are still able to do much more than just 80km/h.

Limerick-LJ isn't all that much better being limited to 110km/h, also I believe because of the LCs.

Ennis-Athenry while limited to 130km/h, has a good few LCs with significant speed restrictions. Though the number of LCs actually isn't too bad.

That all said these lines are slow now, but that's also why there is so much time to save with what are minor interventions in the grand scheme of rail infrastructure costs. Especially for Waterford-LJ and Limerick-Ennis it wouldn't take much to save a lot of time.

But also looking further in the future, an interchange at Kildare may not be possible, I think the HH-Portalington express line would bypass it. My guess is most services would only stop at Portalington and Heuston as that would cover most services, but interchange with Waterford-Dublin services would have to be in Heuston.

I am not sure if there are any official numbers, but it would hopefully it will save a few minutes. Though more importantly it should make journey times between Cork and LJ much more consistent. It should allow the section to function like clockwork, where as currently it is prone to a lot of delays because of the 7 LCs.

Additionally in the long term the LCs would become very limiting to future frequency and speed increases. It is also just a massive safety improvement, as I believe some of the 7 are rated the most dangerous LCs in the country.

That would need ~15 minutes of time savings, which I think is quite unlikely with the LC closures alone.

I do agree about the need for more services though. I suspect it will be one of the services enhancements looked at when some 22Ks are freed from Dublin commuter services.

I expected as much, I've never even seen a level crossing on the cork line, I guess because they go past the window so fast. Hopefully DART+ SW can make a difference, if it is built ofc. I find the slowest part of the journey is generally between Parkwest and Heuston.

Also I know the Cork-Dublin express is timetabled at 2:14 but on a good few occasions I've seen it arrive in Heuston as much as 10 mins early. I wonder is there nearly capability there already for 2 hour journeys but the timetable is padded.

Actually depending on how much the timetables are padded, the LC closures could save more time than I thought.

I forgot to consider that, reading through the reports I was just looking at the delay the LCs add, but I forgot the timetables could already be padded to help account for some of that delay.

I would think the majority of the padding is between Portalington and Heuston, but I am not sure. I don't know enough about the time tables to say.