DART+ (DART Expansion)

4 Sets I believe.

Set 3 is doing all the EMU testing. I do not believe set 4 have left Inchicore since being delivered 6 months ago.

No point in delivering the sets with faults that are found during testing. All the battery packs have to redesigned and replaced as it is so thankfully only 4 BEMU sets delivered to date.

Sixth train was craned in today, and put onto bogies.

Coincides with the further delay of having the units in service later in 2028 than previously planned.

I think they are certified for another 8 years, but I could be wrong on that. There's a big lack of spare parts for them now.

Multiple issues. No press release yet.

Coastal South is the simples but most difficult project, as it mainly involves closing level crossings. IE are probably taking the long view that the demand from Bray to Booterstown for a better service when they see what is happening elsewhere, will overwhelm the denziens of Sandymount.

Phase 1 will get done very quickly and doesn't need planning and is going to be fairly cheap so avoids most of the bureaucracy

No dependency on the TMS project

The signalling change at Bray is fairly straight forward (though that could result in a crash of the current CTC system). The signalling in Bray was replaced recently enough so its a fairly simple SSI data structure change.

The changes to reduce journey time are track alignment and the ETCS L1 kit is already live. If you could run the DART+ train over Bray Greystones today it would be ~1 minutes faster than the current fleet without ETCS, track alignment changes gets close to another minute saved.

Solution is reduce journey time between Bray and Greystones, today you can fit 5 trains an hour in, if you chop a bit of time off the trip, combination of ETCS, track alignment and the trackwork at Bray should save 2.5 minutes so gets you to over 6 an hour

There is already a mid section signal, unclear if the plan is to have 2 mid sections, Bray got a new interlocking in April 2024 so should be more than capable

Where did that happen?

Alstom on the hook for the clean up, Irish Rail don’t own the trains until after engineering acceptance. Looks like the sidings south of Dundalk

When the Mk4 test set hit a cow in testing, ripped the buckeye coupler off which then bounced under the train shattering brake disks, CAF took the cost hit for repairs.