Rail Freight & Western Rail Corridor

corktina wrote: »

there is no western rail corridor...its a secondary route from Limerick to near Galway..freight potental zero ( dont believe me? how much frieght runs from Tralee or Sligo or Derry or Belfast or Cork?

Saying there is zero freight potential is a bit extreme, as said already, at the very least if Claremorris is reopened then the Ballina freight is a possibility.

There are big plans for Galway port including a rail head so somebody better tell them quickly not to bother if what you are saying is correct.

The Ballina operation seems to indicate that moving boxes around the country by rail is viable if managed correctly, and surely there is potential there, especially given the tolls on the roads for trucks.

rainbowdash wrote: »

Saying there is zero freight potential is a bit extreme, as said already, at the very least if Claremorris is reopened then the Ballina freight is a possibility.

There are big plans for Galway port including a rail head so somebody better tell them quickly not to bother if what you are saying is correct.

The Ballina operation seems to indicate that moving boxes around the country by rail is viable if managed correctly, and surely there is potential there, especially given the tolls on the roads for trucks.

There is little potential and the little there is doesn't justify the Western Rail Corridor. This is not a Hollywood movie where "build it and they will come" applies.

exactly.Diverting existing traffic over the route as an exercise in saying "look what a great idea it was to spend millions on this line " is pure lunacy.

that three thou is probably 1500 each way per annum....or 6 vehicles in total.... those statistics are so woolly that you can make them say anything. There is no doubt in my mind that there would NOT be 3000 extra trucks appear should these services stop running.

its not a lot of truck movements when you break it down though is it....

dowlingm wrote: »

Claremorris-Athenry would open up some slots on Athlone-Westport/Ballina, Athlone-Portarlington, Portarlington-Kildare and Kildare-Waterford for movements currently blocked, although it wouldn't affect the North Wall traffic. Given IE's throwing shapes at improvements on Kildare-Waterford passenger, Belview traffic could find itself unwelcome soon. It would also offer a massive cut in the deadheading distance of the current Ballina-Limerick maintenance shuttle.

However, the reality is that there are few slots available Athenry-Galway and IE's crosshairs are lining up on Limerick Junction-Waterford. Unless Mayo and Galway County Councils were going to do an aboutface and co-fund this section (and with what money? The Co. Co.s are broke!) it just won't happen. IE say that the freight trains from Mayo take 3,000 trucks off the road, but neither the government, the NRA or the county councils remunerate IE for that.

Is that 3,000 truck journeys a day or a year?

If it is a year, for the expenditure it would be like saying buy me a helicopter and you take my car journeys off the road.

More lunacy.

i doubt it turns a profit if you add in the real costs of the extra signalling and mangement time etc....

Empire o de Sun wrote: »

Well a fully loaded HGV can do as much damage as almost 10,000 cars.

Yes ten thousand.

So one trains load is what, about 18 cars, 18 x 10000 = 180,000 car equivalents, capacity of the M50, so now you know what trucks do to our roads.

Now even if the train isn't fully loaded, it is still at 100,000 or more.

So Rail freight is saving us a fortune on road maintenance.

evidence please! if this were true every truck would be leaving a wake of broken tarmac and potholes...

Empire o de Sun wrote: »

Well a fully loaded HGV can do as much damage as almost 10,000 cars.

Yes ten thousand.

So one trains load is what, about 18 cars, 18 x 10000 = 180,000 car equivalents, capacity of the M50, so now you know what trucks do to our roads.

Now even if the train isn't fully loaded, it is still at 100,000 or more.

So Rail freight is saving us a fortune on road maintenance.

Firstly, I find that number hard to believe. HGVs are heavier than cars, I can understand but 10,000 times the damage?

Secondly, if the weight of the HGV proportionally does that much damage to the roads, it also does it to rail. So the money saved in road maintenance is wasted on rail maintenance (as well as the money wasted on building the thing and keeping it open for the 23 passengers).

corktina wrote: »

i doubt it turns a profit if you add in the real costs of the extra signalling and mangement time etc....

And the trucks pay a motor tax of €2000 (not sure exactly) does this cover the cost of road maintenance, traffic lights, the guards to police the roads, etc. etc. I doubt it.

Jim Martin wrote: »

Yes, there is potential for freight to & from the Clare county town, Ennis. They cut it out & withdrew to Limerick & then had to road it, they've probably lost it all together now!

This time of the year, I used to see The IR lorry come from Ennis loaded with Guiness for the Willie Clancy Week. It probably comes all the way from Dublin now - disgraceful!

One lorry load and you'd run a train for that? It probably does come all the way from Dublin for the very good reason that it would be cheaper and would be delivered right to the door instead of being transhipped twice. Rail freight only makes sense in large quantities over long distances.

corktina wrote: »

well were it more economical they'd still be running...why else would everything have been transferred to road...lets make a list....newspapers, parcels, post, oil, cement, need I go on? Rail freight is not viable because of the costs and inflexiibility of it.

think about it...if you started loading the same items on to road and rail at the same time, the first lorry would be half way there before you loaded the 18th wagon, which when it was loaded would have to be unloaded on to a truck at the other end for delivery with more delay.Its a fact of life.

corktina - I sometimes wonder if it is worth arguing with your posts, no matter how outrageous, as we are both so entrenched in our views but I can't let the above go unchallenged. Does it follow from your first paragraph that because CIE can't operate the railway effectively that railways are bad per se? I think not. Newspapers - I don't know the problems here but probably to do with CIE hiking up the rates and, from my experience, careless handling of the products concerned. Everybody's business being nobody's business.
Parcels - well no point in going over old ground here but suffice to say that the run down and abandonment of Fastrack was outrageous and somebody should lose their job over it - preferably John LYnch. Post - well given An Post's record of dicking about with the postal service and the SDS fiasco I don't think we can put much store in their commercial nous can we?
Oil - I don't have the facts but it wasn't a very substantial traffic. Cement - many factors and if the recession ever lifts we may well see some of it return to rail - of course factors like Sean Quinn's breaking of the Irish Cement monopoly also played a part in the demise in cement traffic.

Your analogy with loading wagons and lorries simultaneously is too daft to comment on and there were plenty of freight customers happy to use the rail service until CIE/IE either withdrew it or priced themselves out of the market.
Rail freight is environmentally friendly in terms of carbon emissions, damage to roads, accidents involving trucks and cars, reducing our oil imports etc.etc. All that said, rail freight no more than rail passenger has any future as operated by CIE/IE where the staff mark time as best they can while waiting for the lump.