Should Donegal get a railway?

Honestly, I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell that such a link would be viable. It would be even worse than the WRC as most of the infrastructure would have to be built from scratch, as opposed to rebuilt. Investing in the area's roads would be a better way of spending money in my opinion.

corktina wrote: »

Outside of our charter. Please move to Infrastructure or similar.

"This is a place for discuss rail fan / heritage types topics"

This is "train & Rail systems"

If it had any chance of working would have to consider linking it from Sligo and on to Derry. You would then have to consider linking it to the translink service, which would almost certainly invlove a new station in Derry considering its current location, or a dedicated bus connection service from either side of the Foyle.

Would be nice to have, but could turn into a bigger white elephant that the current WRC.

yer man! wrote: »

Just want to know people's opinions on a railway in Donegal connecting into Sligo perhaps and offering onward travel to Dublin and possibly in future Galway if the WRC is built. Do you think it could make money? offering an alternative to the 'car is king' county that is Donegal.

Snowflakes. Chance. hell.

where is the demand going to come from?

as in, its 3 hours 5 min to get from Sligo to Dublin.
Donegal town at the very south of the county is 65 km so about another hour away.

Bus Eireann already has a service that does Dublin in 3 1/2 hours, or a shade over 3 to the airport direct from Donegal town.

Who would ever take the longer MUCH MUCH more expensive train if it ever saw the light of day.

Not to mention that Donegal town is NOT Donegal county. A railway there is of no addition to vast swathes of the county that would still be dependent on a car for local journeys and busses quicker for public transport journeys to major centres like Belfast or Derry or Dublin.

As i asked before, is there even an attempt at a business case for these pinings for a bit of rail track in Donegal?

The only possible viable way of Donegal getting rail is if it were to connect to a line running from Derry <-> Strabane <-> Omagh <-> Dungannon <-> Portadown.

It would however, most likely only be a commuter line, commencing at Letterkenny and terminating at Derry where you would either alight for the city or change train.

The Derry - Portadown route would in my opinion be viable if the speed of the line was above 60mph and it didn't need to stop at every flippin' hamlet along the route like every other NI rail route. I would assume many from Omagh would make use of the route to get to Belfast and Derry. (A lot more than currently use the WRC, and would ever use the theoretical Sligo to Donegal branch).

One last point to note is, after much thought on the Derry end of the hypothetical Portadown line is the investment/construction needed to get the rail line into the centre of the city. I arrived at the need for cut and cover tunnelling along this length:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?saddr=Waterside+Link%2FA2%2FA5&daddr=Victoria+Rd%2FA5&hl=en&ll=54.991059,-7.314148&spn=0.007177,0.01929&sll=54.988006,-7.316251&sspn=0.007177,0.01929&geocode=FdYgRwMdHG2Q_w%3BFckORwMdfViQ_w&mra=me&mrsp=1,0&sz=16&z=16

As there's not a hope in hells chance of having a line run along the river bank, reinstating the original station used for this route would also not attract many passengers and I think there'd need to be a new station at the end of the peace bridge to attract even more potential passengers. But alas, even the more viable route (in my opinion) would cost to much. So we need to concentrate on the roads first.

Comments welcome on my thoughts for such a scheme.

yer man!

about the same likelihood of happening as the West Cork or North Kerry (Tralee-Rathkeale) railway lines being reopened.

Judgement Day wrote: »

Nah, more chance of reopening the Birr/Portumna line.

I was gonna suggest Cork -> Macroom given that part of the route is submerged and all.

yer man! wrote: »

I'm not actually from Donegal, nowhere near it in fact. I just have a lot of friends who live there and hate getting the bus as it's so uncomfortable to be on for that length of time. I also found it really weird how some of them had never seen an Irishrail train before.

Well a train via Sligo or Derry would be no quicker as I pointed out before.
EDIT: so the only extra comfort is the leg room or a toilet, both which are available on busses if the provider would put on such Vehicles. Maybe you need a better bus company to spend a few grand rather than the taxpayer billions on a railway!

Anyhow, It would only cost many hundreds of millions to build a railway, if not billions, and swallow a subsidy of at least tens of millions per year.
And be of no use to the majority of people in the area who ignore it because they live nowhere near it and take the car or bus instead(also noting that in Ireland busses don't act as feeders to trains so unless you can walk or get a lift in a car to it, you don't take the train!!)
And even the theoretical max nr of passengers will never be reached as busses will poach passengers to beat the ban, offering a similar timed or better journey for less cash.

In so many ways, it's not even a starter let alone a runner!

We need to get our priorities right.;)

We should first concentrate on getting the inter-urban road to the North West sorted. This will not just simply help shorten the journey for commuters but for businesses too who need to deliver their goods and services to the rest of the country and so helping to improve the local and national economy.

When all of that is done, then and only then you should consider the train option. (of course all this totally depends on if the cash is available in the first place)

Donegal should definitively get a railway. However the Irish gov. doesn't have any money available for it. Knowing irish rail it would be roughly half an hour quicker than the bus route and double the price.

Do Irish Rail have high speed trains at all? I remember the last on I was on crawled for the entire journey. I'd love if the trains went faster. I'm not asking for a Maglev train but a train that went a consistent 120mph would be nice.