Irish rail fleet and infrastructure plans

Terminating Belfast trains at the airport would reduce conflict with Dart services. It's not unusual for intercity trains to terminate outside of city centre on the continent

Another idea might be extending a line from Hueston (via Airport) to Rush, and then we could have a Cork/Dublin/Belfast hourly express service.

Have you seen the number of people on the buses from Belfast getting off at Dublin Airport? And with Metro it would only be, what, 20 mins into from there? Also, not every Belfast service needs to terminate at the airport - some could continue to service Dublin city centre.

I really don't think it would, they originally wanted to run more lines from Fairview to Connolly, you can see from the bridge:

It involved building a big wall on Stony Road and West Road, but it was opposed by residents. Gas thing was the place was a kip at the time, and they could have CPO'd the effected residency's cheaply enough

From Fairview to Killester, 4 tracks is definitely doable, there is loads of space. but once you get there, there is a steep embankment, that would need to be dug out further back and start CPO'ing land from very expensive houses. You'd probably have to knock down houses at Venetian hall along with the Bridge. There is serious flaw with that bridge in that its the only way in and out of Venetian hall/The Pines. (How the hell did that even get built?)

Now as you proceed East you need to make the cut in the earth and hence you need to CPO the back gardens of all the houses in Harmonstown and Raheny.

As you get past Harmonstown you need to CPO all the industrial /Commercial buildings on the north of the line and knock them.

At Raheny station things start to level out a bit so you don't need to cut in so far to the earth, but you need to rebuild the station and the bridge over the Raheny road which is a main road that's extremely busy and the bridge is raised. so you need to start the hill for the bridge further back which means CPOing a heap of houses including the protected cottages and trying to raise the road earlier some how to go over the 4 tracks. (I've no idea how you'd do this, maybe move the train station 200M west?)

As you get from Raheny to Kilbarrack you nee to CPO and entire house and not just a piece of the back garden as the expansion would leave no back garden for these house.

From Kilbarrack you need to build a new bridge and knock 2 blocks of apartments, then more CPOing houses in Donaghmede. The land is flatter between Howth Junction and Clongriffin and you might fit 4 tracks in without having to cut into earth.

From there on, 4 tracks is relatively easy.

Factor in the hassle and planning and CPOing and digging... It works out WAY chepaer to just buy a tunnelling machine, learn how to build tunnel's and then start building tunnels. Starting with Donnycarney, Artane, Coolock on toward Malahide and link up there.

Hypothetical question: If you were to build a new line to Belfast would you stay 5 ft 3 in or go Standard Gauge?

Let’s wait and see what the feasibility study into this very topic (quad tracking the Northern line) that IE have just got several million of EU funds for comes up with is probably the best strategy.

The only way I'd see of connecting the northern line to Heuston, while also serving the airport, would be to use the PPT line. Buy the Batchelors factory to create a tunnel portal and then tunnel north under the canal. Its a straight shot to the airport, then join the northern line. Could be up to 20km depending where you connect but obviously not all tunnelled. All services coming from north of the tie-in would go this new route, with an interchange station allowing people to switch to the coastal route. It would solve a lot of problems.

I don't think switching to standard gauge would be realistic there. Funnily enough, it might be worth switching the part of the northern line south of the above mentioned tie-in to standard gauge. You could create another Metro from, for example Malahide south, then through the DART+ Tunnel (which should be easier to do as standard Metro) and out to Hazelhatch. That could be completely separate from the remaining heavy rail network and would mean only trains coming from Drumcondra go to Connolly (thus removing the conflict north of Connolly). It could also be built as driverless so could have a train every couple of minutes.

Would be great but not realistic now and not for an extremely long time, if ever.

I don't think this is true. Our track gauge may add somewhat to the cost of buying new trains, and limit the possibilities for buying second-hand stock, but isn't a deal breaker. All orders are bespoke in some way and stock made on order, they don't build "standard" trains and have them sitting there for people to buy. We are in the process of buying a lot of new rolling stock so we will be in a good place in terms of rolling stock for decades.

The gauge has little or no effect on general works to rail lines. The cost and disruption caused by changing gauge on the network would be enormous, far more than the extra over cost of buying special gauge rolling stock every couple of decades. It would be a disaster for stock management too given the existing stock is at different stages of their usable lifes.

The discussion on track gauge is a bit strange. As far as leasing or buying rolling stock from Continental Europe is concerned, there is also the much bigger problem of Loading Gauge. Continental trains will not fit under our bridges and will foul our platforms. No problem with the UK insofar as their loading gauge is even more restrictive then the Irish one.

It's a strange one isn't it? The gauge is wider but loading is more restrictive... One wonders how did that happen. Platforms aren't to much of an issue unless they're curved (Oh wait... they're nearly all curved). For Bridges/Tunnels... goosed.

The gauges just came about in the 19th century because there was no reason to maintain compatibility internationally. Ireland and Britain both are islands and both adopted railways very early, driven by private investors developing lines. Narrower was cheaper, and avoided needing to purchase land.

Long distance, huge scale bulk freight is more important on continental railways covering vast distances in Europe or North America. We have short distances on islands. So you’d have had lower capacity and more frequent freight. That’s probably why the loading gauges here and in Britain didn’t ever get very wide and why they’re huge in places with big empty plains like the US and Canada or Russia etc. Land was available easily, cheaply or may have been just taken back in the day without any significant cost.

You also can’t and couldn’t just take lands by decree here, as is possible in authoritarian states like China and possible Russia etc, was possible in the USSR and many formerly authoritarian states and was possible in states with odd landownership arrangements. Private land ownership here (even if in the early 1800s was still largely an oligarchy of huge landlords) would have required a lot of negotiation and compensation.

Trains also weren’t bulk manufactured and were very much bespoke and never left their railways. Compatibility between rail operators was all that mattered and they ultimately picked compromise standards.

I can’t see gauge changes here making much sense. Metro and tramways obviously should be built to a European standard, but you’re not going to get much cost benefit from shifting to international standards on an isolated rail network running on very long established routes with a collection of ornate 19th century stations…

A draft plan for the All Ireland Rail Review is due to be published by Transport Minister Eamon Ryan at the end of the month.

2 of the proposals sound interesting as below from the Nuacht RTÉ article above.

A new railway line to be built between Ballina in Co. Mayo & Rosslare Europort in Co.Wexford.

New railway line to be built for Donegal.

What do people here think of West on Track's concerns that Ballina to Rosslare Europort would only be used for freight services only and not for passengers? Do you think that is a sensible one to call by them? I would personally love to see that line used for passenger services as well as freight. I think it would be a big boost for people who live there would want to use rail services between the regions of Munster and South Leinster.

I think Donegal have personally hit the jackpot when they get news of a proposed rail line in over 100 years. I think people living there could be very pleased to hear about it.

If they’re building new lines they need to build them to run at 200km/h. Even having a 160km/h service would be very useful. There’s little point in building a brand new line into Donegal if it is going to crawl along at low speed, as is the case for almost all of the lines.

It doesn’t need to be TGV quality but it needs to be able to get the maximum out of normal trains and be faster than driving.

If the Claremorris to Athenry line is rebuilt, I presume there isn't a hope in hell it will be capable of 200kph?

If it uses the original trackbed / alignment, I presume this means max speeds much lower than 200kph?

I'd say you'd be lucky to have max speed of 160kph?

It’s just a pity to keep doing these things without making them vaguely competitive with driving. They need a bit of speed or they’ll just be much less attractive than they could be.

Nobody’s going to go as far as a high speed line but we should be capable of getting the most out of the existing 160km/h trains. Other the Cork line, they all seem to be built to very low spec.

Dublin Airport could easily be a big rail hub for national and local rail.

Lyon–Saint Exupéry, which is significantly further out of the city, manages quite nicely as a long distance rail hub with a fast high capacity tram (Rhône Express) to the city centre.

There’s a big non city centre intercity demand in Dublin that’s never looked at. There’s also huge road infrastructure, bus station potential and large scale park and ride possibilities, if it had a high capacity metro link.

There probably should be the development of a significant intercity station on the Cork line on the outskirts of Dublin too.

Funnelling absolutely everything into the very middle of the city centre doesn’t always make sense and changing trains isn’t the end of the world either, if it’s convenient.