There was a points failure this afternoon meaning maynooth line services had to use Newcomen junction and the midland line.

If this had've happened this evening.......

I'm not sure what your point is?

Points failures can happen anywhere on the network from time to time and will cause disruption when they do.

Why you're particularly selecting the PPT services I don't know? if points fail at Howth Junction for example, Howth branch trains will be disrupted.

Well given that the PPT services are in the public eye it's not unlikely that Irish Rail would have tried to save face by sending the PPT services down the midland line and had them do two reversals causing complete chaos for Maynooth services.

Just read a comment from Irish rail on twitter that one of the afternoon peak Drogheda services now leaves pearse 3 minutes later to accommodate phoenix park services. Which seams fair enough but never highlighted unlike heuston services.

Come on - that's just getting ridiculous.

There's a level of reasoned debate and frankly that's just nonsense, let alone impossible given the signalling constraints.

The 1728 GDC-Newbridge, a 4-car ICR, was over 90% loaded today. Not bad after less than 2 weeks.

Hazelhatch service lag a little behind in loading.

The 1805 Heston-Portlaoise has been upgraded to a 7-car; it is a amalgamation of the 1755 and 1810 trains. Presumably they needed the 1755 slot for the 1728 from GCD.

It will be interesting to see how this service evolves. Given that 95% to 99% of commuters on the Heuston routes travel to/from stations beyond Hazelhatch, services to Hazelhatch only will continue to do limited busines.

I imagine that Grand Canal Dock trains will be progressively extended westward ultimately displacing much of the Heuston commuter service.

Either way the start has been very positive although punctuality is closer to the less than stellar DART pattern than what would heretifore have been the case from Heuston.

It would be fair to say I think that the root cause of the timing problems (apart from the signal and points failures) has been the appalling performance of DART caused by the low rail adhesion - hopefully this should start to improve in the coming weeks.

They really need to consider a leaf fall DART timetable

For a line that is cleaned nightly and given the cold snap, leaf excuse is wearing very thin.....anyway we have a 10 minute DART to look forward to possibly by end of 2017 so PPT will turn into you typical commuter mess day in day out.

Yes this last week there was a few points faults causing problems (to be fair first in a while) but DART performance has not been acceptable for a long time. How many delays are caused by inadequate capacity?

Well look at the UK TOCs and you will see that they have been and still are being badly affected by leaf fall on lines that are being treated every day. The treatment helps but it doesn't eradicate it. It is still an issue and will be for a week or so more.

There shouldn't be capacity problems given the resignalling that has happened.

Trains have been typically 5 mins late at Drumcondra outbound but, so far, connections with Heuston-Portlaoise trains have been made on-time, at least when I used them. I wonder what's the limit before the connection will be broken?

The PIS at Drumcondra consistently shows a Maynooth service arriving 1st and then at the last minute switches to the Hazelhatch service. I suspect the Maynooth train is held at Connolly to allow the Hatch train to keep its schedule and the tight connections.

I accept it's a problem but given the weather it's not good enough. If it was mild and wet it would in theory be much worse but I suspect we wouldn't notice any difference...

My capacity comment was in relation to dwell times at stations and is there adequate capacity been provided.

Most likely kept until they impact a Cork service!

Like all routes they have up to 5 minutes build into schedules at the end of journey.

Exactly!

It's fairly obvious that there's a 5 min margin built into the run time between Drumcondra and Parkwest and the Portlaoise trains fairly dawdle between Fonthill and the Hatch, another 5 min delay is probably accommodated. But, as you say, once it begins to impact IC, esp Cork, then the connections will break leaving long waits for some.

I got the 16:40 from GCD to Newbridge on Friday, as it happened to suit my weekend plans. Although we were about 5 mins late departing, and stopped at Heuston platform 10 for a couple of minutes, the rest of the journey ran smoothly, and the time was made back somewhere, as we arrived on time. The train was never heavily loaded, and there were plenty of empty seats, but I expect the later ones are busier. Anyway, I enjoyed taking a train through the PPT at last!

By the way, the RUI fare calculator says an adult single for this journey should be €16.75, but the TVM at GCD actually charged €14.45.

Last week due to the 'sygnet' fault, the 1758 GCD-Hatch was 13 mins late leaving Drumcondra, but the connection with the 1825 Heuston-Portlaoise was maintained.

Experience is showing that delays of 10mins and even longer will not result in a missed connection which is vital for the success of the route. Without this tolerance, passengers beyond Newbridge would have a 40+min wait. The next train operates to Newbridge but without connections onwards (something to fixed in the future hopefully).

Considering the service has to mesh with services out of Heuston, the Maynooth line and the Northern line, and problems on any of those lines could have a knock on affect, I can see a certain amount of padding is necessary. I'm impressed that there haven't been more teething problems.

The new services are to a great extent immune from the frequently chaotic DART operation as they only share the short section of line between Grand Canal Dock and Connolly. Provided specific connections with DART are ignored they can be easily slotted in without either causing or being the victim of undue disruption.

In fact if there is a lesson to be drawn from the new service it is probably that Irish Rail should cease to hold Drogheda, Dundalk and Maynooth trains at Pearse to follow late running DART trains and at least salvage some semblance of a of a punctual service for not DART users.

While trains like the 1650 from Bray to Drogheda are convenient for some passengers, they are continuously disrupted by DART as are the 1705 & 1735 from Bray to Maynooth.

I quite agree. There's nothing more annoying than when a northern line train gets held for a Malahide DART, which can easily add 15 minutes to the arrival time at the destination.

I think the argument for them has been that there isn't enough parking space for all the trains required for the evening rush hour services. However, Newbridge services manage a quick turnaround at Grand Canal dock, and there would seem to be plenty of capacity to terminate some northern line/Maynooth services there.

I think stopping the direct services from Bray would be unpopular with a lot of commuters, but might make them realise they have a choice of more than one or two trains home.

James

There's a story going around, not confirmed, that the city-centre add-on to P2P does not work at barriers other than Connolly and that IE are now suggesting that users get a P2P to Pearse since they can't/won't reprogramme the barriers.

If so that's bad news with my 2017 P2P+add-on ordered.

Any truth in this?

Took the PPT service this evening to try it out, 18.01 ex Pearse to Hazelhatch. It was on time until we were held for around 6 minutes north of Connolly because of a fault that caused a delay to the 18.05 to Longford. Had a slight stop coming out of Heuston because the 18.05 to Portlaoise didn't depart until 18.25, Connolly delay off set this stoppage.

18.01 was a very quiet service, had a 4 seater to myself, around 35-40 got off at Hazelhatch and maybe 15 joined the connection to Newbridge.

It was great not having please mind the gap and thank you for traveling with Iarnród Éireann at any intermediate stops. They have also removed it from Portlaoise services.

I'm going annoy them until it's removed off other services, I have succeeded in the past getting the pa cut down.