There will be no trains in Cork tomorrow morning, the bulk of the driving staff has been removed from the payroll or will be by tomorrow morning.

We have been informed by various trustworthy sources that services elsewhere are at serious risk of vanishing, including DART services. We understand that the various depots country wide are debating what will happen tomorrow.

We won't know until between 9 am and 11 am if things are going to be bad or not, the morning rush may escape. However there is very real chance that there will a partial if not total suspension of service on several routes. Whichever way it goes there will not be a full timetabled service tomorrow given the ongoing shortage of drivers.

Given we have this information and believe it to be accurate we have an obligation to pass it on. We are being upfront, the least we can expect from Irish Rail is admission that there is a real risk to all services and that you should check before you travel.

There could of course be a magic two in the morning development as happened so many times, the usual rules apply check before you travel.

Seriously before you accuse us of scaremongering take a look at the recent list of cencellations. Most have a post by Mark at least 24 hours in advance of said cancelation. We aren't making this up, OK!

Are the Enterprise staff sufficiently far removed from this debacle to run a full service tomorrow? Need to travel down tomorrow and haven't decided what train to take yet.

Trains staffed by NIR drivers should run normally, so first two enterprises Belfast Dublin should run.

Updates as of 5am

Galway services seem to be affected today.

Thankfully nothing else affected yet.

I need this like a hole in the bloody head. I have to get to Cork this evening because that's where my flight to the Heineken Cup final is. Well, first stop this morning is Sandymount station to see if the guy will refund me for my ticket that I advance-purchased.

To be honest, the people here seem to be on the ball. This topic was covered in the Cork Area Services thread yesterday and all the information was correct.

Did management actually ask them to do something unreasonable?
Or, is it another hissy fit ?

I don't want to defend the unions (ever) because their work practices are not really helping but this was all avoidable.

The real problem is that the only people who suffer in all of this is us, the customers.

The 10:30 from Cork will be departing Mallow at 10:50. What is the likelyhood of this train being delayed into Heuston, due to arrive at 13:20. Any info would really be appreciated.

Just about everything Galway & Westport Dublin will be cancelled, small chance a number of trains may run only Dublin Athlone, possibly Dublin Galway Dublin.

15:00, 16:00 and 17:00 Dublin Mallow likely as are the 18:30,19:30,20:30 Cork Dublin but from Mallow only

Expect the 17:00 Dublin Mallow to be the last train south of Thurles tonight

10:30 ex Cork runs from Mallow and is likely to be on time

Cheers Mark

My Father is in Mallow. The southbound train has arrived. He was telling me that everyone is really nervous and rumours are crazy around the platform. He is confident it will run, albeit the rumours are making him anxious.

One of the rumours he heard, which is complete heresay, is the driver will return to Dublin but will refuse to take any passengers.

looking at booking bus tickets but want to wait until last minute - any idea when we'll know about evening trains to galway???

Highly unlikely any trains to Galway to today all the evening trains are driven by Athlone and Galway drivers

If they are running we will know well in advance since a train would have to work from Athlone to Dublin

From Breaking News

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mhgbmhkfcwoj/

thanks for the heads up - i'd feel a right chump wandering around heuston this evening - booked citylink instead - chaos ahead!

The 10:30, originally scheduled to leave Mallow at 10:50 left at 11:15. Not too bad over all I guess.

10:30 is meant to leave at 10:52.

Very much doubt it will be more than 10 minutes late into Dublin