UPDATE: 18.30 Saturday 24 May 2008
 

http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/travel_alerts.asp?action=view&news_id=379

Something happening in Cork this morning.

8:45 to Cobh

Update: driver there but no train

UPDATE Cork & Kerry area service disruptions, Sunday 25 May 2008
 

http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/travel_alerts.asp?action=view&news_id=379

As unpredictable as the weather...

Widespread disruption on Friday, dying down to leave a mainly settled picture, with some isolated disruption in the West later on Saturday. Sunday will be a mainly fine day...

Outlook Monday changeable, strong chance of scattered showers

Don't get too excited here

The drivers have always said they would go back to work, Irish Rail refused to let them on Friday

Drivers are willing to work under the LRC proposals issued March 4th. Will Irish Rail management let them work? If they don't its about time questions have to be asked as to the philosophy of a company where its staff are available to work under a LRC proposal that all sides have accepted, but won't let them

http://www.railusers.ie/resources/lrc_march_2008-1.jpg
http://www.railusers.ie/resources/lrc_march_2008-2.jpg

I see we are back to the "Great Loyalty Oath" documents. Isn't that a calm and measured response to the issue. Somewhere Brendan Ogle is giggling.

Walking through Heuston this morning, 1000 and 1100 to Cork were cancelled, the 0900 was being operated by a MkIII set.

Waterford
 

I am hearing that some Waterford services are affected too.

Why no update on the IE website? The latest information was put up at 4.45 am (it's now after 12pm).

And why the sympathy with the drivers so evident on this site? Public sector unions (and above all those of the NBRU/ILDA tendency) are a huge obstacle to the development of a high quality, dependable public transport system. Problem is no-one else knows how to drive trains, so one can't sack them. (OK the quality of management is nothing to write home about either, but at least they are not actively sabotaging things)

Derek has made a vital point above.

10,000 disrupted pax is a big figure, but spread over Cork, Kerry, Galway and Mayo it will not attract critical mass at any one location to cause massive problems to IE managment and the DoT in Dublin.

You bring out Dublin Surburban and DART for one day and it'll be war.

We understand, filtering through the mix, that it came very very close in relation to Inchicore coming out, needless to say what in actual fact happened was predictable to me in retrospect.

At the end of the day, and I can see Derek's point, what Mark said was actually the same as Barry Kenny and IE's PR department - they could not guarantee any trains running anywhere and they adivsed people to check before traveling.

Anyway......

It is very obvious that industrial relations within IE do not function. Barry Kenny is telling all and sundry that there is "an agreement". Funny, but if there's an agreement, how come so many drivers are not working? Maybe someone didnt tell them what was agreed on their behalf?

Here's the thing. Since those drivers do not belive there is an agreement, IE should at the very least find out why. They have to talk to these guys. If Isreal can talk to Syria, Paisley talk to McGuinness, IE can talk to their staff.

The number one priority has to be "What can I/we do to get trains running and serve our passengers" It is glaringly obvious that this rule wasnt applied last Thursday in Cork. Consequences were either not considered, which is appaling, or they were considered but disregarded, which is shocking and an indictment of Irish Rail Managment.

Someone decided to pull the trigger and to hell with the passengers. Will that person be reprimanded. No. Is that person or his mangager accountable to anyone? No again. Irish Rail are mandated to run a train service, running that service on a day to day basis is their one and only function. If they fail to do that one basic thing they are paid to do - manage a railway company - what sanction is there there to punish them for it?

None.

And that is what is truly wrong with the dysfunctional world of Irish Rail.

Situation in Cork this morning, all drivers showed up and where prevented from driving. Thats a factual statement. A driver elsewhere actually managed to sign on and drove a train into a platform and was just about to leave presumably with passengers when he was stopped and told he was off the payroll

We have a farcical situation of drivers standing around in Cork not allowed drive while passengers suffer. The drivers are willing to work under the LRC proposals which are significantly to the benefit of the company and to the passenger yet they are not allowed.

End of the day 95% of services in Cork could be running within hours if Irish Rail get off their high horse and accept the LRC proposal as a way forward. 95% is a hell of lot better than the 0% in Cork currently.

Irish Rail management are not some wonderful infallible outfit, they did something rather ill advised and look where we are now, Cork has been targeted despite the fact a whole heap of trains where cancelled yesterday through Connolly and again today.

Day 6 no change.

NOTE 1 Irish Rail have abandoned the Cobh line passengers, no buses are being provided. Its not like they didn't get sufficent notice

NOTE 2 Services on the Dublin Sligo, Dublin Gorey lines are at serious risk of cancellation as well so this other routes operating normally is a blatantly misleading, been cancellations Mon and Tues

Well, our company's just decided never to use Irish Rail again. We've had a huge problem all week because of a lack of trains to/from Cork and have now resorted to fly+car hire. We've also just moved from using FastTrack to DHL. It's quite unlikely that we'll be going back.

I really don't care if it's the drivers or the company. At the end of the day the organisation is incapable of getting its house in order and is really hurting passengers and destroying its own reputation.

This is costing businesses a lot of money and it's an absolutely petty dispute.

Frankly, I would think there's an argument for putting the entire Cork operation off the pay roll including the management! This situation is just utterly unacceptable.

mark, what do you make of this intepretation that the drivers have of 'of required' to only mean in emergencies

i know IE have brought this upon us in a number of ways but this kind of restrictive practices can't be supported, surely?

The specific case of the pilot driver

1) Operates all empty trains in the station area, in and out of shed etc, this is why Dublin Cork services only go to Mallow as otherwise the Dublin driver doesn't get his full break

2) Will replace another driver in the event of an accident e.g. suicide on line

3) Will drive the rescue locomotive to assist a failed train

4) Will if necessary operate a passenger service to prevent a cancellation

The roster normally includes what is known as a spare link where there is driver on duty with nothing to do but fill in, given the shortage of drivers obviously they don't have one

Its very stupid not have this all written down, but if it has been standard practice for many years and no conflicting proof can be shown it has to be accepted as both sides agreeing.

On Thursday the driver was asked to take out a training train.
Three problems arise:
1) With no pilot in Cork who shunts and tests the Mk4 set from Dublin?
2) Normally a driver is rostered specifically to handle the training
3) The driver involved was not a mentor driver, was not specifically appointed by the company to supervise as they want. Mentor drivers get paid extra but are also fully responsible for those under supervision. The whole selection/payment/responsibility issue has yet to be determined

For several months several Cork Cobh trains have been cancelled and the driver redeployed on to Dublin Cork services, this is the much talked about flexibility Irish Rail talk about, moving to a service of a greater importance. Of course if this continues there won't be any service to Cobh at all. Point to note of course not all drivers are qualified to driver all train types

There is talk Irish Rail will withdraw the letter which started phase two of the trouble if that is the case 95% of services in Cork will resume quickly

Light at the end of the tunnel
 

Reports tonight indicate a vote is to be taken on a deal tomorrow

http://www.railusers.ie/forum/showpo...16&postcount=4

Usual deal in Cork is meeting 11am, there are 40 drivers so in if it goes well we could be back up and running almost fully by evening rush. 95% of trains would be back

There will be a slight delay as there will need to be a train with no passengers Mallow - Cork, Cork - Cobh and Mallow - Tralee to verify the lines clear and safe

Fingers crossed

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0528/rail.htmlhttp://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/travel_alerts.asp?action=view&news_id=379

UPDATE: 0730 Thursday 29 May 2008
 

Looks like good news!

http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/...ew&news_id=379

the question is - was this a fudge or have some of the crappy practices on both sides been sorted out?

RTE News

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0529/rail.html

I hope so! Too many times issues like these crop up again and again. Lessons need to be learned. Something needs to come out of the past week, hopefully the talks have done that!

I know its not as black and white as this but isnt it amusing that the drivers complain that they work too many days and that IE havent increased their numbers while refusing to train new drivers?

They changed the training program compared to the one agreed back in 2000. The whole driver mentor thing

Had a driver been rostered specifically for the job on Thursday there would not have been a problem. That was the normal case

A large amount of the training requires the trainees to sit with a driver and simply watch and learn the road thats the biggest part of the training course, however a driver has the right to operate alone, indeed in the UK recently trained drivers are not allowed to have someone with them. The practical drive under supervision is actually a very small part of the job

Two points: the return to normal service does not seem to be exactly a matter of urgency: nothing restored to-day. And this coming from drivers who said a few days ago that they wanted to drive and were being prevented from doing so.

Also "a driver has the right to operate alone". That really made me laugh. Do you mean that hey are unwilling to have a trainee colleague sit alongside and learn the road. Any normal person should love to have someone along to whom they can pass on a few comments. Don't tell me they might be distracted: after all drivers in the UK used to go on strike in defence of double-manning in the (alleged) interest of safety.

There has been far too much mollycoddling of drivers in this descussion.

One of the key causes of accidents is getting confused as to where you are,

Obviously in 99% of cases there isn't a problem to have someone else in the cab once they have the right pass

Since the line Cobh Cork, Cork Mallow and Mallow Tralee haven't seen a train in Thursday last a test train has to run to confirm the line is clear, also several of the trains need to be inspected since they have gone too long without a routine maintenance inspection obviously that can't be done if its not in Cork station, of course Cork was short serviceable trains anyway

There should be something running today, assuming there are trains in the right place to run the service

For Friday the 7:15 Tralee Dublin likely to be canceled or run only from Mallow

As a layman, I can understand why a driver would have to be "type-rated" to a specific train but not why the driver would have to be cleared on a given line. After all, buses can be chartered to anywhere you like without a prior visit, as can aircraft.

I'm sure there's a good reason for it - stuff like acceleration/deceleration profiles so you stop accurately on the platform, who to ring when the LC operator hasn't got out of bed, that sort of thing...

It just seems a lot like Mark Twain's book on apprenticing to be a Mississippi steamboat pilot. I mean, feck there seems to be more automatic guidance in private cars these days with all the GPSes being sold, you'd think Garmin could come up with an equivalent to assist train drivers :)

Curiously too many trains in the wrong place

Services resume at 00:01 on Friday May 30th

Location of signals as well as the speed limits, braking points, gradients etc must be learned, its not easy in the pitch black dark at 100mph remember it takes 2km to stop at that kind of speed and you have a target you can't see where you have to be accurate to within 1.5m. Airline pilots are somewhat similar certain difficult airports must be flown by senior captains

Not all Cork drivers are able to drive all trains in Cork which causes some problems when a freight train appears and the guy isn't passed out to drive it

20:00 and 21:00 Dublin Cork only made it to Mallow last night as there was no driver available in Cork to handle the incoming trains

7:00 Cork Cobh and 7:30 Cobh Cork where cancelled this morning

Why do the Cobh service problems not have the users up in arms. Is it due to low patronage? Im just saying that I dont hear much about the cancelled services except from this board.

There are about 450,000 journeys per year

Cancellations are common as services are killed to ensure the Dublin Cork service stays running, this is the flexibility Irish Rail talk about

Rail is the fastest way to Cobh given the layout of the Cork

Presumably Cork-Cobh service fall under the service level agreement between the DOT and Irish Rail?

Makes you wonder why not a single local politician has even raised a peek about this.

If DART's were being canceled like this, there would be war.

Management of course are selling this as the strike, when in fact they are so desperate to keep the Dublin Cork running everything else is sacrificed

Remember this is an operational matter for Irish Rail......

And yes it is in breech of the DOT agreement

Since it hit the paper this morning, we can go public on this.

Two drivers were suspended on Monday, the two drivers chosen were far from random

This explains the issues with the 20:00 and 21:00, though the Cobh changes are different issue

Curiously training train showed up Tuesday and no one was asked to take it out

I assumed that there were two driver pools. One for the Commuter services and one for the intercity services. That would make more sense would it not?

Something drastic either has to be done or is going to happen, again.

So much potential in cork for a decent commuter network. Pity.

Its been brought to our attention that there is some class of weird timetable in use on the Cork Cobh service

The 19:30 Cork Cobh and 20:30 Cork Cobh have been cancelled and a 20:00 Cork Cobh added

The 20:00 Cobh Cork and 21:00 Cobh Cork have been cancelled and a 20:30 Cobh Cork added

As a result Irish Rail are now in breech of the service level agreement by running two trains less than agreed

Of course no notice has been issued telling the public of this

Isn't this just last year's timetable, with the infuriatingly sparse service in the evenings?

I was surprised also last Sunday to see how few matchgoers used the train to go into the city. It seems people prefer to face the joys of Cork matchday traffic to park in the city centre rather than park in a near empty station and have a 7 minute ride into Kent. While it's a bit of a trek to the ground it is no worse than it would be from most parked cars.