Malahide viaduct
 

Due to subsidence of the viaduct at Malahide, there are no services between Howth Junction and Skerries until further notice. Dublin Bus is honouring train tickets in the affected area. Other DART services may be subject to variation.

Have to wait for the video but it sounds extremely bad

The description is that of the embankment and not the viaduct itself. Very serious and may take days if not weeks to sort out depending on how bad it is. I'd assume the safety people from the RAIU are on the way out to see it as well

Due track layout in Malahide it can't be used as a terminus really, will have to wait on precise details

so how long is it going to take to repair?

According to irish rail northern commuter services are suspended until further notice with bus transfers are being arranged for dublin belfast

Notice is advising passengers to use dublin bus or bus eireann but not saying whether or not rail tickets will be accepted

For reference the station level displays are saying ticket valid on Dublin Bus

They also imply services are running Skerries-Drogheda/Dundalk

Any idea what could have caused this ? Record rainfall for july ? Soaked soil ?

A 20m section of the Viaduct collapsed - pictures on RTE web. Very serious with rails in mid-air and a derailment only narrowly avoided according to RTE.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0821/rail.html

pics now,http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0821/rail.html, total collapse of sections

Looks like the very centre span collapsed, pier on the right looks to have collapsed as well

Very serious, could be weeks to repair

I have the engineering details of the viaduct somewhere at home, they could prove interesting. The piers the bridge is carried on appear to be the originals. Scour from the tidal flows has always been a problem

At least Irish Rail seem to be making an effort of sorts

There has been 'spring tides' the last few days.

Extremely high tides. Further up the coast at Balbriggan it's was as high as I've seen it in recent years, if as high as ever.

so commuter chaos for the next few weeks :( wonder how they'll handle the annual/monthly commuter ticket holders!

I think the RAIU people are going to be swarming around this issue like flies - that's an absolutely catastrophic failure!

Looks bad, alright. Not looking forward to several weeks of bus transfers to work. :-(

It's very lucky the driver who spotted it managed to stop in time, or a very serious incident could have arisen.

We will see how good the contingency plans are. I know the time of the Skerries freight derailment, there was chaos with lots of mis-information.
There were no extra buses put on, and the Dublin Buses were full from towns like Balbriggan, so no one else got on en-route.
I tried to get a taxi to Malahide, but that took an hour as so many people ended up driving.
I really hope they have learnt from all the past mistakes.
I fully acknowledge this is on the serious end of the scale in terms of impact, but call in the army of whoever, if they do not have the skills/capacity.
Time will tell.
They will need a lot of buses to start transporting people in from Skerries. And will they bring them just to Malahide, or to the city centre?
Assuming they get the buses, not sure how you 'fast track' them along the M1 to the Port Tunnel, and into the city centre.

If it happened in the dark it would not have been spotted I would imagine. If it happened in another month or so it would have been dark at 6pm!!!!

A shockingly close call.

Whats even scarier is there was an even closer call within the last month.

Exceptionally lucky today, the consequences of a full 8 coach 29k railcar rolling off the viaduct are too shocking to imagine.

latest @22.30hrs

now it would be helpful to know how to get from malahide to skerries best i know is sutton-swords village-skerries (102 and 33-although you might be a few minutes walk from off the bus to skerries rail station)

RTE now reporting the driver of that train drove on to malahide and them reported it :eek:

6.00 will be bright enough to see issues until the clocks go back. I'm not due to use that section of the line until early October, so hopefully it will be fixed by then.

Lucky the driver spotted it in time. That's a full speed, flat out area of the track. I hope IR have learned their lesson from the Cahir viaduct collapse a few years ago.

Thank heavens no one was hurt today, thats all I can say.

Absolutely shocking images, we can only hope there is an engineering explanation as to why this could happen so suddenly, if not there are massive safety questions to be asked of IE.

I read this too, if true does it mean the driver proceeded over the viaduct? Possibly he was unable to stop in time. Presumably it will all become clear at a later stage.

The worst place for such a thing to happen would be the Boyne Viaduct, where it's a 30-metre drop into the water.

All viaducts should be regularly and thoroughly inspected.

Yep, shocking images really and very scary.

Now everyone should be on red alert along the wicklow and wexford coast too...

True i always wondered if the platform at leixlip would subside but that is a drop in the ocean [excuse the pun ] compared to the northern and east south eastern line [DART AND Rosslare line ] i shudder to think of the consequences.

Jeasus H Christ, this is serious problem. I can't state enough how lucky this whole thing was. :eek: This will take a month or 3 to repair. And depending how serious condition the rest of the bridges are. Again....:eek:

Right engineers, any idea how a span can just collapse?



Is this the part most affected by tides?

Also, how does a driver on a south bound service cross this and then report the issue?

heres a clue
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=5...13937&t=h&z=17

There curiously was a 29k in the Dublin bound platform in Malahide. The radio telephone would work fine on the bridge. no way a train would get across the bridge in its current state

Each track has its own span possibly one collapsed before the other

Ladies, any service will not operate for a good while over this section until a proper survey is carried out on the rest of the structure. We really don't know if a proper 'modern' detailed survey was ever carried out on this section. As stated already, the tidal forces would be strong at this section.

Oh wow, I think IÉ is in the deep shi*e over this. This is as far as I'm concerned, totally unforgivable, especially considering the DART extension to Drogheda :mad:

We are looking at months here, probably 3 at minimum. It takes concrete 28 days to reach full strength and a steel option is workable in that exposed location

Mark we really need you now to ask the tough questions to IÉ over this. This could have been really serious. I am talking about possible deaths here.

Press release is just finished. Something went wrong an underlying fault in the bridge was missed, there is a history of scour problems. We are very lucky to escape this time. IE built, own and maintain the bridge so unless it was blown up or an earthquake (both highly unlikely) its IE's fault

For the last few years off the record its always been 'there's a big one coming', sadly there will be an fatality accident. This was not the closest to a fatality incident in the last month, a member of staff came within seconds of death on board a passenger service.

Sorry Mark, but if it wasn't for the very basic cop-on of the driver, this would have been serious. But as you have stated there has been other 'close calls'. how long until...

I really feel sick to the stomach over this. Are us Irish really that incapable or running a rail services safely, let alone efficiently.

Related to this now, but how will the commuter trains that are normally sent to Drogheda be serviced and fixed now?

Does that mean that other services will suffer as they are cut off now from access to the depot for many weeks at least?

It's extreemly lucky that those 50 passengers on the Balbriggan to Connolly train were safe.


The driver noticed a subsidance on the obosite side of the track as he passed.

So he stopped and called in, and soon after it all collapsed.


Scary to think how frequently hundreds of people rocket over that section.

A full, proper rush hour train either south in the morning or north in the evening would have hundreds of people on board. It could have been unbelievably horrific.



But those 50 are safe and probably didn't even notice.


As for what will happen now i'm just shocked at the implications.


My mother and myself have to figure out the best way to get from Drogheda to Dublin.

Our current thinking is take the car to Portmarnock.

Or get the 101 from Drogheda and Park in the station.

Overall i don't know what kind of service's and extra buses they will run but it will be a disaster to organise.


The Skerries Freight Derailment last year was poorly managed to say the least.

This could also be.

What are the Bus contingency plans?


Will Donabate North to Skerries/Balbriggan also recieve shuttle Trains to A unified bus point or extra buses into dublin at stations not capable of handling the traffic.



How will the fleet be maintained over 3 weeks?


There has to be several trains stuck in Dublin. At least 4 or so maybe even more, that can't get back to Drogheda for Repairs.


All other 29k's shared with Southern Commuter service's and Maynooth Service's will also be out of luck.

Thankfully most of the 22k's are now running so this isn't that many, but it puts massive pressure on the Maintenance facilities in Dublin, Ie Connolly.

Will Trains be sent west for repair??

And why is the Enterprise fully suspended? Surely at least 2 remain up north?

There is 5 or so engines and 4 set's of carriage's. NI and IE can easily spare Northern Line trains to keep the Business of Enterprise going between Drogheda and Belfast, or even as far south as Skerries/Balbriggan.


Sending a coach as far north as Belfast directly is a waste of petrol and capacity. Transferring to remaining trains earlier will save time and allow more people to head back to Dublin.






There's far to many issue's to think about.

This is going to be awful!:confused:

"the line across the estuary will not reopen for at least 3 months"
 

its gonna be a long winter for some! :eek: :(

A bit of media reaction and the mystery of whether or not the driver stopped might be solved, it seems it may have been subsiding as he crossed the bridge!
Independent http://www.independent.ie/national-n...e-1866930.html