[Article] Rail Against the Machine
 

Sunday Tribune 11/4/2010 Page 14.

Full text later by 8pm, not online yet

It seems that Irish Rail 'donated' taxpayers money to put a train back in service for a single trip, but it won't use the train to fill in for the string of breakdowns.

Full text http://www.tribune.ie/news/home-news...t-the-machine/

Pretty damning stuff...

How many articles total - two?

Yes, Rail Against the Machine, and Iarnrod Eireann Derails €420m line upgrade.

I wonder what line will be next for the chop to cope with the opening of the Clonsilla - M3/Pace?! :confused:

Rail against the Machine: Its a good article, highlighting a lot (but still tip of iceberg).

With the KRP being "surplus to requirements" does this mean an end to the Interconnector?

Its important to be clear that the KRP is a very important piece of infrastructure and even today is providing an improved service mainly through the much improved signaling.

KRP will only really shine with the interconnector in place. Previously IE terminated the tunnel in Heuston with no link to KRP, currently the link is proposed at Inchicore and will exploit the KRP to a level greater than originally envisaged

How on earth IE expect to grow passenger numbers with a timetable which is full of strange gaps is beyond me, they need to put a clockface timetable in to provide the consistency which people need

For reference the 8200 DART fleet is out of service due to a refusal within Irish Rail to buy the spare parts. Price is a factor but they are several vendors.

Parts are available. The 8200 fleet uses an Alstom ONIX drive system which is common in most Alstom products between 1997 and today, i.e several thousand of units. In fact some parts are directly exchangeable between the Luas fleet and the 8200's. The Alstom ONIX is recognised as being one of the best in the business.

The bogies are the same as the LHB fleet and IE has several spare.

But weren't they (the Alstom DARTs) breaking down all the time? I had read that they simply were not reliable.

They started out very reliable with all 10 in service each morning as a matter of routine. Yes there are problems but if you ain't willing to pay for spare parts of course the train will break down.

Plenty of other railway companies bought stock from Alstom in that era and stuck it out and resolved the issues resulting in a reasonably reliable train. They stuck with it, IE gave up.

Baz retorts in the Tribune today.

http://www.tribune.ie/news/letters/a...-rails-cliche/

Its one thing to deliver projects, what is needed is a quality customer experience - on-time, in reasonable comfort and reasonable prices to places where customers want to go when they want to go there and to do that in a consistent fashion.

Shinny new stuff doesn't fix all problems

Customer service is still woeful, WRC timetable a disaster. Nothing in the article is challenged, all the numbers, Ken had it spot on. This so called charity trip will come back to haunt IE.

Charity starts at home and the folks on the 15:30 to Galway last Friday would have been very happy to make the journey on a Mk3 set, much nicer than the bus they ended up on.

Just sent to Trib Editor:

A nice letter well put.

Nicely done mark!

glad to see that the standard reaction to criticism within IE is alive and well. Without Barry Kenny knowing what he said, he said it.

Also, glad to see that the comments underneath are moderated, nice to see all the old gang there

I must apologise to everyone, the article said 24 temporary restrictions between Dublin and Cork in December 09, the number was actually 26.

that is the sort of unreliability you can expect from RUI

Still though the numbers are getting worse, not better. Accuracy is very important to us

For the record
5th December 2009
Down (towards Cork) 13 - 3@50mph 10@25mph
Up (towards Dublin) 13 - 4@50mph 8@25mph 1@20mph

Current stats?
 

There are limits at Cherryville Junction due new crossovers and there are restrictions between Portlaoise and Portarlington as new track is laid. Expect bus replacement on evening Saturday trains in the next week or so to allow for work at Cherryville

Relaying of the track on the down fast is impacting on the down slow.

The problem on Dublin Cork is a lack of coordination has led to far too many restrictions, for instance the track work at Cherryville should only happen after the restrictions in Ballybrophy are lifted to ensure delays are minimised

Two things:
Am I right in thinking that the restrictions now (April 2010) are not nearly as numerous as in Dec 2009?

At least some of the restrictions mentioned (CherryOrdhard-Hazlehatch, Cherryville, Portlaoise-Portarlington and Ballybrophy) are attributable to serious work in progress, rather than simply the track being left to decay.
But Limerick Junction seems to be a bit of a black hole, which should have been fixed long ago: even for stopping trains it costs a couple of minutes.

I was interviewed some time ago for the article so the data at the time was up to date

The number has reduced but there simply are far too many restrictions and they stay in place for too long, Ballybrophy is still a mess months on. Limerick Junction is a joke years have past with no sign of any progress

End of the day Dublin Cork 3 stops should be doable in 2:35 in the current state, 2:15-2:25 with the problems closed out

This was published.

http://www.tribune.ie/news/letters/a...k-record-mr-k/

Nicely done

Superb letter, especially the reference to who could name the PR spin doctors in Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann. :D

Hmm