[23/03/2012] 1100 Dublin-Belfast
 

Presently limping along on the 1100 to Belfast.

Apparently a DART departed Connolly at 1059 - what a joke !!!!

Realtime claims it was on time by Drogheda.

It arrived in Drogheda at 1138, an average speed of 50mph, the same performance that was delivered with steam traction in the 1950s. Utterly pathetic !

I took the Enterprise three times on Thursday and Friday. All services were on time with very good service on all three trains. The service could be much faster even with all the stops. The non-stop service in the 80s was scheduled for 1 hour 55 minutes but regularly arrived into Belfast ten to fifteen minutes early (leaving Dublin at 1800). Speeding up the trains should be a priority for NIR and IE. I would eliminate the stops at Drogheda and Lisburn as those towns are well served by commuter services.

This can be slightly complicated, e.g. in the early morning, a DART leaves Connolly and feeds into a commuter at Malahide, which then feeds into an Enterprise at Drogheda, so that is 100,00-200,000 people (obviously not as many passengers) served by that connection

Colm I have to agree, while I would dearly love the Enterprise to be faster. I frequently use Drogheda to connect from a Northside commuter town to the Enterprise service, without it I, and others no doubt, would have to travel into Connolly everytime, significantly increasing the journey time.