Cork Area Services
 

It appears there are major problems in Cork due to a lack of serviceable trains. Several trains have been cancelled as a result on the Cobh line.

Nothing on the Irish Rail site.

If we get details of further cancellations we will update

Due to a massive shortage of railcars in Cork a large number of trains have been cancelled, of course no one is saying anything in IE about it

Morning
The 7:00 and 8:30 Cork Cobh and the 7:30 and 9:00 Cobh

Evening
The 16:30, 17:30 and 18:30 Cork Cobh and the 17:00, 18:00 and 19:00 Cobh Cork

These cancellations are expected to continue for some time

The Mk3 citygold coach set used as a standby for Cork Dublin is now running Tralee - Mallow to substitute for the missing railcars, this however leaves Cork Dublin services at risk

Buses are on standby in Mallow since a 2 coach railcar is not able to take the load where a 4 coach is normally used

The 19:30, 20:30 Cork Cobh and 20:00 and 21:00 Cobh Cork and the 5:35 Cork Millstreet remain cancelled as a result of the ongoing issues in Irish Rail, again no notice to that effect on the IE site

Are the railcars dead or have they been transferred up the country?

2 up country, gearbox related issues
1 in Cork not mobile
1 in Cork mobile but short an engine

If things couldn't get any worse

This is expected to continue for a number of weeks

Things get worse

Should of course point out the 19:30 and 20:30 trains are nearly always buses anway

A 6 coach push pull set is now based in Cork which somewhat resolves the situation.

Its back to front from operational reasons, so the engine faces Dublin instead of Cobh

Is that a Mk3? And I didn't think some of the platforms (Fota and Carrigaloe come to mind) could handle that length of a train.

Irish Rail don't have agreement on the supervision of trainee drivers, someone foolishly in the company seems to want to cause trouble instead of minimising it

The arrangement that is being pushed is the senior driver is responsible for everything while the trainee is driving, doesn't appear to be 100% fair now does it

seems foolish to start this arrangement before aggreement was made, was progress on this issue not being made?

Also given the impact the original issue was having on other services what is the chance it could spread?

It doesn't seem fair

Situation is that they tried to do some training in Cork this morning, this is voluntary anyway it appears, guy said no to taking the train out the issue seems to come before even the mentoring thing, he sent home, other guy in Dublin won't come back down until the first guy is back in work.

With the exception of the 11:00 all Dublin Cork seems to be ok

Seems pretty stupid then for IE to brag that this could cause significant disruption to cork services.

If it is voluntary for the driver to do the training, why refuse to take the train out. Why just say no to the training?

updated

updated again, does not look good

A total of 6 Cork based staff have been struck off the payroll, that will increase steadily

Effectively there are no services into or out of Cork

The issue at hand is management asked to the pilot driver in Cork to take out a train with trainee drivers. Driver refused on the grounds that as pilot he operates only within Cork station

Heuston should be fun tonight!

The media don't seem to be covering much.

Is there bus transfers planned for the cancelled services?

Doesn't suprise me that the whole thing just happened too late for the 1pm news

Buses provided, however they aren't enough of them and the budget to pay for them has been exhausted

This isn't good at all. What are the chances of this happening tomorrow morning.

On a personal note, my father is flying out of Dublin tomorrow afternoon and hoping to get the 10:30 train out of Cork.