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Any thoughts on a colour (s) for the now clear loopline?
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Personally I'm delighted to see the hoardings coming down. I know I'm in the minority, but I love the lattice structure and I'm really glad to see it exposed. I hope it gets a nice paint job to bring it up. I think the white on the Ha'penny bridge really works well, and would be stunning on the Loop bridge.
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The Loop Line could eventually be demolished, however, and be replaced by a tunnel under the Liffey. Under Transport 21, the government’s recently announced plan, an underground interconnector linking Heuston station with Connolly is proposed, and a spur from Connolly to Tara Street railways would be a logical addition.
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As pointed out above, this is patently wrong. If you were to put in a tunnel, it would need to connect the Maynooth and Bray lines. On the northside, it would need to go underground somwehere between Glasnevin and Drumcondra, and on the south somewhere around Lansdowne Road - and you might as well make it south of Merrion Gate to cut out level crossings.
This would, of course, mean Diesels couldn't cross the city (except maybe at night when out of service). This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Diesels from the north could continue to run into Connolly, and from the south overground into Pearse, but in both cases they would now be fully segregated from the DART for the last leg of the journey.
The biggest problem is, of course, expense. I'm not digging out Google Earth right now, but I'd guess we're talking about the guts of 10km.
The other issue is, of course, that the Loop bridge is itself a listed structure, which precludes getting rid of it as long as it's not unsafe (though I presume there's a procedure by which it can be "unlisted".
When it does come to be replaced, it doesn't necessarily have to be completly shut down to do so. The original wrought iron portion of the Drogheda Boyne viaduct was replaced in the 1920s by building the new steel structure inside the iron girders and removing the iron supports after. This is one of the reasons that the bridge can no longer take two tracks. It's possible that a new structure could be built around the current bridge, allowing at least some level of service while the works are ongoing.