[Ballymore]

Disaster this morning, although this train rarely leaves at the appointed time of 7:26 alluded to in the topic title, this morning it left at 08:18 arriving 09:30 at Connolly.

I arrived at Mullingar at about 07:23 and the ticket inspector told us that the train was going to be about 40 minutes late. Luckily enough there is a warm ticket office / waiting room there so that bit wasnt too bad. However there was the usual startling lack of communication between IR staff and passengers.

At 8.10 or so a coach appeared at the front door and a number of people immediately ran for that and to be honest I couldnt understand why as we ahd been told the train was due in 5 minutes at that stage. Obviously these people were in the know that there was a problem with the train and sure enough - When the train eventually appeared it was missing 3 carriages and there was a brief apology citing mechanical difficulties in Sligo earlier this morning. So some people did end up standing all the way from Mullingar.

As this train arrived in at 9.30 as opposed to 8:47 are people entitled to some sort of refund or something - or is that still within 'acceptable IR performance delivery' limits?