Its a case of horses for courses as I have argued before. Locomotive haulage was appropriate to the old style traffic patterns Ireland had, which was the heavy passenger train, running 3 times daily (direct) in each direction on the routes to Rosslare/Sligo/Westport/Tralee/Limerick. 4 or 5 times daily to Galway/Waterford, and 6-7 times daily to Cork. This was the case until the early 2000's.
This was not quite appropriate anymore to customer needs, so they decided to go with high frequency, smaller trains, which is more in keeping with the traffic levels likely to be on offer. DMU's are more economical once you have 6coaches or less.
I agree with retaining 48 Mk 3 coaches, particularly if they can be retrofitted for Push/Pull, which is the way forward. There were only 30 of the original fleet fitted for this kind of operation, in 5 sets. Also, having two vehicles in a rake doing nothing with no bums in seats is'nt all that good either. I mean, one locomotive and one gen van.
As for loco's lying idle, its just symptomatic of a change in the system. We got half the expected lifespan out of the 201's, and the full whack out of the remainder of the fleet. Its not perfect in my view, but it could be worse.
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