monday 19th March

[Colm Donoghue]

This morning I went down to my local train station to get a train to Dublin to go to work.

It was just opening, and inside the building which was locked when I arrived, was a sign saying there would be a Sunday service today, the 19th of March.

The electronic sign said the next train would be 70 minutes.
I asked the IR guy when the next train was and he said it'd be 9:23
I mentioned that the first line of the timetable says excluding public holidays but that today wasn't a public holiday.
he said it's abank holiday and it's always a sunday service on a bank holiday.

I've mentioned this before here. I don't see why IE don't publish their bank holiday/public holiday/timetable variations along with their normal timetable. sncf and bahn do this. I especially don't know why IE lie to their customers.

When we got into Connolly, one person got off and everyone else stayed on the train. on my carriage, the last of 6 I'd say there were a reasonable number of people, every seat pair had at least one person in it. i.e. more than half the seats were occupied.

after sitting in the station for about 5 minutes, at platform5, the driver announced the train was terminated there. We all threw our eyes up to heaven and got off. loads of people were getting off the rest of the carriages too.

When I got into work at 10:30 this morning after getting the first train today, I looked up the Irish rail website to see the craic for getting home.

"No travel alerts"

Under general news, the third news item was something to do with the St Patricks Festival and Skyfest.

clicking on this and scrolling waaaaay down, there is a single line un-hihglighted statement saying

"On Monday 19th March, a Sunday service will operate on the DART network, to and from Drogheda / Dundalk and to / from Maynooth."


I also checked the "Printed Timetables" link where the timetable proudly says on it's first line
Dundalk – Drogheda – Dublin – Monday – Saturday (excluding public holidays)

and on it's sunday service it proudly says that the 9:23 not only serves Tara and Pearse but goes onto Dun Laoghaire and Bray.

To summarize:
IE publish incorrect timetable.
IE advertise their altered timetable inside a locked station
IE have an on platform display that says the next train will be in 50 minutes as the train pulls into the station.
IE have a train with the pis turned off, no display on the front of the train
IE don't announce the destination of the train
IE's website disguises any notice of the timetable changes
CIE charge almost a grand a year for this.

[Colm Donoghue]

Just looked at the timetable in Rush and Lusk station this morning.
The sunday timetable stated the 9:23 from Rush and Lusk on a Sunday goes to Rosslare. Not terminate in Connolly.

[Mark Gleeson]

The 8:55 was only to run on Connolly on March 17, no notice concerning the 19th