Cork-Kerry services

[comcor]

While waiting for the 06:30 Cork-Dublin this morning, I was able to view the goings on with the 06:20 Cork-Tralee.

A massive three passengers boarded.

Now, perhaps it's as much of a repositioning train as anything else, but that's a pretty shocking figure.

Then when I got to Mallow on the Cork train, I started of getting an inkling of why. The Tralee train was still there. When the Dublin train left, the Tralee train was still there. In fact, on checking the timetable, it seems that the Tralee train stops in Mallow for a whole 17 minutes - a bafflingly long time considering it's not facilitating a connection. It would actually be perfectly possible to catch the 06:30 Dublin train and connect onto the Tralee train. The online timetable even presents this as the possibility instead of showing the direct train.

Given that 40+ passengers leave Cork by bus for Kerry every hour and that some of the fastest trains beat the bus by 10 minutes, I can't help but feel that Irish Rail are missing a trick here if they could actually get the timetable together.