Mildly Interesting Suburban Journey

[Rashers]

I was waiting on the 22.22 Pearse St - Drogheda service last Thursday (Jan 26). As I had come in on a DART, the overhead displays were advising delays to 'some' services due to an earlier failure at Tara St.
However, the Drogheda service was missing from the display altogether, but was showing a Howth, Malahide and Maynooth service. When I checked with station staff, they agreed is was missing, but advised it was going to pull in straight from Tara St. There was 1 member of staff waiting with a ramp to assist a girl in a wheelchair on.
At the last moment, the Drogheda service pulled in on the southbound platform, which was a bit of a pain for all involved, especially the girl in the wheelchair.
To be the fair, the driver did apologise, and advised the inbound service had suffered a fault. We were about 10 mins late departing.
But here's where the story gets interesting.
A northbound Malahide service, which had departed about 5 mins ahead of the delayed Drogheda service was held north of Connolly to reduce the delay to the Drogheda service. This used to be very common, and I always thought it was a good idea, but during 2005 it rarely happened.
Secondly, the girl in the wheelchair was alighting at Skerries. As this station was closed at this point (including the lifts), the Northbound Drogheda service switched over to the Southbound track just south of Skerries.
So it pulled into the Southbound platform. (Northbound platform can only be accessed via bridge). Then the driver (can't be 100% sure it was him, but I'd say so) went back, and got the ramp and assisted the girl off. Probably added another 5 mins to the journey.
However, this was great to see, and the whole process worked well.

As I work shift, I get these late evening services regularly enough. They used to suffer delays, and a complete lack of information during these delays. Hence for the month of December I got a taxi home any night I was working shift. This journey was my first late evening service in about a month, but it was good to see things improving.
End of rant....

[Mark Gleeson]

Very interesting

They pinched a incoming arrival from Maynooth to run the service and that train always arrives into platform 2 which avoids holding up the long line of northbound trains (5 in 20 minutes). It unfortunate that it wasn't routed into platform 1 but that may not have been possible with oncoming northbound trains where the route was already locked in. To wait would have delayed things even further

I'm surprised they didn't try the seriously scary I'll race you game across the northside, its perfectly acceptable for two trains to travel in the same direction one on each track across the northside IE use it every night

I'm seriously impressed by the actions of the crew in the signalling control centre to reroute the train at Skerries and fair play to the driver. Thankfully the 29000 units each carry a ramp.

It raises a particular point of accessibility beyond stations opening hours, but it also emphasises the need for the wheelchair user to call in advance. We are going to have some serious fun with IE on this in weeks to come

[Colm Donoghue]

Almost the exact same thing happened in December, I'd imagine it was the same girl, whe was getting off in Skerries, she told me they were gonna switch the track in Skerries.

Good job she wasn't goint to Rush and Lusk, where it's impossible for a wheelchair bound passenger to cross from one platform to the other, at any time of the day.

[Mark Gleeson]

IE won't let you board unless the destination is accessible, all stations are listed online with respect to accessibilty. There is also booklet available (we have a copy)

[Colm Donoghue]

I'm sure Rush and Lusk is, there's 3 wheelcahir parking spaces each side.....