[16-12-2005] DART delays morning

[TomB]

DARTs a bit delayed this morning

Arrived at Tara St at 835 as per usual, a Bray-bound DART that should have arrived at 828 arrived 5 minutes later. It was only 6 coaches (is it usually?) and was absolutely packed -- some people couldn't get on at Tara and Pearse.

Seems all services were running over 10 minutes late, southbound anyway. Not too bad for me, but all those people on the 7:17 ex Dundalk and 7:57 ex Maynooth were late for work by at least 10-15 minutes.

Must have been an earlier problem -- anybody any further insight? No announcements (of course)

[Mark Gleeson]

7:59 Howth Bray delayed by 9 due to operational difficulties (possibly caused by 6:20 ex Longford) should be an 8 coach train was in the past but its been hit an miss this week. The 7:18 from Drogheda was on time so thats the best guess

Operational difficulties must be the most useless excuse going

There is a pinch point at Connolly at about 8:30-8:35 as the 7:45 Maynooth Connolly and 7:27 Drogheda Connolly (both additional as of this years timetable) arrive 8:28am thats a lot of people needing an onwards transfer southwards

[Colm Donoghue]

the 0635 from Dundalk went through Malahide station (after a delay on the estuarys) on the west track and was delayed getting into Connolly
There was a dart in malahide on the east track.

[Rashers]

I was an Connolly at 08.35 for the same delays.
What I found interesting was the large volumes of passengers from the Drogheda and Maynooth services who needed to get the DART southbound. They headed in their hundreds to the platform 5, to wait for the delayed 6 carriage DART. I have rarely seen a DART as packed on arrival, and when I met 2 work colleagues later they said there was a gap of approx. 20 minutes to southbound DARTs.
Another observation is that very few passengers (relatively speaking) left the DART at Connolly.