Without giving the technical specifics, is it likely that whatever is keeping 22Ks down to 70mph Cork-Mallow will be resolved to allow 90mph operation, or is this a permanent state of affairs?

i dont think he meant the 22Ks, he meant the older railcars. which I beleive operate the Cobh Cork Mallow services (some at least).

Surely both platforms are equally curved?

You are right - I omitted the maitenance and depreciation on the costs of the local commute. That is because in my case, the car does so few miles that the maintenance has to be done on a time schedule rather than a mileage schedule.

So in my case, I drive a 12 year old Mondeo that is worth essentially nothing leading to zero depreciation and maintenance is about 500 per year. So ignoring all other use of the car, that adds 2 euro per journey to the car's cost. If you wanted to do the numbers on a new car which would depreciate 5,000 euro per year, you arrive at a 20 euro journey cost and now traveling the whole way by car begins to look attractive but only if you like to have a new car anwyay.

You can get away with a a banger as a station car but you cannot if you are doing 40,000 miles per year (which would be my approximate mileage).

The argument over journey times is all well and good but most people dont use a train for intercity journeys because its quicker then a car.
Even with a substantial reduction in Cork Dublin times its never going to be quicker from A to B unless you happen to be going from Lwr Glanmire road to the Guinness brewary wall and that would assume you have to be there around the time the train arrives.

In the much vaunted days of the mark III´s the nonstop train on Sunday evening left at 18.00 (I think) and did the journey in 2.18, but the train before that left about 14.00 taking a bit more then 2 1/2 and the one that left half an hour afterwards .stopped everywhere and took over 3 hours. The effect of this is if I had to be in Dublin at 7.30 pm I had to be getting a train at 2 o clock giving a 5 1/2 hour travel time and if I had to be there at 10 pm I would have had to leave Cork on the non-stop giving me a real journey time of 4 hours despite the train doing the journey in times not seen now. The 2.18 minute journey time was as much use as tits on a fish except to the 3 people on board who had appointments in Dublin at 8.30 pm

Frequency is of much more importance.
With the hourly service there is no more 4 or 5 hour travel times needed, I think more effrort should be put into increasing the frequency at peak times to half hourly, this would have the effect of cutting travel times by up to 30 minutes.
Most intercity rail users care less about they are spending 15 minutes longer on a train then having to waste hours away waiting for the next one.


The first and last segments of any long distance railway journey are always going to throw any time advantage away unless you happen to be just traveling between two major train stations and increases in frequency are more effective ways of reducing journey times.

I disagree. For intercity journeys (probably not commuter) many people are happy to plan their day somewhat around the trip (provided it operates on time) and would prefer a shorter journey time.

I would say on most peoples journeys you can more or less disregard depreciation and maintenance because most people only make the occasional journey. A regular commuter would be a whole different ball-game i agree.

I can drive from home to Dublin city centre quicker and cheaper than the train fare. If I bring someone with me, they travel for free effectively.

The only way for Irish Rail to compete with the motorways is having more direct non stop train services between the 2 destinations,ie Dublin Cork which i know already has a few direct non stop services between the 2 cities but should have at least a few more. The railway service i use is the Dublin Sligo service and every single train stops at every single station on that line so I doubt anything would change about that service any time soon.