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Here is an interesting picture of an A39 hauled train at Dalkey(my local station) coming from Hueston.It is on route to Wicklow as it can be seen in the next picture pulling up at Kilcoole at a later stage.

The point I'm trying to make is that IE could operate extra services from the likes of Galway/Athlone to Gorey/Rosslare via the Phoenix Park Tunnel (Phunnel as one of you called it).Assuming it called at all stations to Hueston it could then call at Drumcondra, Connolly, Tara Street, Pearse, Grand Canal Dock, Lansdowne Rd, Sydney Parade, Blackrock, Dun Laoghaire, Dalkey, Bray and all stations to Gorey.Therefore they would act as EXTRA Galway services, Dublin Express Services and Gorey bound services to the lack thereof, benefitting a huge percentage of people.

The Mark IV Intercity services and 22000 Intercity services are supposed to be replacing their predecessors.Instead they could put the old units through refurbishment/maintenance like the LHB DART stock so that the spare units could be used on lines where there is still a lack of service. The idea of this would be to balance the amount of services throughout the network.

The interconnector could be used aswel as the Phoenix Park Tunnel acting like an M50 for train services thereby forming an irregular circular line around the city.There is a site which covers this philosophy in greater detail and here is the URL:"http://www.darganproject.com/index_files/Page322.htm". Here are a few Ideas: (Galway-Heuston-Interconnector-Belfast), (Galway-Heuston-Phoenix Park Tunnel-Connolly-Rosslare), (Rosslare-Connolly-Belfast), (Cork-Heuston-Interconnector-Sligo), (Cork-Heuston-Phoenix Park Tunnel-Connolly-Gorey). The possibilities are endless.

Mark G - where would the bottleneck be to determine the maximum number of services, assuming enough rolling stock? Space at Docklands for instance, or the Kildare approaches to Heuston, or somewhere else?

A lot has changed since 1999 a hell of a lot of extra trains running

The line south of Pearse is running at close to capacity, its really tight and lucky to see a single green signal on the way in from Dun Laoghaire on a bad morning. Level crossings restrict any increase. Terminating in Dun Laoghaire comes with a number of problems, there is only one terminal platform so you got to get in and get out before the next train and in doing so cross oncoming trains. Bray is a mess so don't even think about there

When the third platform in Grand Canal Dock is re-signaled the current northbound line will become a terminus solving a lot of problems currently at Pearse

Currently isn't any room on the approach to Heuston for extra trains until the 4 track happens

The simplest solution is to do a simple piece of trackwork in Docklands and running Kildare local trains to Docklands is consistent with the post interconnector service and it was promised. There is free capacity to run that could manage 3 to 4 trains an hour. Those trains would start from the new turnback platfrom in Hazelhatch

Pearse Kildare after 9pm and all day Sunday is realistic and a reasonable approach

paddyb wrote

but surely with Greystones DART in place and Rosslare track being one track this is already impossible. in anyway i personally think its a waste of a set to run for 6 or 7 hours meaning it would only be able to complete 1 run in and possibly one run back.

MarkG is right that if We can't get extra maynooth or drogheda services into connolly it will be impossible to get Kildare services in. whatwork would have to be done to get kildare services to docklands. would it cost much.

It is a pity though about Dun Laoghaire platform 3. this would have been great for comuter services. out of interest does the same signal sequence that runs connolly-pearse run all the way to bray making it easy to run more Maynooth and Drogheda services to dun laoghaire

Agree you could get carried away with all sorts of combinations once the PPT is open and you have to look at route capacity and rolling stock limitations.

Those things aside looking at having a service north to south that runs via the 3 biggest cities on the island ie Belfast - Dublin - Cork would surely benefit people. I know a good number of students from Munster study north of border and have to make the trip via bus which can take 7 hours+.

What time would such a direct train service take? 4 hours with stops at say
Newry, Dundalk, Drogheda, Connolly, Drumcondra, Heuston, Portloais, Thurles, Cork.

Would there be interest in twice daily service?

What we can do is put a number on the number of people who fly Cork-Belfast, which was 3,380 in March. That's on a route that's twice daily on weekdays and once daily on weekends, so it works out at around 68 people each way per day on weekdays.

That's not a great number and when you consider that the plane will be a lot faster and that the price will be similar, you wouldn't attract too many over.

Obviously, the advantage the train has is that it can also pick up in Mallow, Limerick Junction, Thurles or Port Laoise, none of which have an air service to Belfast. Similarly, it would offer a service from Cork to Drogheda and Dundalk.

If you choose to look at it as two separate services from Cork to Dublin and Dublin to Belfast, where through passengers have the option of staying on the train if they want it makes more sense. Anyone who has caught the train from Amsterdam to Paris will have realised that 90% of passengers get off the train in Brussels to be replaced by a similar number of new faces. However, those people who want to travel through still get the choice. You would probably get a similar thing in Dublin, but if it helps to fill the train, great.

Gary,there is one major problem in that journey suggestion.If the train is travelling southbound,then to get to Drumcondra would mean reversing northbound.I know that you mentioned Connolly.However, the journey would be quite a messy one.If you were to travel south to get to Cork from Newry then the interconnector would be you best bet.However,if you were to travel from Bray or Gorey to Cork/Galway than using the Phoenix Park Tunnel would be your best bet.Therefore,there is an "en route",tidy and more seamless approach to the journey.It is the reversing part that would make the journey messy.The interconnector would be one half of the circle while the Phoenix Park Tunnel is the other half.

reversing 's not a problem with railcars, enterprise or CDE's though.

Happens all day every day.

Yea didn't think the reversing would be too much an issue. As for comparing to flight passenger numbers on the route, not sure if this if the best comparsion. As you say the train makes several stops on route and you have the great alternatives of the car and bus that people would also take.

What I was thinking was you replace a Cork - Heuston and a Connolly to Belfast service with one direct service via PPT. Know that means re-giging timetables etc but am sure its still manageable.

Am sure in this car dependent era there's a number of people avoid the public transport option because of the hassle of 2 trains, a tram, some waiting around in Dublin and all that while carrying luggage around.

I know you could get carried away with all sorts of crazy permutations of routes (like cork - sligo) via ppt but here we're talking about linking the island's three major cities and the large towns on route. And it follows the same route of the road that is no doubt taken by many via car.

It would be even being optimistic 4:40 Cork Belfast. and the return fare is 87.90, air competition will under cut that easily and the time is not attractive, competitive compared to road given the M50 at the moment and totally hammers the bus. When Belfast Dublin goes hourly it will be 5:50 ish end to end with changes still 2 hours faster than the bus. Of course this was tried in the mid 1950's and disappeared quickly afterwards.

You would need a common fleet of trains as well. The question is how reliable it could be having to operate through Heuston and Connolly, that means a spare train on standby at all times. This is rather fanciful given both Dublin Belfast and Dublin Cork are a shambles in reliability terms.

The issue here is it would cause total confusion for someone going to say Thurles Cork Mallow etc, do I go to Connolly or Heuston where will I get a seat, you can get round that by calling in Heuston P10 which would in turn inconvenience anyone in Heuston

Dublin Cork carries about 8 times more than Dublin Belfast. I'd see the demand as suburb to suburb so Midleton Cork Heuston Balbriggan will be do able very quickly post T21

My brother does Cork-Belfast, sometimes train, sometimes plane. I think it would be useful if a through service operated (change drivers and ends at Connolly). Imagine Cobh-Derry/Antrim - you are talking 4 or 5 changes and all the premutations of problems and missed connections that can happen.

The other brother sometimes flies Cork-Dublin hires a car and drives to Dundalk, Craigavon, etc.

Cork-Drogheda wouldn't be a priority, although Cork-Drogheda with only one change would become possible. I think Cork-Limerick Junction-Portarlington (for Galway/Mayo)-Connolly (no Heuston)-Dundalk*-Newry*-Belfast keeps stops to a minimum while maximising connections.

* Possibly Newry only when Northbound and Dundalk only when Southbound, feeding of the local services.You could have the CDB trains operate as extras, on top of existing services. ;)

One way Cork-Belfast could be done is like this:

PPT reopened.

Cork-Dublin trains rerouted to Connolly.

Dublin-Belfast trains rescheduled to meet with Cork trains in the other direction, i.e. Dublin-Belfast train scheduled to depart 5 minutes after the arrival of an inbound Cork train, and vice-versa.

This not only simplifies things for Cork-Belfast passengers, but also opens the way for wider travel patterns like Mallow-Dundalk, Limerick-Newry etc.

This could be followed up with some new platforms at Heuston to allow PPT trains to stop at Heuston and two sets of travelators (sorry if this sounds too Metrobestish)

One at Connolly carring passengers down to Spencer Dock (Interconnector) station, and another wherever Park Tunnel routed trains can be stopped, to the Heuston Interconnector station.

Hey Sean, would that not be just the same thing as having one train if you had the two trains to meet at the same time. What happens if the Belfast one is delayed. I can see the point about having too many stops on a Belfast - Cork, would make the Trans Siberian look like a commuter train.

If the travelator worked for Heuston be a good idea, not sure about docklands though, there's a fair distance from Connolly to Docklands and as the crow flies it via housing estates. Maybe a walkway alongside the track out of docklands and then up towards the back of connolly might work.

[quote]No, unless the trainsets were homogenised (sp?) like CDE trainsets covering both legs, otherwise you'd have an hour-and-a-halfly service with Enterprise DDs in Cork and CDEs in Belfast, and given the unique application and problems of both, it would just be too Laurel-and-Hardy-ish

Depends on how long the delay is - ideally the staff in Connolly would have a new ETA. Depending on how much the delay was, the outbound train would either be held for a few minutes, or the passengers would wait for the next train (Cork trains run hourly now)

Just a bit of Crayons on Maps from me, I'm afraid.

I would be interested to know what kind of numbers would travel Cork-Belfast-Cork. I cant see it being high enough to warrent a change in the current set up. It there was a market for it id imagine Ryanair would have put planes on the route by now.

Limerick also used to have direct servcies to Dun Laoghaire.

I would say what didn't work in the 80's isn't a valid reasoning by IE today because of change population spread and traffic gridlock etc.

Would think there is a market for it especially considering all the towns in between and amount of routes it would open up Drogheda - Portloais, Dundalk - Thurles. A train journey on one of these routes now would put anyone off using rail, 2 trains 1 tram and a whole lot of stress.

Having said that Bus Eireann have never ventured now this route of a single route so maybe its not that viable.

Actually I think BÉ's approach is to encourage people to do journeys like this via its hub in Athlone. However, the services out of Athlone aren't all that frequent - only 1-4 buses a day.

I don't see why Cork-Belfast wouldn't work.

The service wouldn't only be for Cork to Belfast passengers, for example people travelling Kildare -Drogheda or Dundalk-Limerick can avail of the service as well as the Cork-Dublin and Dublin Belfast passengers who will also use it.
Most Long Distance trains I use (outside Ireland) carry very few passengers from Terminus to Terminus but still provide a valuable service with High usage as there is a high turnover of passengers travelling shorter legs.

While were at it what about a night train Cork-Dublin-Belfast and vice-versa during months with no R's:D

Why then and not the rest of the year?