0615 ex Cork nonstop to Dublin
 

This will start next Monday (25th) and arrives in Heuston at 0830. It runs Monday to Friday only with no opposite working

06.00 moves to 05.55 and arrives at 08.20

Full changes:
06:00 Cork-Heuston advanced to 05:55 and accelerated arriving at 08:20
04:55 Tralee-Mallow (MO) advanced to 04:50
06:15 Cork-Heuston non-stop additional service (arriving 08:30)
05:15 Westport-Heuston deferred to 05:25 arriving Heuston at 08:30

While it's good to see services being added I can't help but think it's really a PR/market stunt and will not deliver much in the line of revenue/passenger growth.

Personally I would scrap the current 06.00 and replace it with the 06.15 service and have it serve Mallow only. Will make less than 30 seconds time delay and can easily be absorbed into the 5 minutes recovery time build into the 06.15 service. Mallow speed restricted as far as I know.

Charleville can be served by the 07.00 instead, can't see numbers being high and able to absorb the 1.5 minutes or so.

The 06.25 connection to the old 06.00 should be a direct Dublin service taking 2 hours serving Limerick Junction only. The 06.40 is regularly full to capacity by Portlaoise etc so while it's possible give those commuters seats from Kildare when there is some to go around.

So
06.15 - 08.30 - Cork-Dublin (Mallow)
06.20 - 08.20 - Limerick-Dublin (Limerick Junction)

So what we will now have is the:
05.55 service leaving Cork empty, 20-30 Mallow, handful at Charleville, 20-30 at Limerick J - 4 coach (265)
06.15 service leaving Cork with at most 80 - 3 coach (190)

Numbers are rough estimates but online bookings have being used as a guide and if I am being honest I am being overly kind with numbers I suspect.

IE will not increase revenue/passengers for a 15 minutes extra in bed.

Any thoughts???

Note both the 0615 and the 0525 both arrive at 0830! Suspect there will be revisions to the 0525 timings.

I suspect that one of them has recovery time built into the schedule and will arrive ahead of that.

But given there are three tracks from Inchicore to Heuston, it's not impossible for two trains to arrive at the same time.

Won't make a difference if both were on time one would be held at Park West, 06.15 will overtake 05.15 at Kildare and should make it in by 08.25.

Could be a little trickey at Limerick Junction with around 5 minutes gap with the 05.55, 06.15 and 06.40 operating. Cutting it tight as the 15 minutes saving are being knocked off between Cork-Limerick J.

There are only two tracks from Park-West to Inchicore and 3 from there on. Whichever one gets the track at Kildare will lead all the way. A Portloaise service occupies the slow line.

But one of the trains could be scheduled to take longer from Inchicore than the other - depending upon platform availability for example.

It could still be overtaken between Inchicore and Heuston.

How do you know where the time is being "knocked off"?

There is no publically available information about the running times on the non-stop service apart from the departure and arrival times.

Edit - I can see that it has to pass Limerick Junction at around 07:00 or so (to remain ahead of the 06:40 ex-Limerick), which means taking 45 minutes rather than the 56 that the 0700 takes with 2 station stops - that's only about 10 minutes

For all the talk, the train is going in the wrong direction...

What is really needed is a 06:00 Dublin Cork, call Limerick Junc, Charleville & Mallow, arrive 08:35 ish

Realistically a timetable recast is needed on the Heuston side to allow for:
- An extra 06:00 Heuston/Cork
- Better spacing of early Cork/Heuston trains
- Elimination of commuter stops on Intercity trains
- Improved peak commuter services

Well if you want to increase Intericty journey times, not practical to fully remove stops.

Each route has:
First departures 05.00-06.00 serving most commuter stations
Second departure, good express with no commuter stops
Third departure, one commuter station

Removing them is not fully practical and could lead to major revenue losses for IE!

Thurles?

For those of us at Ballybrophy, Cork is every bit commutable as Dublin is. Even a drive down to Thurles to hop on the train to Cork to work in Cork City Centre or Mahon Business Park is doable and on par with commutes to Dublin (City Center, East Point Business Park etc etc).

Its 100 miles to Cork from Ballybrophy, totally crazy to commute and not something you want to encourage. Neither of the early Cork Dublin trains call Thurles.

Its a commercial choice, more stops means more time. The absence of a pre 9am arrival in Cork is a disgrace and has serious implications for business.

The two Cork/Dublin trains have no need to call at Thurles as the early Limerick fills that gap.

I would think having a Thurles stop on a southbound 06:00 Dublin/Cork would be a sensible idea - it would also have a potential for students travelling to UCC.

Four stops should be doable in 2 hours 35 mins.

There are plenty of people around me in Longford driving do-lally commutes to places like Galway, Thurles, etc. If the rail routing allows it and it's on a fast line 100 miles is not unreasonable and if the service isn't provided by rail, people will drive it.

At the moment, people in their prime career years living in the country have to put up with stupid commutes because it almost impossible to sell a house for more than is owed on it (at least in less than a 12 months or so). Hence, if Irish Rail can make it easier at a reasonable cost, why not.

http://www.irishrail.ie/news/corkdublinexpress

Would you agree that it's roughly 73 miles (thereabout) from Ballybrophy to Dublin?

If so....100 miles....73 miles....totally doable. I know people who drive up/down every day from Ballybrophy/Rathdowney to Cork. And I'm talking Cork City Centre here. Also Thurles.

Irish Rail seem to think that all signs point to Dublin. They made that mistake with the line from Limerick to Dublin via Nenagh, Roscrea etc. Smart thing to do might have been to try running it from Portlaoise to Limerick via Ballybrophy, Roscrea, Nenagh etc etc just to see if they could get people out of their cars!!

Edit: I've often have had to get up at 5:30am/6:00am to go into Portlaoise to catch a train to Dublin to make a 8:30am start in Eastpoint. Getting up at this time or a small bit later to drive to Thurles to catch a train to Cork (assuming it made Kent Station at 8:30am at the latest) would not be a big deal.

Ballybrophy-Templemore-Thurles are ideal locations for commuting to Dublin, Limerick & Cork via Irish Rail. Totally doable.

At 07.54 the live info shows the 06.15 Cork-Dublin as arriving at Heuston
in 41 minutes time i.e. 08.35.
Possibly it may make up a few minutes.

It arrived Heuston on time, pity is that is caused just about every other train to be delayed.

Delays of 10 minutes on most services following

Reminds of the days with the early Cork train, 0505, would, running late as usual, would disrupt several other trains....

So it caused other services to suffer and I believe the 05.55-08.20 service is more popular with Cork passengers than the new express. So much for listening to customers and asking them their views!

Having it depart at 06.00 and arrive at 08.15 and the stopping depart at 06.10 and arrive at 08.35 would be the way to go.

So big question is how many weeks or months will us others have to put up with accommodating it?

IE should know it is very difficult to add services without implementing a new timetable especially at peak times...

I'm not sure how anyone can jump to all of the conclusions that you have in that post on the basis of a sample of one single day's performance?

I don't think that you can judge the popularity of a service until after several months, and performance until after at least one week.

You certainly cannot leap to the conclusions that you have after one single day.

Schedules don't allow very much leeway and for a service to be late entering a critical part of the network and arriving on time in Heuston is not acceptable. I am aware it's not the only service however causing such delays as 10 minutes is not acceptable. Note that the service commenced when there is only one TSR in place on the line which seems to be preeminent it won't be long until another is in place and it will just make the problem worse. This is just poor timetabling from IE's part and most can see it was never going to work expect those who came up with it.

As for numbers using it, 10 minutes difference in times is a lot to many and I bet that whenever a timetable changes you will see it have an 08.15 arrival.

Another mess this morning

0555 was held at Limerick Junction to allow the 0615 to overtake, delays of 10 minutes across numerous services as a result

Which would suggest that the 05:55 had a problem presumably?

Given both trains run non stop from Limerick Junction it doesn't make any sense to change the order

0555 was 22 late after making an extra stop at Thurles for reasons unknown

If the 05:55 was late already at Limerick Junction and made an extra stop at Thurles, it would sound like it had some form of problem, technical or otherwise.

From Twitter:

05:55 was 7 late arriving Limerick Junction

The 06:15 overtook (it was running 4 late anyway), but as the signalling isn't great around that part of the world the 05:55 was 17 minutes down by the time it got back to full speed.

It spent 10 minutes in Thurles, but made up time from there to Dublin, so not a mechanical issue

Today seems to be the best day so far with it's arrival time of 08.29 (-5 for padding) so around 08.24 however the Westport service seems have real problems. Before the change it usually ran quiet delayed so this just adds to the problem. One might wonder why IE didn't address this when making adjustments. Is it held outside Portarlington for the 06.15 to pass or does it get to Kildare before it passes?

It should also be noted that while some services such as the 06.30 ex Galway are arriving on time they are still around 5 minutes lather than a week ago.

Shades of the mayhem the Alan Kelly Express caused. No lessons learned?

Anybody an update on the service over the last number of days, have saw tweets of the 08.11 being delayed up to 15 minutes because of it!

The "business express" offers a complementary 10 minute delay daily (15 until the padding kicks in).

Pushing the departure to 06.25 would be an outrageous and unrealistic suggestion to Irish Rail!

Unlikely any changes until the new timetable in December/January.

IE internal communication as bad as external as clearly whoever wanted the 08.30 arrival didn't really consult with operations to see how feasible it would be....or they were told what they wanted to hear.