[13-03-2007] 6pm - no northbound DART/Commuter services until ???
 

Due to a train failure somewhere around Merrion gates, there are 'major delays' on all northbound services. Which will presumably have a knock on effect on southbound services later on.

Of course, the guy in Blackrock station has absolutely no idea how long this delay is going to be, much to the confusion of the tourists who were asking him and couldn't understand why he couldn't even give a ballpark figure.

edit: there's a notice on the website timed 17:45, just saying delays, no estimate given

Its saying delays both directions on the platform displays

The DART fleet is currently over stretched owing to the refurbishment project which isn't helping nor is the poor mechanical condition of some of the older coaches

Merrion gates is the worst place to fail since you block the crossover

Tickets now valid on bus

The next train in Pearse is a dart to all stations to Malahide.
according to the tannoy just now.

Some drogheda train left Pearse at 18:15

AA Roadwatch are reporting delays of 45 mins northbound, 25 southbound, but trains only running from Howth/Malahide-Pearse and Booterstown-Greystones.

IE website still just has unspecified 'delays' to northbound services.

And the up-to-date 'real time' system is still blissfully unaware of any issue.

edit:
AA Roadwatch now say services have resumed, same figures for delays though.

8 coach DART sitting in the southbound at Pearse since 18:22 still there

There is no reason not to operate from Lansdowne if not Sidney Parade by alternate reverse line working, it been done before

actually the train that arrived at 18:15 didn't depart at all and is still sitting there with "technical problems"

This reminds me of some post from some while back.

No update on IE site

Currently looks like a northbound train in the southbound platform in Pearse waiting to depart, edit it left 18:42 fully loaded

Next train is Maynooth on P2

Evening train to Rosslare is only now in Tara Street

IE have tweaked the online real time gizmo its more informative but the info isn't matching the trains going by

IE of course hiding the problems with the 18:15 to Drogheda

Strange the update occurred about 5 minuets after someone in IE read this thread

has this been sorted,mate tried to get the 17.10 from connolly. Said there'd be an hr delay,ended up getting the bus eireann to balbriggan

Major disruption at the moment. Amongst the list of cancellations are the 19.00 pearse to maynooth and return journey although the evening longford service did not leave blackrock until half six so that probably made connolly around seven. The 20.17 connolly to drogheda has been cancelled. The rosslare europort to drogheda train will call at all stations. Alot of southbound darts cancelled as well

Affected me this evening too in Tara Street, was told to go to Connolly for the Maynooth train, waited there for 15 minutes then decided to head to the new Docklands station (only had to get to Broombridge as I live in South Finglas)

Lucky I could do that for once, interesting ride up along Withworth Road, had been looking down on the those tracks for ages waiting for a train to come up and down them.

One person on the train say that this train would be full within a few weeks will all the people who work in the IFSC who should be taking it instead.

ah jaysus!,any idea on when its getting back to normal?,out in dcu,would like to get the 11.20 home,don't want to waste a journey into town

Nightmare
 

The earlier delays really caught IE offguard.
CTC made a complete balls-up with the information, and even after standing in Lansdowne Road station for 1 hour, they were still announcing, they would come back with more information.
I rang up Connolly information and later their booking office who advised, that CTC were not giving out any information. I was trying to get the 16.50 Bray to Drogheda service, which around 18.15 'disappeared' off the displays. Connolly information thought it had been cancelled mid route, but they told me that really they had no idea where it had vanished to.
So the last DART through Lansdowne was at 17.15 approx. The next DART afterwards was the one that failed. At 18.10, CTC decided to route one of the northbound DARTs stuck behind the 17.15 one, onto the southbound platform in Lansdowne. They then routed this back onto the northbound line to just before Grand Canal dock. However, after 15 mins waiting just north of there, the service was then routed onto the southbound platform at Pearse street. By now confusion rained.
The DART driver decided not to bother telling anyone what was happening.
I rang Connolly to find out should I head for the 18.40 Connolly-Drogheda service, but they advised the earlier 18.15 Pearse - Drogheda was waiting in Pearse street (In fact they did not even know this service had failed, and was now blocking the northbound line/platform). They did kindly advise the 18.40 would leave without any of the connecting passengers stuck on this DART.
I got off there, and got on the delayed 18.15 service, which left around 18.50. A 4 car Maynooth service pulled in on the southbound platform, and looked like it was mopped. It left ahead of the Drogheda service, but was then held in Connolly, with what looked liked issues to do with the crowds trying to get on.

Interestingly, when I checked the IE website @ 17.15, it showed the next service northbound as my Drogheda service. But when I got to the station at 17.20 it showed the previous DART was delayed. Great new website, same incorrect and false 'live' feeds.

It really was a disasterous evening for IE. Complete service breakdown. Terrible information flows. No one seemed to know what was happening. When things go wrong they sometimes seem to abandon the passengers, which is what seems to have happened tonight.
I would expect notices in the stations tomorrow morning, given the serious nature of the impact, but we'll wait and see what Barry + Corporate Communications can do.

Did someone die? Nothing on www.rte.ie or www.eircom.net or http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/

Tara street advised passengers waiting on maynooth to make their own way to connolly. Apparently heavy load walked from tara street to connolly cue the passenger issues at connolly. No inititive by ie to inform or remind passengers that docklands services were running without any hitches in fact docklands has barely been plugged by the other city centre stations. Customer service youre joking

What I have pieced together is as follows

Think it was the 17:02 Dun Laoghaire Howth failed at Merrion Gates. It failed in such a position that the crossovers at Merrion could not be used to route trains around it. Train behind it was a 29k which can't couple up to tow it out.

The 18:15 Pearse Drogheda suffered a technical fault of some kind in platform 1 Pearse at 18:15

Single line working was implemented Dun Laoghaire - Lansdowne and through Pearse. the system is designed to allow this, however the location of the failure at Merrion meant this solution was not very effective. The failure in Pearse completely wrecked the turn-back strategy

The 16:50 Bray Drogheda was caught at the signal at the Circus site in Booterstown, there where 3 8 coach 29k sets trapped.

Does anyone know if both maynooth and longford trains departed bray this evening. Judging by rashers post the train sitting in blackrock around half six was in fact the 17.25 to maynooth can anyone confirm this

I went over to Connolly to get the 19.05 to Sligo (for Maynooth). Train was there well before time. Driver kept announcing that it was the 19.05 and the first stop was Maynooth. Train pulled away at around 19.11. We crawled to Ashtown and then stopped.

The driver came on the intercom to tell us there was a train serving all stations to Maynooth in front of us.

Crawled on to Maynooth (pulled in around 7.50). Driver apologised and blamed a fault at Connolly???

Maynooth and Longford
 

When I left Lansdowne at 18.15 approx. from the southbound platform, it was showing the next 2 northbound services as these 2 suburban services, plus a Malahide service. Cannot remember if it had times, or just the word Delay.
I remember this, because at this point the next service should be the Drogheda service which 'vanished'. I was wondering if my train would magically re-appear :)

I wonder what time did the failed DART actually get moved at, if it failed at 17.10 approx.? Those poor passengers if they were still stuck there during all this. I wonder did they have to make their way down the tracks, or was the failed DART moved to a nearby platform....

This all makes me really glad I wasn't feeling well and decided to leave work early and get the 16:43 from Pearse to Drogheda. Something was fouled up even at that early stage, as we were stuck for about ten minutes around Connolly. Fortunately once we made itout of the Connolly area the driver was able to put the foot down and make up a bit of time.

Reality was a stoning at Broombridge (1 arrest) at 18:52 and subsequently a pedestrian on the tracks.

Really :eek: ?

Yes did notice a kid throwing a stone at the train I got from Docklands round that time, probably the same kid who got arrested

Just to remind folks

Anyone who was delayed by more than an hour, even if you missed a connection owing to the delay can apply for a refund


http://www.platform11.org/passenger_...hp#their_fault

Weekly/Monthly/Annual tickets get fraction of the face value back, annual ticket holders will be issued with a docket which is exchangable for cash

There was a commuter in Blackrock when I went down around 17:50, which I think was the Maynooth one. I went back to work, a colleague went down around 18.30 and phoned to say a commuter was just pulling out. Had the impression it was the same one.

Yes.
after 7pm I heard an announcement in Tara that the next train to platform 1 was the 17:37 to Maynooth/Longford

This was when I went into the booking office to get my refund form. They had none and told me to get one in Pearse.

This is the second day in a row the 18:15 to Drogheda failed in Pearse, Mark.

Seems like IE won't admit to the 18:15 failure as well

© Copyright Unison.ie / Irish Independent 2007

Any objections if I post this link on boards.ie's Consumer Issues forum?

Go right ahead

I was on the 1725 Connolly-Gorey - it left on time, and ran on time all the way to greystones - woohoo!

sorry, don't mean to gloat, I've been affected by these f**k-ups in the past, I was just amazed not to be delayed at all yesterday.

so, "a maintenance crew was at the failed train within 40 minutes" - assuming they came from Fairview or Connolly that's not that quick. Do they travel by road or rail?

From Fairview by van. Normally if a DART sits down the driver does a check and can isolate or bypass the defect and continue so the repair crew probably made it out in under 30 minutes after word came through that the fault was serious

I had the misfortune to be on a DART to fail at the exact same location about 2 years ago, took a while but a DART behind us was commandeered and pushed us to Sydney Parade

If the failure had been in Sydney Parade or Booterstown the delays would have been much much less

I must have been the luckiest bugger yesterday. I arrived in Blackrock station at 18:05 to get the 18:10 Northbound Dart. There was a commuter train waiting on the Northbound platform (not sure if this was the Drogheda or Maynooth service). As I was walking down the road there was a platform announcement that the next Northbound Dart would arrive at the Southbound Platform. The train departed with me on it packed to the rafters and passed a Northbound Dart waiting just before Booterstown (not actually in the station). The gates were permanently down with a Garda Jeep parked across them and Gardai directing traffic. The broken down Dart was the far side of the Merrion Gates (about 400-500 metres passed the gates on the Northbound side). There was an IE guy in one of the centre driver cabs and 2 IE guys waking along the tracks from the gates. The middle 2 (or maybe 4) carriages had no power. The offending train was either a Tokyu or Alstom. Loads of browned off passengers on board.

As we got into Sydney Parade (still going Northbound on the Southbound side) the offending train pulled in on the Northbound platform. We took off so didn't see after that. We changed onto the Northbound side past Landsdowne and pulled in to the Northbound platform at Grand Canel Dock. There was a wait outside Pearse until we were passed by a South bound Dart. We crossed back to the Southbound side and pulled into the Southbound platform at Pearse. There was a commuter train sitting on the Northbound platform (marked Drogheda if I remember correctly). No idea why this was just sitting here. We left and crossed back over to the Northbound site where we remained for the rest of the trip. I got off at Harmonstown only 20 mins later than I normally one. Bit jammy I think.

Hope this confirms what you are saying.

So the failed train was the 16:39 Bray Malahide, the 17:02 Dun Laoaghire Howth was stuck behind it and the 16:50 Bray Maynooth was still in Blackrock

Get the feeling the failed train was the 8 coach half Mitsui half Alstom, they might make up only 7% of the fleet but nearly all failures in recent times have been attributable to a fault on a Alstom coach