Is it possible to be late
 

As many will know the Cork train is a strange beast

Last three journeys have all managed to get in early, todays one was the best given the circumstances

20 minutes early (must be the all time record)
15 minutes early (had to wait 5 minutes at the first stop to depart since it was early arriving)
6 minutes early despite 2 extra stops en route and poor weather and an arrival Heuston on the tail end of the rush hour

And this is with the route littered with temporary speed restrictions

Had I known I was going to get in 15 minutes early I could have had my meeting 15 minutes earlier and then I would have actually planned for an earlier train, saving me an hour.

Has the crazy padding gone too far?

Its the same on Ryanair.

They apologise that they were 20 mins late departing and then gleefully announce that they have 'made up time' and arrived 15 mins before scheduled..

"Made up" being the important part.

How can you be actually late when you can make up your own journey times??

How does it work in the UK?

To get the accurate times, they should work out what the 98% time is and set it at that. It might be fair enough to make some adjustment for known issues.

On a good day assuming nothing goes wrong it is absolutely no problem to roll in at 5 minutes past the hour (in fact if the signalman in Heuston runs the system correctly you can be in within 2 minutes of the outbound Cork train), similarly in Cork it no problem roll in at 35 minutes past. Despite the crazy number of speed restrictions there is easily 5 to 10 minutes excess padding

The 7am service is meant to be in Cork for 9:53, not much good for a 10am start, but it gets in at 9:40 as a matter of routine which is perfect. How many have chosen Aer Arann with the 9:25 arrival in Cork as a result of this?

Well they could adopt the Japanese approach. If a train is late, the driver has to get off and personally apologise to all the passengers at the final destination!

For Information: The 6:30am from Cork arrived into Heuston at 9:05 this morning.

That's common enough. A 2h35 minute run is easy to accomplish; can even be done in 2h20 in good circumstances.

You'll find that there are huge allowances made in timetables in the UK, probably IE are doing the same...

Here's just one example from Virgin Trains...

London Euston DEP: 0805 1005
Milton Keynes ARR: 0836 1036 (Journey time: 31 minutes)

Milton Keynes DEP: 0931 1159 2155
London Euston ARR: 1009 1242 2252 (Journey time: 38 - 57 minutes)

The 2155 is slightly unfair, as it allows for closure of the fast lines for maintenance / engineering work, with operation on the slower relief lines. The point is valid however. Look also at St Erth - Penzance - a section with little real congestion.

For those who preach privatisation of IE as a final solution, note that while these allowances started in the nationalised era for "Customer Charter" purposes, the same performanace regimes have been adopted and extended since privatisation, and so have the recovery allowances built in to the timetable, at the behest of both the operators and the infrastructure owner.

The reason that the figures are only recorded at journeys end is due to the impracticality on many UK lines of accurately recording and collating the information at each and every stop due to the presence of manual signalling, together with the sheer amonut if data involved, much on secondary routes still recorded manually. This would - in theory - be less of an issue with IE with CTC and stops in loops.

However, privatisation would still involve governement subvention, so "targets" would still be in place, and ways of circumventing them would also occur. That is human nature.

Fianlly, don't forget that journey times out of Heuston are extended to cover the Kildare Route Project works, and given the number of restrictions currently in place, outbound especially at the moment, this time is needed.

LC

Has anybody been noting the times Cork trains tend to depart intermediate stations? Is there a habit of early departures if the train is running ahead of schedule??

Not in my experience. In fact, intermediate departures tend to be late, as recovery time is placed towards the end of the journey. The 0515 ex Cork invariably leaves Portarlington late; drivers do not push it, as it follows the stopper in from Newbridge, so a good driver will try and avoid running too close to it and have to stop appraoching every station.

LC

Most countries have a bit of slack built into long distance train times. From Basel to Amsterdam I always have time to get out in Cologne to get a bratwurst:D (they have really good ones under platform4) and nip into the shop for 2 bottles of beer and get back on. In some town in Russia we jumped out legged it into the station sat down and had lunch and still had time to take some pictures before we set off.

Up to dublin always late arriving, usually by about 8 mins.

Heading down, any of the 22k's arrive early and have to hang about a bit.

Towards Dublin is always trouble, but there are days when its arrives perfectly on time and departs perfectly on time

Its not uncommon for a Cork bound train to sit in Thurles for several minutes before setting off. I did note departing Mallow about 2 minutes early in recent weeks

Its really easy be on time when there is at least 15 minutes slack built in