Rail Strike on the way?
 

There have been growing rumblings from IE staff with regard to the latest paycuts all staff are being asked to take, from what I'm being told a strike is very much in the offing as the demands by the company have not been properly thought out and don't make a whole lot of sense! It seems there are meetings going on tomorrow to try amd smooth the progress of the cuts through via senior management to middle management whole presumably will try and soft soap it to everyone else! The place seemingly is a total mess after the last major restructuring by a now departed Acting CEO in 2010. Looks like the chickens are coming home to roost!

No word from our staff contacts of any issue and management don't seem to have anything on the radar either

There is an agreed cost reduction program voted on and agreed last year by the unions.

If the staff can't cope with the new CEO demanding results (i.e. doing the job you are paid to do correctly) well you are on a road to nowhere.

Further non pay savings through fleet reconfiguration are coming between now and October which will be significant savings while solving the capacity issues

Look forward to this, long overdue but hope they make some sensible decisions unlike they have previously.

Gather Mk4s will soon be the exception rather than the rule on most Dublin/Cork/Dublin services. Suggestions of a new timetable in the next few months.

Couldn't see a new timetable until early Jan 14 or what should happen is it's issued in early December like it used to be.

It will be next to impossible to get Cork all ICR's without causing shortage in capacity. So either a cut to Cork services, ICR's removed of local Connolly routes and stored ones back in service. ICR's operate plenty of Cork services now over half most days but on Fridays capacity shortages happen on Heuston side.

Is it safe to say that next year will see further cuts to services?

For the love of god they could at least TPWS the Mk4 DVTs and send them North so the DDs could go for refit. Either that or start using one to Limerick on peak service like the 1725 and leave it in Limerick to form the 0640. Simply parking them up is a shocking waste. Is the problem that they want to start storing even more 201s than are already??

The Mk4s are fairly tatty internally and at this stage probably need a bit of a re-fit themselves.

Well at the rate the Enterprise service is chewing through 201s they might not have that many spare soon...

Putting Mk4s on the Enterprise would also park up the EGVs for the duration - they sounded like a great idea when proposed but seem to have been awful in execution.

Inniskeen, I imagine a remodel for 2006 Mk4s would be more in fixture and fitting whereas having been flogged since 1997 the DDs must be in need of serious looking at.

after what happened in Bus Eireann the chances of a rail strike are somewhere between zero and sod all.

We are aware of the solution IE is coming up with in relation to capacity - its in the members section.

In relation to the Mark4 interior it is fabric wear and tear mainly nothing mad. I have seen and heard worse in 22ks i have been on recently. There are a lot of rattles going on, reminds me of the old Atlantians in Dublin back in the 80's.

Power points and alignment with windows aside the 22k is in inferior product to the Mark4 and the less of them on the supposedly prestige services the better.

The DD stock is coming up for proper mid-life refurb in the mid-term. At that point choices arise, should the money be there.

Not part of the topic but I applied for the membership thing a while ago but have received nothing back about it.

I'll do a checky whecky.

Great its probably about a year ago at this stage.

that is odd. I thought you were the chap who joined a week ago but due to circumstances i hadnt done a clearance on.

I had done a sweep a few months ago of over a years worth of applications and I had checked all the ones. If you can re-mail I'll be able to see what happened.

I just did a form again and included the payment but forgot to put down the Pay Pal reference number.

got your e-mail, will get you up and running today hopefully

Well, looks like Bus Átha Cliath has kicked one off.