Westport Line - Media Reporting
 

Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Western People

Up to 300 shoppers delayed on Dublin to West train
by Marian Harrison

Iarnrod Eireann has defended itself in the wake of recent delays in train services to and from the West.
Up to 300 commuters on the Westport to Dublin train on Tuesday morning, November 22, were delayed by over an hour and a half.
The passengers on the 7.10am service from Mayo, many of them shoppers heading to the capital to stock up on Christmas presents, were forced to wait just miles outside Heuston Station due to a problem with signals.
A spokesperson for Iarnród Eireann told the Western People that the delays were out of the train company’s control with workers on a construction site, near Cherry Orchard, cutting a power line.
“When the power line was cut turning off the electricity in thousands of houses there was a power surge which damaged out signalling system.”
The signalling system was up and running within an hour and a half but further services to the West were also delayed.
The midday train from Dublin to Western People was almost an hour late, while the one o clock service from the West to the capital was delayed for more than 50 minutes.
Iarnród Eireann apologised to commuters but a refund on tickets was not awarded with the rail company noting that the delays were “out of our control”.

Wouldn't it be better if IE could give the refund and then claim the money back from the developers for loss of service? I'm sure ESB don't look kindly on people disrupting their network. It's hard to believe they (the developers) can get away with this.

For a start your ticket i.e contract of sale is between you and IE (CIE board actually)

In this case the cable was outside the IE boundary and was not an IE cable, in fact had no connection to IE at all as the only connection to the system is at Heuston. The signalling installation in Heuston is brand new and has an emergency generator as do all signalling equipment rooms. The spec for the Kildare Route Project includes UPS devices so power surges, power cuts etc are not going to effect the system I'd bet money Heuston has this given its recent installation

In this case a safety critical system shutdown, if it had been a real power surge there would have been quite significant damage, don't hear of any businesses complaining

The onus is on IE to prove that this was out of there hands
http://www.platform11.org/passenger_info/refunds.php

Despite that the law in this case would indicate libility on the part of IE for failure to provide service. Its not an act of god its reasonable to expect power cuts and the surge that follows a reset

Mark, in your opinion are people entitled to a refund? I've never read the conditions.