[05-05-09] Major service disruption to DART and Rosslare/Gorey Services this morning
 

"Major service disruption to DART and Rosslare/Gorey Services this morning by Corporate Communications

There is major service disruption to DART and Rosslare/Gorey Services this morning due damage to overhead power lines at Dalkey.DART services will operate to and from Dun Laoghaire only. Rosslare and Gorey services will terminate and originate at Bray with a bus transfer to and from the city centre. Dublin Bus are honouring all rail tickets. Iarnród Éireann apologise for any inconvenience caused. "
from www.irishrail.ie ....great

and Darts soundbound times are all over the place.

Had to walk from Pearse to Ballsbridge cause of a 20 minute wait for a DART when usually a couple of mins.

As is typical DART services Bray Greystones have been suspended as well for no good reason

Usual no time notice issued at, no estimate on when it will be fixed

There are some commuter trains running DART routes to increase capacity on the section of the line that is operating. Good for capacity, not so great for speed; their acceleration is pretty awful so they take quite a while in the Sydney Parade-Connolly stretch where the stations are every km or two.

Also rail tickets are only being accepted on buses between Dun Laoghaire and Greystones.

There was a time estimate on the PIS in Pearse, which was that services aren't expected to be back in action before noon.

Well, that's a pleasant surprise.

Anyone know what the root cause of this was? I overheard someone talking about an overheight vehicle on a level crossing.

Well there are no level crossings in Dalkey

Irish Rail would be very quick to blame someone else if they could

Theres a level crossing at Dalkey?:D

Perhaps it was an over-length vehicle getting stuck on one of the bridges around Dalkey. The bridge right at the station has two pretty tight turns at either end. Hitting the wall when crossing the bridge would be enough to cause some disruption.

Now, can anyone explain how a bridge strike or other problem more or less at one end of the line can manage to interrupt the entire length of the line ? I heard on the radio this morning that there were 30 minute gaps between trains and so headed off for the bus instead. How come they can't manage to turn trains around at Dun Laoghaire (and run one back and forth as a shuttle as far South as was feasible) and maintain a more or less normal service for the 80%+ of the line that's not impacted ?

I can understand how a bridge strike at Custom House can mess everything up for a while, but out in Dalkey . . .

z

It was an overhead line fault, there seems to be a lot of them in the Dalkey area for some reason

About a third of the DART fleet is based in Bray so without that available things get messy, normally the fault arises during the rush hour when most of the trains have left Bray, that wasn't the case today

Of course it had nothing to do with this http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/...ew&news_id=480