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ACustomer · 21-06-2011, 09:23

Quite commendably Irish Rail are providing quite extensive services from Dublin, Kilkenny and Clonmel fo the forthcoming Tall Ships festival in Waterford. However the publicity for these services is woeful.

On the Irish Rail website, the times of the extra trains are given in the general news, and at the end of the notice mention is also made of unspecified regular service trains. Given that many users will be unfamiliar with the timetable, this is a serious omission. Also the online journey planners have not (yet) been changed to incorporate the special services (with the exception of those form Dublin).

The Tall Ships website has a link to a full timetable, which however is not well highlighted. The link is to a 3-page Word document, which lists all trains both regular and special. But the formatting is a shambles, for example with a page break in the middle of a table. It is clearly an internal Irish Rail working document, OK for railway personnel but not for the general public. Irish Rail should not have supplied the organisers with such badly laid-out information.

Once again the ability of Irish Rail to communicate with the public is quite awful. Are these the same people responsible for so many uninformative and often semi-literate "Corporate Communications"?

21-06-2011, 09:23	#1
ACustomer Really Regular Poster Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 767	Waterford Tall Ships: Poor Information Quite commendably Irish Rail are providing quite extensive services from Dublin, Kilkenny and Clonmel fo the forthcoming Tall Ships festival in Waterford. However the publicity for these services is woeful. On the Irish Rail website, the times of the extra trains are given in the general news, and at the end of the notice mention is also made of unspecified regular service trains. Given that many users will be unfamiliar with the timetable, this is a serious omission. Also the online journey planners have not (yet) been changed to incorporate the special services (with the exception of those form Dublin). The Tall Ships website has a link to a full timetable, which however is not well highlighted. The link is to a 3-page Word document, which lists all trains both regular and special. But the formatting is a shambles, for example with a page break in the middle of a table. It is clearly an internal Irish Rail working document, OK for railway personnel but not for the general public. Irish Rail should not have supplied the organisers with such badly laid-out information. Once again the ability of Irish Rail to communicate with the public is quite awful. Are these the same people responsible for so many uninformative and often semi-literate "Corporate Communications"?