Quote:
Originally Posted by James Howard
Another major issue is that there is usually a 2x3 22k set parked up in Longford all weekend that operates the 1805 to Longford on Friday. They could probably help matters quite a bit by running half of this to Dublin on Saturday morning leaving Longford around 7 or 7:30 but it is against all traffic flows.
That being said, there are a lot of reasons for needing to be in Dublin before 10 on a Saturday morning and I reckon that there would be reasonable enough numbers for such a service if it were given time to develop. It's never going to be packed, but I could see there being 50 or 60 on it leaving Mullingar and most of them would be paying for tickets. It doesn't take a huge amount of staff nowadays to start the line up an hour earlier.
But the result of this would be that it would put that 22k back in play and they would provide a service that would give Longford and Mullingar people the option of doing a couple of hours' business in Dublin and being back home in time for lunch.
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The problem with that is you would need additional drivers, as the Longford drivers already work a full week Monday/Friday.
That would mean taxi costs to get the drivers to Longford from Dublin and from Longford on Sunday having got the train back in position for Monday morning. Frankly to cover for one return train on Sligo I just don't think that is going to happen.