Agreed about the Northern Line - as elsewhere, you can be left sitting there twiddling your thumbs, even off peak at 10-11am, with the doors wide open.
It's most certainly down to timetabling on early morning services. As you probably know well lostcarpark, the 7.16 service from Dundalk stops for exactly the same length of ridiculous time at Laytown every morning, right beside the sea with freezing winter winds blasting in at you and every ounce of heat built up over the past half hour in the coach lost over the 2-3 minutes it stands there - and all in spite of it being little more than a model railway stop with a handful of commuters who board inside 4 seconds.
By contrast the stop at Gormanston, of similar size, lasts little more than 30 seconds, and usually pulls away exactly 10 seconds after the destination announcement has finished.
Luckily for Drogheda commuters, they don't have to endure the driver changeover and ridiculous dwell time often experienced at Drogheda, often several minutes after the platform has emptied. IE's attitude is nothing more than sure there's only a handful of Dundalk types left on board - they'll be grand for a while longer while we finish our chat. And chat they do...
After five years I gave up on the Northen Line completely during the summer - it's simply not worth the hassle anymore from Dundalk. The dwell times, the infrequency, the ever-expanding farcical journey durations, and above all the hideous 29000s just turned me off the railway compltely (sadly), in favour of a private coach service. It runs every hour, costs 60% less for a return ticket than IE, is immeasurably more comfortable than the DMUs, I'm gauranteed a seat, takes a little less time than rail, and is 100% reliable.
Simply no competition. The company cannot get over the demand for their services - the amount of former rail people I see availing of it is constantly increasing too.
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