First memorable time going to Maynooth!

[paddyb180285]

I hadn't been to Maynooth by train for the best part of at least 12 years until last week.I went up there twice (both one day return journeys from Glenageary). I have to say the price for a return ticket at €7.30 wasn't half bad considering its well over an hour each way and cross county. Every time, it was on a 29000 DMU Commuter formation. The trips were very pleasant indeed. Maynooth is a gorgeous town as well. Here is were the positives end. A lot of the stations were absolutely dreadful, Drumcondra and Broombridge especially. At Broombridge, there appeared to be no ticket booth and as well as that the platform was in very poor condition. At one stage, I thought that the train was actually twice the length of the platform.

If this stretch of track is set to be electified in the not too distant future, I would asume that major upgrades to these stations are on the cards as well. In a lot of the stations the Platform Information Systems (PIS) weren't even switched on. Luckily, when I was leaving Maynooth on both occasions I actually made the train. If I had been a minute or two later, I would have missed them and have to wait at least 20 minutes for another one. I can see why electrification is being carried out on these lines. 20 minutely at peak hours is extremely infrequent when the demand is taken into consideration. However, when it got passed Connolly, I saw a few overhead electrical wires as far as the bridge where the Commuter turns left off the Howth/Malahide/Drogheda/Belfast line to Maynooth. Other than this, no work appears to have been carried out at all on electrifying this line.