A damning indictment of Irish Rail's Intercity service.

[Colm Donoghue]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

You wouldn't do it at an airport would you??

If the gate is closed, its closed, wait and form a queue, far too often the train in the platform is not the one you are looking for, imagine this guy boarded and the train vanished off to Inchicore. Equally the ticket checker may have been required to assist a passenger to board the train and had to close the gate. The gate exists to prevent passengers from boarding a train when they shouldn't, that is perfectly reasonable

This procedure occurs only in Heuston. In Connolly, Drogheda, Rush and Lusk, Donabate, Westport, Balbriggan, Arklow, Kilcoole, Dun Laoighaire you buy your ticket and go onto the platform to board or wait for your train.

All Aer Rianta's Airports follow the same proceedure. One of Irish Rail's stations follows a procedure different to most of the rest. This is different to the majority of train systems used abroad too. This difference is not communicated clearly to customers.

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

If everyone started to open the locked gates in Heuston just because they felt like it it would cause all out chaos

You are required to have your ticket validated/stamped etc if there is a gate, again you will find this is common across the rest of Europe where you must get the ticket punched or stamped before boarding and failure to do so will result in trouble. Now its inconsistent but still

Locked or closed? It is fairly reasonable to assume any unlocked door or gate in any area open to the public is going to be opened and passed through unless clear communications direct people not to.

Irish rail should lock gates if they don't want people to open them.
If you board at many stations at different times of the day you will pass a gate and no one will stamp your ticket. Don't come back and say well the rules are different if there's no one there or such. If Irish Rail can't get their act together simply and consistently that is not our fault or the fault of a first and last time customer of theirs.

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

The host was correct to refuse access as the ticket wasn't stamped when it should be, however his attitude in dealing with the issue was way out of line

Ticket checks on the Cork line are conducted normally after Limerick Junction Cork bound and after Thurles Dublin bound to catch anyone who boarded since Dublin or Cork and also to nab anyone travelling beyond their destination, thats not unreasonable

A better attitude would be to stamp the customer's ticket, and inform the customer of the proper procedure for the next time the customer "lets the train take the strain"

[Thomas Ralph]

Originally Posted by Colm Donoghue

This procedure occurs only in Heuston. In Connolly, Drogheda, Rush and Lusk, Donabate, Westport, Balbriggan, Arklow, Kilcoole, Dun Laoighaire you buy your ticket and go onto the platform to board or wait for your train.

You'll find that there are several other stations which have ticket checks before people enter the platform and people generally aren't let onto an empty platform, for example Limerick (platforms 1 and 2), Waterford, Galway, and Cork. It also happens some of the time at Cobh. Seems to be exclusive to terminal stations.

[MrX]

CIE companies in general have absolutely no concept of what proper signage is.

It's not too long ago that you could be faced with 4 orange MK3 trains in Heuston with no signage on them and no signs overhead! In the good old days I accidently boarded the Galway and Waterford trains by accident!!

I often wonder if they ever walk through any of the 'systems' they expect their customers to navigate.

The Cork Queue sign in Dublin Heuston is just idiotic. I don't understand it.

Boarding should work as follows:

Announcement that the train is now boarding on platform X
Ask for any passengers with special needs to come forward for priority boarding.
Get them on board.
Call the 1st class and reserved standard class ticket holders.
THEN call everyone else.

It's nuts expecting people to pay a premium for a first class /citygold ticket and then providing no clear priority boarding. Reservation should give you that too. It's pointless without it.

There should be staff around to manage the queue etc too.

There's also absolutely no consistancy.

Sometimes they help reserved passengers to their coach, sometimes they don't.
Sometimes there's food, sometimes their isn't...
The list is endless.

It's not about resources it's about poor management of a now well resourced service!

Other railways and airlines have been getting this stuff right for >100 years!!!