Irish businesses want tunnel to Britain

James Shields · 20-02-2006, 15:23

Some interesting stats. Perhaps there would be more demand for railfreight than we're let to believe...

Quote:

Irish businesses want tunnel to Britain

Three out of four Irish business people believe a tunnel linking
Ireland to Britain and mainland Europe is important for Irish
business.

A MORI survey of 600 senior business people — for the Chambers of
Commerce of Ireland — revealed concerns over the rate of the Irish
government's investment in all forms of transport.

Rail transport registered high levels of dissatisfaction, with
37pc not happy with passenger services and 44pc critical of freight

In the wake of the report, the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland
called for the Irish Government to seriously consider the
construction of an undersea tunnel between Ireland and Wales to be
completed by 2030. The report proposed a tunnel from Tuskar,
County Wexford, to the nearest landfall in Wales

This is not the first time such a project has been put forward. In
December 2004, a high-speed rail link between Wales and Ireland,
beneath the St George's Channel, was proposed by the Irish Academy
of Engineers, as part of 'A Vision of Transport in Ireland'
looking forward to 2050

The tunnel to South Wales would be 50 miles long, approximately
twice the length of the Channel Tunnel linking England to France

This external information has been sourced from Business World,
a service of Media World Ltd.

sean · 20-02-2006, 16:27

Well, at least they want an HSR rail tunnel not a road.

Kevin K Kelehan · 20-02-2006, 16:42

It would be a lot cheaper from an Irish Viewpoint to have it from Dunlaoghaire or somewhere on the central East Coast. Rosslare to South Wales would be a logistical nightmare for both road and rail but I think I will have been fertiliser for a few centuries before any government in this state has the vision to even fund a scoping study

James Shields · 20-02-2006, 17:18

There would be the thorny issue of gauge. Obviously the tunnel itself would have to be standard gauge to connect to the UK/European networks.

If we were serious about railfreight, we would expect the tunnel to be carrying a serious amount of it. The sensible solution would be to use variable gauge bogies on freight wagons, though I can't help feeling we'd adopt a half-arsed solution of carrying containers to the tunnel by lorry then loading them on standard gauge trucks.

The ideal solution for passenger trains would be to build a new high-speed standard gauge line connecting the tunnel to Dublin city centre. This would be costly, but a small fraction of the overall project. Ideally, this line could be extended to Belfast, giving the Enterprise a dedicated route. No doubt this would require extensive underground running through the city, along the lines of London's CTRL.

This is all fantasy, I know. But when people go bandying about ideas of tunnels under the Irish sea, it's worth thinking about what it would entail. By the way, as far as I know, the longest undersea tunnel in the world is a 53km one in Japan, and this would be considerably longer.

Mark Gleeson · 20-02-2006, 17:35

Given we can't even build a small thing like the port tunnel without making a mess I can't see much hope

There hasn't been a new rail tunnel built since the 1917 Greystones No 4 we might want to get the interconnector and metro sorted first

Derek Wheeler · 20-02-2006, 20:46

Ah Mark, the words FEET and GROUND spring instantly to mind.

But one question, this 44% of businesses being unhappy with rail freight in Ireland....who are they.....where are they???????

Maskhadov · 01-03-2006, 12:58

Totally back the proposal. We need as much improved infastructure to mainland Europe (via England) as possible.

We need to move FREIGHT OUT OF DUBLIN (relocate the port to out north of the city). Not build a tunnel into Dublin. Why in heavens name would you try to jam up Dublin any more than it already is.

There were other proposals for a deep port in Shannon and a HSR from there to the Tuskar tunnel. That might help finance the project. However it shouldnt be a pre requisit.

Gauge's shouldnt be a problem because any HSR line for freight or people should be 100% segragated from the rest of the network.

James Shields · 02-03-2006, 23:46

I'm with you on this, but... if there were a thousand steps on the path in transforming our railways into a world class system, the Tusker Tunnel would probably come about step 943. I would say we are currently somewhere around step 27, and there are many on this board who would be less generous than I am.

But that doesn't mean we can't fantasise about what it might be like...

Up till now, gauge has never been an issue in Ireland, being an island. It might make it slightly awkward ordering rolling stock, but we muddle on. But once we have a direct connection to another railway, it's a whole new ball game. Obviously the tunnel itself would have to be standard gauge, since everything in the UK and much of Europe beyond uses it.

However, I wxpect that as with the Channel Tunnel, the tunnel would be complete before any onward high-speed links are available. This could be a problem, since the Roslare lines are all single track and not currently what you would call high-speed lines. It's possible that Dublin-Roslare will have been doubled by then, and its speed upgraded, but current passenger numbers don't make this seem very likely. In any case, I would expect that initially passengers through the tunnel will have to get off one train and onto another.

One advantage the UK had was that since its existing track network is all standard gauge, it was relatively easy to build new high speed routes in sections, linking to older track as each section was complete. Unfortunately, it's likely we'll decide to make our high-speed links to the tunnel standard gauge so trains can whisk straight in and out. This makes the piecemeal approach much more difficult, especially since there aren't two many significant population centres along the way where you might put an interchange station.

I would think the first priority would be a high-speed line to Dublin. Much has been made of the masses of freight that will be coming in through Shannon, but I can't see it being the only deep port for long. I think there could be growth in railfreight if we get serious about emissions (and build a few nuclear plants to power electric railways), but it will likely want to go all over the country not just Shannon. Freight thends to be happy enough trundling through the night, so high-speed rail is not that important for freight. Sending freight over the current network on variable gauge trucks and putting a freight depot and gauge switcher near the tunnel mouth would seem to make the most sense.

But passenger traffic is where the tunnel will succeed or fail. I can't see it getting built at all until there is a compelling case for passengers. With high-speed all the way, I would guess we're talking of an hour Dublin-Rosslare, another hour to Pembroke, an hour to Bristol and an hour to London. That's a four-hour journey, which doesn't compare too favourably with a one hour flight. If you factor in travel time to and from airports, check-in time and baggage collection time, I'd say we're talking three hours from central Dublin to central London, which claws back some of the disadvantage, but you can't deny air has the edge. The only way I can see it working is if there's a significant move away from air travel because of emissions controls and carbon tax. This isn't beyond the bounds of possibility, but it's not likely to happen any time soon. However, if air travel became less affordable and less socially acceptable (it is destroying the planet, after all), the tunnel could become a lot more urgent.

Of course when the tunnel is first built, journey times will be much slower (unless we get much better at funding and building things at the same time). Currently Dublin-Rosslare takes three hours and London-Pembroke takes over five, however both of these journeys could be improved, even on the current track. The Irish government would have a strong incentive to complete the Dublin link, but I can't see the UK government being so quick to finish a London high-speed line, considering they've been well over a decade getting fully connected to the channel tunnel (a much shorter link to a much more crucial link as far as the UK is concerned), although I'm sure there would be a significant EU contributon to the cost.

Once a Roslare-Dublin HSR line is in place, we can look further afield. A new Dublin-Belfast route would make sense. Again, Dublin-Belfast in an hour should be achievable, which would make a huge difference for travel between the two cities as well as taking a lot of traffic off the existing route, and give Belfast a direct connection to London. A new line from Roslare-Waterford-Cork would also be a possibility. Again this ought to be possible in about an hour, which would make Cork-Dublin in two hours a possibility (not bad for a fairly indirect route) and Cork-Belfast in three, and Cork-London in four.

This is all very pie-in-the sky. But sometime in the far-flung future, it might bear some resemblance to reality.

Mark · 02-03-2006, 23:49

Lads, we'll all be dead before this happens.

Maskhadov · 03-03-2006, 09:04

We have to continue to fix the existing railway service and offer new services of course but there is scope for a HSR in Ireland.

Any high speed rail line has to be Cork - Dublin - Belfast with just a few stops in between. The Cork - Dublin route would have to be along the east and south coast so it could link in with any future Tuskar tunnel.

They should lay new track from Cork - Dublin - Belfast and build it to the European gauge. If they still want to run commuter or whatever services then they can run two extra rail lines (irish guage) on the outside of the HSR.

Of course this will probably mean buying more land for the extra lines and to straighten out the bad corners. Dublin would probably need a new tunnel linking the north and south H.S.R lines and maybe a new sub station at Stepens green or Connolly (any ideas?).

Flying is a good solution for now but emmsions from planes and the like and slower journey times is going to go against flying in future.

The tuskar tunnel will only be profitable if the government goes ahead with a deep port in Shannon and runs a second HSR line from Shannon - Limerick - Waterford(tuskar) to England. Passenger services will of course benefit from rail access to UK and the mainland Europe but it will be freight that pays for it all.

sean · 03-03-2006, 16:42

1: believe you could do HSR on the existing Dublin Cork MainLine. You'd simply electrify the line, overhaul the tracks, replace as necessary, and place a hefty order for ICEs with Siemens ... Ah, well, we could if we were rail transport ditctators

Aviation does not really have a future. The whole Ryanair model is a house of cards, the bottom card being abundent supplies of oil. Once that's gone ... pfft.

We need to prepare for this - although it will be possible to biofuel aircraft, this will probably be so expensive as to be unviable for anything other than transatlantic travel.

We need to prepare for this and while we don't need to be worried right now, there are things that must be done. Top of my list for this would be that the lines into to Rosslare Europort must be preserved, as must future-proofing capabilities on such lines.

PaulM · 03-03-2006, 17:00

The only thing is Sean, all our power comes from fossil fuels. Unless we were to get neuclear (unlikely) there is no point electrifying rail here. Current renewable sources, which I would like to see more of, just don't have the capacity at present. They are unlikely to do so here in the medium term either.

sean · 03-03-2006, 19:13

Paul you are right, but that doesn't tell the whole story.

When it comes to airplanes, it's totally oil dependent. There's lots of coal hanging around AFAIK but you can fly a plane on it. We have several different types of fuel not available to aircraft but that are available to electric railways.

You can power a lineside power plant with coal, peat, or if we really wanted to get adventureous, biomass plants such as Miscanthus.

Try running one of Mickey O Leary's planes on Peat

There is also that little matter of renewables, we have a huge reserve of wind, rivers and tidal energy that could be harnessed, it may not happen in the short term but eventually it will - I mean look at Germany, take a train (electric) from Berlin to the Dutch border and you'll lose track of all the Wind Farms you see. The Germans would love to have even a fraction of our natural resources.

Also, we could import Nuclear electricity from Britain also, as there are a couple of electricity Interconnectors between Ireland and Wales.

If we want a transport system that is environmentally friendly(er) and based heavily on electric railway transport, it can be done. Obviously a lot of work needs to be done though between now and 2050.

Navan Junction · 03-03-2006, 21:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by lostcarpark

Some interesting stats. Perhaps there would be more demand for railfreight than we're let to believe...

We'd be really at the mercy of our neighbours if this proposal happened.

Vitually everything coming in and out of this country would be dependent on their good will.

Remember what used to happen with some of the lines that used to cross the border in times gone by? Searches, stops and eventual line closures..

The biggest problem that I can see is that all of our eggs would be in a single basket, particularly with the investment required.

Think of the issues the Dublin and Meath railway had with the MGWR, where the Dublin and Meath had to endure running rights to get into Dublin. Not saying it's a directly comparable situation by any means, but most countries would seek to spread the bet, not rely on one trading partner too much.

I know times change etc, but surely there would be some concerns about the disadvantages we would be at. Couldn't see us objecting to Sellafield by taking court actions, if the EWS government had us by the short and curlies with this for example..

Anyway, we have plenty of gas in the corrib field for hot air balloons to keep ryanair going

And I'll take the Navan rail link, M50 upgrade with proper junctions, and interconnector and maglev first if ye don't mind..!

Maskhadov · 03-03-2006, 22:22

Nuclear has nothing to do with this tunnel or HSR. We dont need it. We just need to make efficiencies in the country.

James Shields · 04-03-2006, 09:14

Remember that we are only on the first phase of Kyoto. If we take climate change seriously and really do want to curb carbon emissions, we are going to have to significantly reduce our reliance. This will mean very much reduced reliance on fossel based fuels. This would mean that in addition to much reduced relaince on private cars and air travel, most of our current oil, gas, coal and peat burning power stations would have to go. We will probably see a host of new wind, hydro, wave, tidal and solar schemes, but I can't see us powering 100% of our needs on renewables, even if we become far more energy efficient than we are now, so it's likely that nuclear will be seen as less environmentally damaging than fossil stations.

The alternative is that we ignore the situation completly, and in fifty years we'll be too busy getting to grips with our new coastline to worry about railway lines.

I take Sean's point that you could do HSR of a sort on the current Dublin-Cork line, but you'd have to do a lot of work to take out some of the kinks. It would also be HSR along the lines of the UK's IC125, and even then you'd have to slow down to take turns too tight for tilting stock. You'd also keep catching up with slower local trains. It also wouldn't be much use for connecting to the hypothetical Irish Sea tunnel of this thread. I'm thinking of a new railway along the lines of France's TGV or Japan's Bullet train with speeds of at least 300kph.

I think Maskhadov may be right that the key could be to put new HSR lines in place first. However, we'd have to plan them to connect to Europe from the outset. It would be no use building new HSR lines to Irish gauge. It would be an incredible leap of faith to build new lines to a gauge that's incompatible with everything else in the country. As the lines would have minimal stops, they would more or less have to be built in their entirity before any services could run, and entirely new rolling stock and service depots would have to be purchased.

There was a suggestion that they could be built alongside the existing lines. I see several problems with this. First, these lines tend to go through lots of towns and villages, where space can be very tight. In many cases, adding two extra tracks simply won't be possible, so the line would have to divert around the town, adding speed restrictive bends. Second, many old lines are far too twisty for HSR. Third, they often have level crossings, which the English will tell you are not a good thing on high-speed lines. Fourth, larger European trains tend not to fit on restrictive Irish running gauge, although the entire alignment would have to be signigicantly widened to fit extra tracks. Finally, things would get complicated at junctions. You want to avoid at-grade junctions, so you'd have to build flyovers for standard gauge and Irish gauge lines to cross each other.

I think a new alignment designed to be as straight as possible, with any curves being very long gentle ones, fully segregated on a high-quality trackbed, built to fit full UIC running gauge, with standard gauge track and 25kVAC OHLE, avoiding towns apart from a very limited number of large towns and cities. If property prices keep going up and up the way they have been, it may actually be cheaper to tunnel under some parts than buy land. It's also possible that we'll have new construction techniques by then that will make it affordable.

I would certainly see a big tunnel under Dublin, not dissimilar to the CTRL in London, but it would have to be designed to allow through running to Belfast. The station would have to facilitate customs and immigration and security checks and possibly the loading of cars, and in many ways would be as much like an airport terminal as a railway station. It would be atractive to put it under Stephen's Green or Pearse to maximise onward connections, but that would require excavating a huge underground space. Hopefully by then we will have an extensive Metro network, so there will be some flexibility about its placement.

This is all a very long way off, and Ireland will be a very different place by then. Hopefully some of us will still be around to see it.

Navan Junction · 04-03-2006, 10:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by lostcarpark

One advantage the UK had was that since its existing track network is all standard gauge.

Where else is standard gauge used?

Were/ are there not differences between French and English gauges? I remember reading an article on European gauges. I found it facinating that the Spanish at one point had a different gauge to the French as they were fearful of a French invasion using their rail network. Apparently, the French then designed some rolling stock that could run on both.

All a bit hazy now but I'm sure some of ye know more about it..

James Shields · 04-03-2006, 10:53

Much of Europe and the world use standard gauge (which dates back to Louis Stephenson's Rocket). We had it here on the Dublin and Kingstown railway until Irish gauge was standardised.

You can find a more comprehensive list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_gauge

Spain uses 5'5.5" (or six catalan feet), but there is a facility for gauge shifting specially designed bogies at one of the crossings. Some high speed lines connecting Spain and France have been built to standard gauge.

Loading gauge is different to track gauge, and determines the size of trains that can run on the tracks. Much of Europe uses the same track gauge as the UK, but has a larger loading gauge so European trains won't fit on UK lines. The newer high speed link to the Channel tunnel is built to European loading gauge, so in the future we could see French TGVs or German ICEs showing up in London.

Navan Junction · 04-03-2006, 20:47

That is what I love about this site.

It's an educational tool.

Maskhadov · 05-03-2006, 13:53

I covered most of the points here

http://forum.platform11.org/showthread.php?t=112

before the thread was locked because someone reckoned it was all pie in the sky walter mitty stuff. Personally I dont. What exactly is the country going to do infastructural wise post T21 ???

We should be starting on the following

Tuskar tunnel
Deep Port in Shannon
High Speed Rail (Passenger) Cork - Dublin - Belfast
High Speed Rail (frieght) Shannon - Limerick Tuskar
Relocating Dublin port out of Dublin and develop the area like Sydney bay with high rise et al.

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20-02-2006, 16:27	#2
sean Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Dublin Posts: 707	Well, at least they want an HSR rail tunnel not a road.

20-02-2006, 16:42	#3
Kevin K Kelehan Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: West Tower Posts: 355	It would be a lot cheaper from an Irish Viewpoint to have it from Dunlaoghaire or somewhere on the central East Coast. Rosslare to South Wales would be a logistical nightmare for both road and rail but I think I will have been fertiliser for a few centuries before any government in this state has the vision to even fund a scoping study

20-02-2006, 17:18	#4
James Shields Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Drogheda, Ireland Posts: 1,275	There would be the thorny issue of gauge. Obviously the tunnel itself would have to be standard gauge to connect to the UK/European networks. If we were serious about railfreight, we would expect the tunnel to be carrying a serious amount of it. The sensible solution would be to use variable gauge bogies on freight wagons, though I can't help feeling we'd adopt a half-arsed solution of carrying containers to the tunnel by lorry then loading them on standard gauge trucks. The ideal solution for passenger trains would be to build a new high-speed standard gauge line connecting the tunnel to Dublin city centre. This would be costly, but a small fraction of the overall project. Ideally, this line could be extended to Belfast, giving the Enterprise a dedicated route. No doubt this would require extensive underground running through the city, along the lines of London's CTRL. This is all fantasy, I know. But when people go bandying about ideas of tunnels under the Irish sea, it's worth thinking about what it would entail. By the way, as far as I know, the longest undersea tunnel in the world is a 53km one in Japan, and this would be considerably longer.

20-02-2006, 17:35	#5
Mark Gleeson Technical Officer Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Coach C, Seat 33 Posts: 12,669	Given we can't even build a small thing like the port tunnel without making a mess I can't see much hope There hasn't been a new rail tunnel built since the 1917 Greystones No 4 we might want to get the interconnector and metro sorted first

20-02-2006, 20:46	#6
Derek Wheeler Registered user Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Kildare Posts: 1,555	Ah Mark, the words FEET and GROUND spring instantly to mind. But one question, this 44% of businesses being unhappy with rail freight in Ireland....who are they.....where are they???????

01-03-2006, 12:58	#7
Maskhadov Regular Poster Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 74	Totally back the proposal. We need as much improved infastructure to mainland Europe (via England) as possible. We need to move FREIGHT OUT OF DUBLIN (relocate the port to out north of the city). Not build a tunnel into Dublin. Why in heavens name would you try to jam up Dublin any more than it already is. There were other proposals for a deep port in Shannon and a HSR from there to the Tuskar tunnel. That might help finance the project. However it shouldnt be a pre requisit. Gauge's shouldnt be a problem because any HSR line for freight or people should be 100% segragated from the rest of the network.

02-03-2006, 23:46	#8
James Shields Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Drogheda, Ireland Posts: 1,275	I'm with you on this, but... if there were a thousand steps on the path in transforming our railways into a world class system, the Tusker Tunnel would probably come about step 943. I would say we are currently somewhere around step 27, and there are many on this board who would be less generous than I am. But that doesn't mean we can't fantasise about what it might be like... Up till now, gauge has never been an issue in Ireland, being an island. It might make it slightly awkward ordering rolling stock, but we muddle on. But once we have a direct connection to another railway, it's a whole new ball game. Obviously the tunnel itself would have to be standard gauge, since everything in the UK and much of Europe beyond uses it. However, I wxpect that as with the Channel Tunnel, the tunnel would be complete before any onward high-speed links are available. This could be a problem, since the Roslare lines are all single track and not currently what you would call high-speed lines. It's possible that Dublin-Roslare will have been doubled by then, and its speed upgraded, but current passenger numbers don't make this seem very likely. In any case, I would expect that initially passengers through the tunnel will have to get off one train and onto another. One advantage the UK had was that since its existing track network is all standard gauge, it was relatively easy to build new high speed routes in sections, linking to older track as each section was complete. Unfortunately, it's likely we'll decide to make our high-speed links to the tunnel standard gauge so trains can whisk straight in and out. This makes the piecemeal approach much more difficult, especially since there aren't two many significant population centres along the way where you might put an interchange station. I would think the first priority would be a high-speed line to Dublin. Much has been made of the masses of freight that will be coming in through Shannon, but I can't see it being the only deep port for long. I think there could be growth in railfreight if we get serious about emissions (and build a few nuclear plants to power electric railways), but it will likely want to go all over the country not just Shannon. Freight thends to be happy enough trundling through the night, so high-speed rail is not that important for freight. Sending freight over the current network on variable gauge trucks and putting a freight depot and gauge switcher near the tunnel mouth would seem to make the most sense. But passenger traffic is where the tunnel will succeed or fail. I can't see it getting built at all until there is a compelling case for passengers. With high-speed all the way, I would guess we're talking of an hour Dublin-Rosslare, another hour to Pembroke, an hour to Bristol and an hour to London. That's a four-hour journey, which doesn't compare too favourably with a one hour flight. If you factor in travel time to and from airports, check-in time and baggage collection time, I'd say we're talking three hours from central Dublin to central London, which claws back some of the disadvantage, but you can't deny air has the edge. The only way I can see it working is if there's a significant move away from air travel because of emissions controls and carbon tax. This isn't beyond the bounds of possibility, but it's not likely to happen any time soon. However, if air travel became less affordable and less socially acceptable (it is destroying the planet, after all), the tunnel could become a lot more urgent. Of course when the tunnel is first built, journey times will be much slower (unless we get much better at funding and building things at the same time). Currently Dublin-Rosslare takes three hours and London-Pembroke takes over five, however both of these journeys could be improved, even on the current track. The Irish government would have a strong incentive to complete the Dublin link, but I can't see the UK government being so quick to finish a London high-speed line, considering they've been well over a decade getting fully connected to the channel tunnel (a much shorter link to a much more crucial link as far as the UK is concerned), although I'm sure there would be a significant EU contributon to the cost. Once a Roslare-Dublin HSR line is in place, we can look further afield. A new Dublin-Belfast route would make sense. Again, Dublin-Belfast in an hour should be achievable, which would make a huge difference for travel between the two cities as well as taking a lot of traffic off the existing route, and give Belfast a direct connection to London. A new line from Roslare-Waterford-Cork would also be a possibility. Again this ought to be possible in about an hour, which would make Cork-Dublin in two hours a possibility (not bad for a fairly indirect route) and Cork-Belfast in three, and Cork-London in four. This is all very pie-in-the sky. But sometime in the far-flung future, it might bear some resemblance to reality.

02-03-2006, 23:49	#9
Mark Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Northern line Posts: 1,311	Lads, we'll all be dead before this happens.

03-03-2006, 09:04	#10
Maskhadov Regular Poster Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 74	We have to continue to fix the existing railway service and offer new services of course but there is scope for a HSR in Ireland. Any high speed rail line has to be Cork - Dublin - Belfast with just a few stops in between. The Cork - Dublin route would have to be along the east and south coast so it could link in with any future Tuskar tunnel. They should lay new track from Cork - Dublin - Belfast and build it to the European gauge. If they still want to run commuter or whatever services then they can run two extra rail lines (irish guage) on the outside of the HSR. Of course this will probably mean buying more land for the extra lines and to straighten out the bad corners. Dublin would probably need a new tunnel linking the north and south H.S.R lines and maybe a new sub station at Stepens green or Connolly (any ideas?). Flying is a good solution for now but emmsions from planes and the like and slower journey times is going to go against flying in future. The tuskar tunnel will only be profitable if the government goes ahead with a deep port in Shannon and runs a second HSR line from Shannon - Limerick - Waterford(tuskar) to England. Passenger services will of course benefit from rail access to UK and the mainland Europe but it will be freight that pays for it all.

03-03-2006, 16:42	#11
sean Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Dublin Posts: 707	1: believe you could do HSR on the existing Dublin Cork MainLine. You'd simply electrify the line, overhaul the tracks, replace as necessary, and place a hefty order for ICEs with Siemens ... Ah, well, we could if we were rail transport ditctators Aviation does not really have a future. The whole Ryanair model is a house of cards, the bottom card being abundent supplies of oil. Once that's gone ... pfft. We need to prepare for this - although it will be possible to biofuel aircraft, this will probably be so expensive as to be unviable for anything other than transatlantic travel. We need to prepare for this and while we don't need to be worried right now, there are things that must be done. Top of my list for this would be that the lines into to Rosslare Europort must be preserved, as must future-proofing capabilities on such lines.

03-03-2006, 17:00	#12
PaulM Really Regular Poster Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 826	The only thing is Sean, all our power comes from fossil fuels. Unless we were to get neuclear (unlikely) there is no point electrifying rail here. Current renewable sources, which I would like to see more of, just don't have the capacity at present. They are unlikely to do so here in the medium term either.

03-03-2006, 19:13	#13
sean Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Dublin Posts: 707	Paul you are right, but that doesn't tell the whole story. When it comes to airplanes, it's totally oil dependent. There's lots of coal hanging around AFAIK but you can fly a plane on it. We have several different types of fuel not available to aircraft but that are available to electric railways. You can power a lineside power plant with coal, peat, or if we really wanted to get adventureous, biomass plants such as Miscanthus. Try running one of Mickey O Leary's planes on Peat There is also that little matter of renewables, we have a huge reserve of wind, rivers and tidal energy that could be harnessed, it may not happen in the short term but eventually it will - I mean look at Germany, take a train (electric) from Berlin to the Dutch border and you'll lose track of all the Wind Farms you see. The Germans would love to have even a fraction of our natural resources. Also, we could import Nuclear electricity from Britain also, as there are a couple of electricity Interconnectors between Ireland and Wales. If we want a transport system that is environmentally friendly(er) and based heavily on electric railway transport, it can be done. Obviously a lot of work needs to be done though between now and 2050.

03-03-2006, 22:22	#15
Maskhadov Regular Poster Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 74	Nuclear has nothing to do with this tunnel or HSR. We dont need it. We just need to make efficiencies in the country.

04-03-2006, 09:14	#16
James Shields Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Drogheda, Ireland Posts: 1,275	Remember that we are only on the first phase of Kyoto. If we take climate change seriously and really do want to curb carbon emissions, we are going to have to significantly reduce our reliance. This will mean very much reduced reliance on fossel based fuels. This would mean that in addition to much reduced relaince on private cars and air travel, most of our current oil, gas, coal and peat burning power stations would have to go. We will probably see a host of new wind, hydro, wave, tidal and solar schemes, but I can't see us powering 100% of our needs on renewables, even if we become far more energy efficient than we are now, so it's likely that nuclear will be seen as less environmentally damaging than fossil stations. The alternative is that we ignore the situation completly, and in fifty years we'll be too busy getting to grips with our new coastline to worry about railway lines. I take Sean's point that you could do HSR of a sort on the current Dublin-Cork line, but you'd have to do a lot of work to take out some of the kinks. It would also be HSR along the lines of the UK's IC125, and even then you'd have to slow down to take turns too tight for tilting stock. You'd also keep catching up with slower local trains. It also wouldn't be much use for connecting to the hypothetical Irish Sea tunnel of this thread. I'm thinking of a new railway along the lines of France's TGV or Japan's Bullet train with speeds of at least 300kph. I think Maskhadov may be right that the key could be to put new HSR lines in place first. However, we'd have to plan them to connect to Europe from the outset. It would be no use building new HSR lines to Irish gauge. It would be an incredible leap of faith to build new lines to a gauge that's incompatible with everything else in the country. As the lines would have minimal stops, they would more or less have to be built in their entirity before any services could run, and entirely new rolling stock and service depots would have to be purchased. There was a suggestion that they could be built alongside the existing lines. I see several problems with this. First, these lines tend to go through lots of towns and villages, where space can be very tight. In many cases, adding two extra tracks simply won't be possible, so the line would have to divert around the town, adding speed restrictive bends. Second, many old lines are far too twisty for HSR. Third, they often have level crossings, which the English will tell you are not a good thing on high-speed lines. Fourth, larger European trains tend not to fit on restrictive Irish running gauge, although the entire alignment would have to be signigicantly widened to fit extra tracks. Finally, things would get complicated at junctions. You want to avoid at-grade junctions, so you'd have to build flyovers for standard gauge and Irish gauge lines to cross each other. I think a new alignment designed to be as straight as possible, with any curves being very long gentle ones, fully segregated on a high-quality trackbed, built to fit full UIC running gauge, with standard gauge track and 25kVAC OHLE, avoiding towns apart from a very limited number of large towns and cities. If property prices keep going up and up the way they have been, it may actually be cheaper to tunnel under some parts than buy land. It's also possible that we'll have new construction techniques by then that will make it affordable. I would certainly see a big tunnel under Dublin, not dissimilar to the CTRL in London, but it would have to be designed to allow through running to Belfast. The station would have to facilitate customs and immigration and security checks and possibly the loading of cars, and in many ways would be as much like an airport terminal as a railway station. It would be atractive to put it under Stephen's Green or Pearse to maximise onward connections, but that would require excavating a huge underground space. Hopefully by then we will have an extensive Metro network, so there will be some flexibility about its placement. This is all a very long way off, and Ireland will be a very different place by then. Hopefully some of us will still be around to see it.

04-03-2006, 10:53	#18
James Shields Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Drogheda, Ireland Posts: 1,275	Much of Europe and the world use standard gauge (which dates back to Louis Stephenson's Rocket). We had it here on the Dublin and Kingstown railway until Irish gauge was standardised. You can find a more comprehensive list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_gauge Spain uses 5'5.5" (or six catalan feet), but there is a facility for gauge shifting specially designed bogies at one of the crossings. Some high speed lines connecting Spain and France have been built to standard gauge. Loading gauge is different to track gauge, and determines the size of trains that can run on the tracks. Much of Europe uses the same track gauge as the UK, but has a larger loading gauge so European trains won't fit on UK lines. The newer high speed link to the Channel tunnel is built to European loading gauge, so in the future we could see French TGVs or German ICEs showing up in London.

04-03-2006, 20:47	#19
Navan Junction Really Regular Poster Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Navan Posts: 305	That is what I love about this site. It's an educational tool.

05-03-2006, 13:53	#20
Maskhadov Regular Poster Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 74	I covered most of the points here http://forum.platform11.org/showthread.php?t=112 before the thread was locked because someone reckoned it was all pie in the sky walter mitty stuff. Personally I dont. What exactly is the country going to do infastructural wise post T21 ??? We should be starting on the following Tuskar tunnel Deep Port in Shannon High Speed Rail (Passenger) Cork - Dublin - Belfast High Speed Rail (frieght) Shannon - Limerick Tuskar Relocating Dublin port out of Dublin and develop the area like Sydney bay with high rise et al.