[16-4-2008] Maynooth and Sligo disruption

[ThomasJ]

Is it possible if the situation is not rectified in the morning for irish rail to run a 20 minute frequency both ways plus the longford/sligo services under a manual system?

[Mark Gleeson]

The Longford trains are included in that 20 minute service so there will be only 3 trains per hour inbound

Porterstown is nothing in the signalling system just a level crossing, the gate can be locked manually, indeed it legally is required to continue to function for 24 hours on a battery

[ThomasJ]

And Breaking News! some good news after all!

UPDATE 01.30hrs : Maynooth Line /Docklands-Clonsilla Services to operate as normal by Corporate Communications


Update - Thursday 17th April - 01.30hrs



Iarnrod Éireann is pleased to announce that Engineers working on the major signal failure at Porterstown have rectified the problem.



All Maynooth services will operate as normal for the morning peak.



All Docklands services will operate as normal.



All outer commuter and Sligo Intercity serviceas will operate as normal.

http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/...ew&news_id=237

[karman]

Originally Posted by ThomasJ

Heard a guy who with all the traffic in lucan it took him two and a half hours by bus to get to maynooth.

The 17:30 66x "express" service from Pearse Street took 1:55 to get to Louisa Bridge. 40 minutes of that was spent trying to get from the Woodies Flyover to the Spa Hotel through Lucan Village, even though the Dublin Bus website clearly shows that this bus doesn't service Lucan Village. I even asked the dispatcher/inspector at Pearse Street before I got and he said "if that's the case, it's the first I've heard of it" Seems Dublin Bus is right up there with IE on confusing the commuter.

[Mark Hennessy]

Nice one, a full service and some updated info on the Irish Rail website.

[Mark Gleeson]

Once again another total mess

We have Irish Rail staff in the press office contradicting the very notices they have placed on the Irish Rail website

We have drivers being told to stop at stations while passengers told the train won't

No clear information of what trains actually ran, we think the 17:05, 18:18 and 19:05 all ran but all left well late for no reason

Irish Rail failed to implement a proper manual system to operate the service, they could have had 3 trains an hour last night, remind anyone of the Skerries mess?

Despite the signaling being modern with backup generators, batteries and emergency control panels the whole show died

Despite 6 hours no contingency plan was in place

One thing you can say about victorian signaling is that it was simple single point of failure stuff at most one set of points or one signal would die and generally required a lump hammer and a spanner to fix

[ThomasJ]

When I was reading the RTE news stories on this, they were quoting IR as saying that Maynooth services were not expected to be disrupted in the rush hour last night.

A spokeswoman for Iarnród Éireann said Maynooth commuter services are not expected to be disrupted this evening.

We didn't expect the disruption to last that long and obviously either did IE.

Any idea what went wrong?

[Mark Hennessy]

Apology "from" Irish Rail in todays Metro.

Somehow I don't think this worded too well.
The different colours make it look like IE are apologising to themselves.

[Mark Gleeson]

Compared to this http://www.railusers.ie/forum/showpo...3&postcount=25 its a waste of space

[Mark Hennessy]

Indeed, we should write a letter to the Metro with the name and address of the manager of the Maynooth line so customers can express their feelings in writing to him about why it took over 12 hours to fix this fault and why a contingency service was not in place for the evening rush.

[11mars]

there was mayhem on the maynooth line on friday as well.

15:54 from pearse chugged out of town, stopping and starting.

between drumcondra and broombridge driver announced that there was a train broken down at ashtown. we stayed put for 20 mins.

they we went onto broombridge and stayed there for another 20mins, where broombridge passengers and obvioulsy a few fed up people got off.

then we went onto ashtown, driver announced that our train would now terminate at clonsilla and anyone wishing to proceed to leixlip/maynooth would have to wait for the next train which presently was leaving drumcondra.

so we all got off and stood in the freezing cold for 10 mins and eventually a train arrived. we along got on. woo hoo seats/warmth.

then because there was no one at clonsilla station it was up to the poor driver to try and announce over the terrible system that this wasn't our train so we all had to get off and he drove off towards leixlip?

then our train came along which was actually the 16:20 from connolly and we all piled on.

eventually got into maynooth bout 17:35.

between that and wednesday which involved a 2 hour bus journey to maynooth it was a great week for public transport!

[gm101]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

Once again another screw up, despite new track, new signaling and new trains the Sligo line is no better than the bad old days, in fact its probably worse

There is meant to be an emergency generator at each signaling location to deal with power failures, needless to say these frequently don't start due to poor maintenance

There are fairly strict procedures to swiftly deal with total signaling failures, there is a gate keeper on duty in Clonsilla who would be more than able to walk down the line to manually operate the level crossing beyond Clonsilla

thats not really true the generator only comes into effect when there is a mains power failure that fault was a link failure with the remote interlockings which is very serious and rare fault and also the generator is run on a weekly basis
with this fault you need to set up temporary block working which in itself is very time consuming and which will only allow you a very limted service if service at all

[Mark Hennessy]

you need to set up temporary block working which in itself is very time consuming and which will only allow you a very limted service if service at all

The failure happened at around 11am.

They had 5+ hours to get some sort of service in place for the evening 5-7 rush.
Contingency and plan are not two related terms in Irish Rail by any account.

[Mark Gleeson]

If something had gone wrong with Porterstown level crossing, simple case of use the local control panel to close the gates and the signalman verbally instructs drivers to pass

The backup procedures are not well practiced, the generators don't always start when required, there is general confusion as to the procedure to follow to deal with problems and of course the general reluctance to instigate an emergency timetable

There appears to be a lack of knowledge at the operational level of the various abilities and limits of the signaling system, this has led to absolute chaos in the Skerries incident earlier in the year.

The disorganisation, lack of information and general incompetence left thousands of passengers lost and confused, many were turned away despite the fact there was a train to take them home. There was almost 6 hours to come up with some class of plan

[gm101]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

If something had gone wrong with Porterstown level crossing, simple case of use the local control panel to close the gates and the signalman verbally instructs drivers to pass

The backup procedures are not well practiced, the generators don't always start when required, there is general confusion as to the procedure to follow to deal with problems and of course the general reluctance to instigate an emergency timetable

There appears to be a lack of knowledge at the operational level of the various abilities and limits of the signaling system, this has led to absolute chaos in the Skerries incident earlier in the year.

The disorganisation, lack of information and general incompetence left thousands of passengers lost and confused, many were turned away despite the fact there was a train to take them home. There was almost 6 hours to come up with some class of plan

just to clear this the generator would have no effect on this problem the limits or the abilties of the system do not come into question when you have a fault like this there are strict procedures to follow which are time consuming to put in place there would be no point with an emergency timetable it wouldnt work with a fault like you just cant put a time frame on it
an emegency operator at porterstown would be no good because of that fault

[gm101]

Originally Posted by Mark Hennessy

The failure happened at around 11am.

They had 5+ hours to get some sort of service in place for the evening 5-7 rush.
Contingency and plan are not two related terms in Irish Rail by any account.

the point being with this special working in place trains can only run at a limted speed which slows down an already slow process its frustrating i know but safety is the main concern

[Mark Gleeson]

So lets go back to when Irish Rail actually followed its own rule book

Back in 2003 the relay room in Pearse flooded one Friday night, signaling totally borked

Following morning I boarded a train and guess what we got to Pearse, since the rule book had been fully applied, promptly and efficiently. Ok so it was a little slow and commuter services had to run from Connolly but there was a train service despite the entire signaling system being busted.

Roll forward to last week, abandon everything, and issue misleading information to the public and make zero effort to apply the rules in an effective manner

The first statement concerning the failure quoted power failure as the reason, thus the generator comments are fully justified, even if the generators work the signaling is known not to like the generator and things stop working