Irish rail fleet deployment

[Ireland trains]

When have irish rail used 9 and 8 car icrs in passenger service.
Also Belfast only would need 5 trains to make it hourly ( 2h 10min journey time and 20 min turnaround)
Cork only needs 6 and I thought all mkiv trains were back in service

[Mark Gleeson]

20 minutes isn't sufficient, need at least 40. And you need a spare set, so you need 7.

Cork needs 7 + 1 spare which is the MK4 fleet, its currently running as 5 or 6 plus some ICR's

9 car is used for GAA specials regularly. Dublin Cork line only
8 car sets are used on Saturdays during the engineering works between Heuston and Portlaoise, again somewhat restricted in routes they can operate

[Inniskeen]

Belfast hourly could easily be run with 5 sets (+1 spare) especially if the current idiotic time wasting schedules were tightened up. There is often sufficient time in Drogheda or Dundalk on northbound trips to nip out to the local shops while the train idles away at the platform.

Mk4s would be little addition to the Belfast line although cerifying them to run in NI would not be a big obstacle, they are not massively different operationally to a De-Dietrich but would require upgrades to on board signalling equipment, notably TPWS and the rather less useful DRA.

As for 9 piece ICRs in passenger service, this is a comparitiv rarity, perhaps less than half a dozen times a year. Eight piece ICRs in passenger service are also relatively rare but do appear during weekend engineering works on the Cork line when service frequency is reduced to two-hourly. No regular workings to my knowledge. Seven car sets are common enough particularly on commuter oriented services notably from Sligo, Newry and Maynooth, perhaps less so on the Heuston lines where 3 or 4 car sets appear to pre-dominate.

[James Shields]

I've seen the Enterprise turned around in as little as 10 minutes in Connolly, but I presume that's under exceptional circumstances. It's one thing to do quick turnarounds on an occasional basis, but if they have to turn around that quick all day every day, there isn't time for the routine checks and servicing, not to mention cleaning. Things will inevitably start to break down, and the quality of service will degrade.

Aside from that, having the service split between two different train types causes a lot of complexity for maintenance, servicing and training, and also makes online seat booking difficult (what happens if a Mk4 is scheduled to run a service and it gets swapped for a DD at the last minute, and the seat number you've reserved doesn't exist on the replacement train?).

I hope we'll see an hourly Enterprise service one day, but it will probably need to coincide with the replacement of the DDs by new stock.

[Ireland trains]

I could be wrong but I thought that 7 car ICR trains operated to Waterford
Has a 5car ICR ever been used to rosslare.
Do you think Irish rail will be running any 8 car trains during the Easter works and is it possible in the future irish rail might have regular 8 car ICR trains when/if the bi mode trains come which will release a few icr sets and if passenger numbers keep increasing

[Inniskeen]

Waterford, Westport & Galway would all 7 x ICR formations regularly, perhaps on a daily basis.

I am only aware of a 5 car ICR operating to Rosslare on one occasion, it is very rare.

As for 8 car ICRs operating to Cork over Easter, i don't know, possibly, although the line closure will reduce traffic considerably.. The use of 8 car ICRs is restricted somewhat by platform lengths which by and large are not long enough on most routes.

[Jamie2k9]

Originally Posted by Ireland trains

I could be wrong but I thought that 7 car ICR trains operated to Waterford
Has a 5car ICR ever been used to rosslare.
Do you think Irish rail will be running any 8 car trains during the Easter works and is it possible in the future irish rail might have regular 8 car ICR trains when/if the bi mode trains come which will release a few icr sets and if passenger numbers keep increasing

They are allowed but cannot call at Kilkenny. Since the formations one schedule passenger service (07.10) was operated by a 7 car and that was due a unscheduled 4 car forming another service.

7 car formations are not that common, on Heuston side its mainly 3 services to Galway/Westport (split on return) daily and more operational than capacity based formations. 1 per day to Sligo and on Fridays Westport/Sligo have extra.

[Ireland trains]

Don't Galway have 7 car ICR trains also and so does cork (21:00 from Heuston)
It would be kind of interesting to see some more 8 car ICR trains but in 5+3 formation.
Possible for galway in the future maybe
If irish rail use the spare mkiv set on the one service to Tralee then they can create on new service or create additional capacity.
If Irish rail just used 6 mkiv trains to cork then the other one could operate one service to limerick freeing up another icr

[James Shields]

In other countries, trains can lock out front or rear doors at stations with short platforms. It's a shame the ICRs don't have such a facility.