[Article] Rail Against the Machine

[Mark Gleeson]

Sunday Tribune 11/4/2010 Page 14.

Full text later by 8pm, not online yet

It seems that Irish Rail 'donated' taxpayers money to put a train back in service for a single trip, but it won't use the train to fill in for the string of breakdowns.

[Mark Gleeson]

Full text http://www.tribune.ie/news/home-news...t-the-machine/

[Sealink]

Pretty damning stuff...

[Colm Moore]

How many articles total - two?

[sean]

Yes, Rail Against the Machine, and Iarnrod Eireann Derails €420m line upgrade.

[finnyus]

I wonder what line will be next for the chop to cope with the opening of the Clonsilla - M3/Pace?!

Rail against the Machine: Its a good article, highlighting a lot (but still tip of iceberg).

With the KRP being "surplus to requirements" does this mean an end to the Interconnector?

[Mark Gleeson]

Its important to be clear that the KRP is a very important piece of infrastructure and even today is providing an improved service mainly through the much improved signaling.

KRP will only really shine with the interconnector in place. Previously IE terminated the tunnel in Heuston with no link to KRP, currently the link is proposed at Inchicore and will exploit the KRP to a level greater than originally envisaged

How on earth IE expect to grow passenger numbers with a timetable which is full of strange gaps is beyond me, they need to put a clockface timetable in to provide the consistency which people need

[Mark Gleeson]

For reference the 8200 DART fleet is out of service due to a refusal within Irish Rail to buy the spare parts. Price is a factor but they are several vendors.

Parts are available. The 8200 fleet uses an Alstom ONIX drive system which is common in most Alstom products between 1997 and today, i.e several thousand of units. In fact some parts are directly exchangeable between the Luas fleet and the 8200's. The Alstom ONIX is recognised as being one of the best in the business.

The bogies are the same as the LHB fleet and IE has several spare.

[sean]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

For reference the 8200 DART fleet is out of service due to a refusal within Irish Rail to buy the spare parts. Price is a factor but they are several vendors.

Parts are available. The 8200 fleet uses an Alstom ONIX drive system which is common in most Alstom products between 1997 and today, i.e several thousand of units. In fact some parts are directly exchangeable between the Luas fleet and the 8200's. The Alstom ONIX is recognised as being one of the best in the business.

The bogies are the same as the LHB fleet and IE has several spare.

But weren't they (the Alstom DARTs) breaking down all the time? I had read that they simply were not reliable.

[Mark Gleeson]

They started out very reliable with all 10 in service each morning as a matter of routine. Yes there are problems but if you ain't willing to pay for spare parts of course the train will break down.

Plenty of other railway companies bought stock from Alstom in that era and stuck it out and resolved the issues resulting in a reasonably reliable train. They stuck with it, IE gave up.

[Mark Hennessy]

Baz retorts in the Tribune today.

http://www.tribune.ie/news/letters/a...-rails-cliche/

[Colm Moore]

For example, reopened lines to Midleton and between Limerick and Galway, an unmatched record in delivering major capital projects on budget, advanced planning on Dart Underground, and station facilities and environments enhanced, are among many developments deemed unworthy of comment in desperation to use the hackneyed "off the rails" pun.

Its one thing to deliver projects, what is needed is a quality customer experience - on-time, in reasonable comfort and reasonable prices to places where customers want to go when they want to go there and to do that in a consistent fashion.

[Mark Gleeson]

Shinny new stuff doesn't fix all problems

Customer service is still woeful, WRC timetable a disaster. Nothing in the article is challenged, all the numbers, Ken had it spot on. This so called charity trip will come back to haunt IE.

Charity starts at home and the folks on the 15:30 to Galway last Friday would have been very happy to make the journey on a Mk3 set, much nicer than the bus they ended up on.

[dowlingm]

Just sent to Trib Editor:

Madam,

The letter from Barry Kenny of Iarnród Éireann typifies his pugnatious approach to the slightest criticism of his employer, both in print and in particular when he participates in interviews. It is fortunate for those who paid the taxes the government handed IÉ to the tune of two hundred million euro in 2008 to observe his company's performance in the face of the disruption of air traffic.

Yesterday, the service from Rosslare to Dublin was deferred by one hour to 1335. The only way you would know is to examine the timetable, as Mr. Kenny's staff failed to communicate this on "Travel Alerts" on their home page, cluttered as it is with Google advertising. They did announce the deferral of today's service to 1845 to meet the incoming ferry, but that only highlights the fact that they don't bother to do that normally. There will be no service from the ferry to Waterford and Limerick today - but that's the same as any other Sunday on the South Wexford Line.

The biggest irony of all is that Iarnród Éireann own Rosslare Europort, which you would think would lead them to aggressively chase the passenger market, but they are apparently not selling Rail and Sail tickets this weekend, referring travellers to the ferry companies. No doubt some blame attaches to the latter but the reality is that Iarnród Éireann rarely misses a chance to miss an opportunity. Travellers are more likely to get correct information from Rail Users Ireland, a voluntary body, than Mr. Kenny, his department's website and its Twitter.

As for scrapping 25 year old trains, those who have travelled by rail in North America know that by frequent interior refitting railways like Amtrak maintain comfort in trains of 30 and 40 years service. VIA Rail Canada just issued a contract to a Canadian company to gut and refurbish their LRC 100mph carriages of a similar vintage to the Mark IIIs, creating tax revenue to offset the company's subvention requirement. Needless to say the expertise in Inchicore to do such work has been long since "downsized".

Finally, Madam, I wonder how many people could name the head of PR for Bus Éireann or Dublin Bus, much larger in terms of vehicles, routes and passenger counts. Mr. Kenny is notorious to readers and listeners because his organisation fails far too frequently and publicly.

Yours faithfully,
Mark Dowling

[Mark Hennessy]

A nice letter well put.

[ThomasJ]

Originally Posted by dowlingm

Just sent to Trib Editor:

Nicely done mark!

[Thomas J Stamp]

Originally Posted by Mark Hennessy

Baz retorts in the Tribune today.

http://www.tribune.ie/news/letters/a...-rails-cliche/

glad to see that the standard reaction to criticism within IE is alive and well. Without Barry Kenny knowing what he said, he said it.

Also, glad to see that the comments underneath are moderated, nice to see all the old gang there

[Mark Gleeson]

I must apologise to everyone, the article said 24 temporary restrictions between Dublin and Cork in December 09, the number was actually 26.

[Thomas J Stamp]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

I must apologise to everyone, the article said 24 temporary restrictions between Dublin and Cork in December 09, the number was actually 26.

that is the sort of unreliability you can expect from RUI

[Mark Gleeson]

Still though the numbers are getting worse, not better. Accuracy is very important to us

For the record
5th December 2009
Down (towards Cork) 13 - 3@50mph 10@25mph
Up (towards Dublin) 13 - 4@50mph 8@25mph 1@20mph