Waterford Tall Ships: Poor Information

[ACustomer]

Quite commendably Irish Rail are providing quite extensive services from Dublin, Kilkenny and Clonmel fo the forthcoming Tall Ships festival in Waterford. However the publicity for these services is woeful.

On the Irish Rail website, the times of the extra trains are given in the general news, and at the end of the notice mention is also made of unspecified regular service trains. Given that many users will be unfamiliar with the timetable, this is a serious omission. Also the online journey planners have not (yet) been changed to incorporate the special services (with the exception of those form Dublin).

The Tall Ships website has a link to a full timetable, which however is not well highlighted. The link is to a 3-page Word document, which lists all trains both regular and special. But the formatting is a shambles, for example with a page break in the middle of a table. It is clearly an internal Irish Rail working document, OK for railway personnel but not for the general public. Irish Rail should not have supplied the organisers with such badly laid-out information.

Once again the ability of Irish Rail to communicate with the public is quite awful. Are these the same people responsible for so many uninformative and often semi-literate "Corporate Communications"?

[Mark Gleeson]

http://www.railusers.ie/resources/ti...dTimetable.pdf

[ACustomer]

Another gem on the IR Tall Ships travel news. Where it refers to scheduled services there is the following: Full details of services are available at www.irishrail.ie

Which gets you back to the Irish rail homepage. Talk about going around in ever-decreasing circles!

[dowlingm]

To be fair, I looked at The Sister Company's website yesterday and they had yet to mention that the bus terminus is being moved for the event.

[Traincustomer]

I read somewhere (possibly Tall Ships website) that it's going to be at Ballybricken (that's about 5/10 minutes from Rice Bridge (main river bridge) in roughly a westerly direction)

And also that there will be buses to the railway station.

[Jamie2k9]

The station car parks will be open for the 06:00, 07:10 and 07:40 departures to Heuston and 06:40 to Limerick J. People returning will be able to take there cars from the car park all day everyday.

For all other services people will have to use the Park and Ride services that will drop you in proximity to station. You pay the €10, then refund forms for the €10 are available in the station. This only applies to Irish Rail customers. I'm sure you will need proof of travel so don't throw away you tickets.

Full details available: (at the end)
http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/...w&news_id=1142

[Mark Gleeson]

I can't really fault this poster

http://www.southtippcoco.ie/en/media...0Timetable.pdf

[ACustomer]

It says something when a County Council can do a better train advertising job than Irish Rail. I wonder has Kilkenny Co Council done its bit?

[Mark Gleeson]

The poster was issued from an office in Connolly station

[Jamie2k9]

According to the poster about extra Dublin and Kilkenny services, no trains between Waterford - Heuston will service Muine Beag until the 14:50 departure from Waterford. Is this a mistake or not?

http://www.irishrail.ie/upload/waterfordTallShips.pdf

[Mark Gleeson]

Thats a mistake

There are also trains which never arrive at Clonmel

Awaiting feedback

There should be a alcohol ban as well

[Jamie2k9]

The alcohol ban will be in place for all Sunday services except the 09:05, although you can still drink so what would be the point when it is not currently enforced.

[ACustomer]

Another mistake: the 1450 Waterford-Heuston is shown as departing Muine Bheag at 1426.

Do they have any proof-readers?

[Mark Gleeson]

The Dublin Waterford Poster has been withdrawn

[jacko]

Good to see the minister encouraging people to take the train to the tall ships

http://www.merrionstreet.ie/index.ph...eekend/?cat=12

[dowlingm]

true, but it would be even better if he added that he'd be eschewing the State car himself.

[Colm Moore]

Originally Posted by dowlingm

true, but it would be even better if he added that he'd be eschewing the State car himself.

He doesn't have one. Its his own car* (but expenses can be claimed ), but state-salaried driver.


* Only President, Taoiseach, Minister for Justice & Defence and possibly the chief justice and have state cars.

[jacko]

Originally Posted by dowlingm

true, but it would be even better if he added that he'd be eschewing the State car himself.

Nenagh to Ballybrophy to Lim Junction to waterford . . . .the tall ships would be in the Shetlands by the time he arrived

[ACustomer]

To-day's Irish Times has a piece by Ciaran Murphy which goes on about the traffic cordon, access restrictions, extra gardai, etc and the only mention of rail transport is that there will be limited access to Plunkett Station in the early morning. No mention whatever of the quite substantial train services available, especially the extra trains being run. All this from a paper which usually professes support for public transport.

But I'm not surprised at the pethetically ill-informed jourlnalism.