Nenagh group rails at lack of commuter service

[comcor]

A NORTH Tipperary lobby group yesterday took their campaign for a new commuter service between Nenagh and Limerick ‘on line’.

More than 100 supporters packed two carriages on the 11am service from Nenagh to Limerick’s Colbert Station.

The train usually has one passenger carriage, but Irish Rail added a second to accommodate the group, whose members each paid the e6.50 return fare.

Irish Rail operates two Nenagh/Limerick trains - one at 11am and the other at 7.50pm.

The Nenagh Rail Partnership group wants Irish Rail to begin a 7.30am commuter service to Limerick to facilitate workers who mostly travel by car.

A recent survey carried out for the group by University of Limerick lecturer Sean Reidy revealed that 360 people commute each day from Nenagh to Limerick and most would avail of a morning commuter train service if it was available.




Over 90% said they travel alone by car each day to work in Limerick.

Nenagh Town Councillor Virginia O’Dowd, who led the protest, said an extended schedule between Limerick and destinations such as Nenagh and Ballybrophy would benefit Irish Rail, commuters and tourism interests.

Ms O’Dowd said: “My husband has been travelling to work each day for the past 15 years by car on his own. He is one of hundreds who would jump at the chance of availing of a morning rail service.”

She said they had received a positive response from Irish Rail management, but the issue came down to funding.

“We have a commitment that they will look at a commuter service between Nenagh and Limerick in 2007. The line needs some upgrading as there are speed restrictions on parts of it. The carriages are very good and our survey has quantified a significant demand,” she said.

The Nenagh group said they want to develop the concept of a Lough Derg line and market it as a tourism asset as well as a commuter facility.

Ms O’Dowd said the Lough Derg line could link with Castleconnell, which has a station on the Nenagh/Limerick line and is famous for its fishing.

Ms O’Dowd said: “We could work with Irish Rail to improve the railway station at Nenagh on the lines of a Tidy Towns committee by placing shrubs and flower beds there. We would also like to see Tipperary North Riding Council appoint a railway officer to help develop business on the Lough Derg line.”

Irish Rail mid-west business development manager Jim Galvin said they do not have carriage capacity to expand the Nenagh service.

He said: “New inter-city carriages are due to be brought into service later this year and this will give us more flexibility regarding the carriages we currently use on commuter services such as the Limerick to Limerick Junction service.

“Our chief executive, Dick Fearn, met the Nenagh group last September and assured them we will reassess the situation at the end of this year.”

http://www.irishexaminer.com/pport/w...q-nXlDAyFE.asp

It starts quite well until they go on about the Lough Derg line. I fear a group that isn't focusing on its priority.

[Mark Gleeson]

They got all happy last year when IE moved the timetable around

http://www.platform11.org/news/news....2005&no=5.html

It is still impossible to commute to Limerick from Nenagh. It not possible to reach Limerick before 9am nor is it possible to leave Limerick at the end of a business day. The line is in such poor shape that it would still be quicker by car anyway

You get this bull**** political add on of Lough Derg, that line is closed for years and built on. This is why politicans are not the right people to campaign as they have no clue about the realities or the bigger picture

[Thomas J Stamp]

Well I work in Nenagh and I see the line twice a day and it is in ashocking state However, and yes, here we go again, what the hell is it with IE? It is a fact they have a commuter car and so they have a driver for it. What does he do all day? Does he swan around limerick all day waiting to drive the damned thing back to ballybrophy? Surely it could start off early morning from either terminus and they could run it back and forth all day with breaks for the driver built in. This sort of thing drives me mental.

[Mark Gleeson]

The story is there is no stock available to operate a morning service, I get the feeling it is tied up on the Ennis Limerick Junction run, the new 5:50am Limerick Limerick Junction for instance.

It would be pointless to even run a morning service out of Nenagh as things stand as it would be faster by road. You need a integrated plan, you need more stations around Limerick, you need to deal with the fact Limerick Colbert is not the centre of the universe, you need the Cork direct curve reopened, you need the line to Foynes as far as Raheen reopened. Ask any of the local politicans and they have no clue about what is needed the I want a train approach isn't really productive

If you know Nenagh you will know the station ain't in the best location its on the Thurles Rd before the hospital and Nenagh is great fun to get through in a car.

You would need a full relay of the line, reinstatement of the passing loop at Nenagh and new signalling, Ballybrophy would need to go and a direct curve put in facing Port Laois

[Kevin K Kelehan]

I agree that it is not as simple as re-routing existing stock and that Raheen would be the Jewell in the Crown, but in fairness to the Nenagh group; I personally would regard a Nenagh to Limerick service as more regionally important in planning terms than an early chariot to whisk Shannonsiders off to An lar

[Thomas J Stamp]

You're both correct. The track is due to be relayed and as I drive past the station every day it's clearly in really bad shape. However we're a bit further down the road then a few years ago where there were genuine fears that it was going to close. The station isnt in a great spot but there are many worse which are used quite a lot. I think if the service is converted from Limerick to Ballybrophy and back as a pure commuter run on a decent track it would serve a really useful purpose. I'm not sure that going as far as portloaise is a good idea as the new timetable already has commuter trains going to and from Ballybrophy to Hueston and the Limerick Ballybrophy run should be kept as simple as possible. A two railcar set would do the job from the start and if there's a toll put on the motorway...............

[Mark Gleeson]

Originally Posted by thomasjstamp

I'm not sure that going as far as portloaise is a good idea as the new timetable already has commuter trains going to and from Ballybrophy to Hueston and the Limerick Ballybrophy run should be kept as simple as possible. A two railcar set would do the job from the start and if there's a toll put on the motorway...............

The idea would be to close the station in Ballybrophy in favour of one in Borris in Ossory which is the nearest town of any real size to Ballybrophy.

The maintenance depot is being built in Port Laoise, as are much better connections and it brings you to a zero miles out of service situation both morning and evening. It also gives you a secondary route from Limerick to Dublin avoiding Limerick junction which could lift passenger numbers to a repectable level to make it all work.

The bigger picture is key

[comcor]

The problem with going to Ballybrophy is that a Cork, Kery or Limerick-Dublin train has to stop there to pick up connecting passengers. If IE are trying to minimise the stops of these trains to reduce runnning times, this is undesirable.

Putting in a direct curve at Ballybrophy, closing Ballybrophy station, reopening Borris in Ossory for local traffic and running through to Port Laoise would help operations on the mainline. I think it is safe to assume that a certain number of Intercity trains will continue to stop in Port Laoise anyway.

If you disregard passengers who are connecting to go to Dublin, you may as well close the line east of Nenagh.

[Thomas J Stamp]

Ballybrophy is two kilometers from Rathdowney which is a much bigger town than Borris-in-Ossory and also since the new timetable came in a lot of people from Templemore are using the 1830 train from Heuston to Ballybrophy and driving a simple example of how a station which looks useless can be made viable by putting a logical service to it. People from Ballacolla can use it also it's slightly nearer than Portlaoise. The railcar serviceing depot is a good bit away from the station in Portlaoise where the sleeper factory is now and I dont see the sense in having a train pull into Portlaoise station and then doing back down to the depot. When a train goes out of service it could beleft there (say if there is an hour before the next departure or so on) and it could go back to the depot overnight. As things stand the train does sort of work, the evening departure from Limerick is used. If they want a proper commuter service it'll probably be at most say a train leaving Roscrea at 7am and one leaving Ballybrophy at 730 or 745am following behind. During the day one train can do the run to Ballybrophy connecting with intercity services there and in the evening the two, the first to Ballybrophy the second to either Roscrea or Ballybrophy would cater for most demand.

Quite a lot of people in Roscrea remember that the railway was the only way goods got to the town untill the 60's and there were a lot of cattle trains out of there as well so at one time it must have been a fairly busy line.

[comcor]

Ballybrophy can't justify its existence as a railway station for Rathdowney. Rathdowney's population is lower than that of Kilmallock and around the same as Buttevant, both of whom lost their railway station on the Dublin-Cork line. Unlike those stations, it is a number of miles from the town it would be serving.

Moving the station to Borris-in-Ossory would allow more frequent services than the current arrangement. It would only increase the distance from Rathdowney to the station from 7km to 10km (figures from OSI; Borris in Ossory station would be on the Rathdowney side of the town).

A possible alternative arrangement would be to create a direct curve to Dublin and move Ballybrophy station several hundred metres towards Dublin. However, this would still leave a station that is significantly distant from the nearest town.


Edited: Rounding error converting miles to kilometres

[Mark Gleeson]

The primary issue is Ballybrophy, its currently a complete mess operationally, I've got the signalling instructions on how to get from the main line to the branch and its a very complex long list. Currently a 70mph limit appiles through the station as a result of the trackwork

The current main issue with the Nenagh line is you can't start or terminate a passenger train in Nenagh itself. To run a morning service necessitates sending a train from Limerick at 5am empty to Ballybrophy, you would want to serve Roscrea as well.

Now if you relaid the line to a decent spec you could offer close to the same journey time via Nenagh as via Limerick Junction to Dublin

My point about Port Laoise is the fact the maintenance depot will be close by (a lot closer than Inchicore is to Heuston for example) so it suits the natural operation of services so you don't need to have trains doing 60 odd miles early morning with no one board

[Thomas J Stamp]

You're correct about the track layout of Ballybrophy, it's very complicated but it can be simplified. What I dont agree with at all is the idea of closing the station and opening one for Borris-in-Ossory. Ballybrophy is on the road from Rathdowney to Borris and Borris is a far smaller town. I cant see the justification regarding the costs of abandoning Ballybrophy and constructing a new station just up the road. Like I said yesterday a lot more people use it now simply becase IE put a service into it at the right time of the day. The 1730 train Heustron Limerick connects with the 1900 Ballybrophy train to Limerick via Nenagh and the 1835 commuter to Thurles stops there at 1957. Funny enough it waits for the 1900 cork train to off load any more Templemore passangers and follows it to Thurles - I suspect that when the hourly service to Cork comes in this is what will happen to all of the cork services which used to serve Templemore ie you'll have to hop off and catch the commuter to Thurles.

Anyway this is a station which has lots of potential if used correctly.

[Kevin K Kelehan]

Are we not getting a little bogged down in technical aspects of Ballybrophy and onward connection to An Lar. Nenagh Limerick is about the limit of large scale commuting in that direction in my opinion and beyond re-routing a Dublin Limerick direct train via Roscrea is it all not a little academic? My interpretation is that those in Roscrea are more likely to commute to Portlaoise or Dublin than Limerick.

[philip]

Originally Posted by Kevin K Kelehan

Are we not getting a little bogged down in technical aspects of Ballybrophy and onward connection to An Lar. Nenagh Limerick is about the limit of large scale commuting in that direction in my opinion and beyond re-routing a Dublin Limerick direct train via Roscrea is it all not a little academic? My interpretation is that those in Roscrea are more likely to commute to Portlaoise or Dublin than Limerick.

Indeed Kevin, people seem to be applying the law of the Dublin commuter to Limerick City. This is a nonsense as the main reason people commute from Portlaoise (and beyond) to Dublin is house prices. Clearly the same distances from Limerick don't have to be travelled to obtain housing at reasonable cost.

Nenagh is about as far as you're gonna find sufficient numbers of commuters into Limerick IMO.

[Mark Gleeson]

One thing I would point out is the survey behind the numbers in the article are misleading, 90% would use the train, not quite. The best in Ireland currently is Skerries which manages 25% of all commuters by rail and thats on the back of 4 trains an hour.

What is needed a integrated regional network, one route in isolation is not much good, as it stands you can't start a train in Nenagh thats a bit of a problem

[Kevin K Kelehan]

What would be the (lower) cost of re-engineering or introducing appropriate rolling stock at Nenagh to facilitate turn backs?

[Mark Gleeson]

Originally Posted by Kevin K Kelehan

What would be the (lower) cost of re-engineering or introducing appropriate rolling stock at Nenagh to facilitate turn backs?

Need to reinstate Nenagh as a blockpost and reinstate the loop and associated trackworks, thats the only solution to starting a train in Nenagh and also to allow for any increase in frequency

In terms of cost effectiveness mini ctc would be cheap and reduce operating costs no signalman required at Killonan, Birdhill or Roscrea. There are daily freight services on the line between Limerick and beyond Birdhill