[Letter] Don't trust what Irish Rail say

[Mark Gleeson]

In recent weeks Barry Kenny has answered a raft of questions in the Irish Independent but has avoided some important facts

Question 1 is why are people writting to the Indo surely IE are meant to answer post emails etc ?

Dear Sir,

Mr Kenny of Iarnród Éireann in his response to recent letters (April 24) is somewhat economical with the truth.

Punctuality standards for suburban trains in Ireland classify a train on time if it is no more than 10 minutes late, while elsewhere including Northern Ireland 5 minutes is the standard, if Iarnród Éireann fails to make the targets set there is no provision to refund or discount the fares of weekly, monthly or annual ticket holders as there is in the UK and Northern Ireland.

Mr Gallagher (April 8) is quite correct to pose the question of incompetence with respect to the provision of 8 coach DART's, there is in fact a 4 coach DART in service in the evening peak.

What Mr Kenny omitted in his response was that the continued shortage of 8 coach DART's is in part due the now 10 month delay in the 60 million euro DART refurbishment project. The date having been revised by Mr Kenny and his colleagues from the initial June 2005 to September then November then February, it is almost May and still no sign. The first batch of coaches left in December 2004 and a total of 20 (out of 76) have so far travelled to Leipzig and then onwards to Siemens in Prague.

Ms Early (April 15th) is quite correct to inquire about additional services from Sligo as currently there exists only one intercity service to Sligo per week (Friday 15:55) and one to Dublin (Sunday 15:45) all other services are operated by commuter trains ill suited to the 3 hour 5 minute journey. Despite new track and new signalling journey times increased between Dublin and Sligo by 7 minutes last year. All the hype Iarnród Éireann has placed on the new timetable is misplaced, there may be more trains but they are significantly less comfortable than those they replaced and the key measure, the daily number of seats has only increased by a fraction. Iarnród Éireann have steadfastly refused to admit that they have got it very badly wrong with respect to Dublin Sligo.

The most shocking indictment of all is why so many members of the public feel they must write to local and national newspapers with rail service queries and complaints, is it because it is Iarnród Éireann policy not to respond to email complaints, the failure to respond to many written queries or is it that those lucky enough to receive written responses may be left waiting up to 8 weeks?

Yours Sincerely

Mark Gleeson
Platform 11 Ireland's National Rail Users Organisation

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independe...issue_id=13974

[Kevin K Kelehan]

Good letter Mark

It is encouraging to see the passenger issues side take precedence

[Mark Gleeson]

It was truly great this morning, I nabbed a seat on a DART and the person next to me was reading it. They only sell about 165,000 copies

Barry will write back and deny it but I think most of it is hard to twist its hard to deny the facts presented

The punctuality standard is hard to hide from we all know its screwed up

Sligo is a non brainer,
You can't deny it takes longer after the upgrade
You can't deny that the timetable only has 1 intercity service

DART is great fun

The 4 coach DART is train E252 the 17:35 Connolly Bray (yes we have the internal IE timetable)

The DARTs on holiday, thanks to the IRRS
8107/8307 8113/8313 8140/8340 shipped 15/12/2005
8123/8323 8124/8324 8131/8331 shipped 14/03/2005
8105/8305 8130/8330 8138/8338 8139/8339 shipped 24/04/2005

We think there are 20 coaches in total, none of the above 20 have been seen since the above dates. What we do know is the deal to provide the CCTV gear was only signed August 2nd 2005 for delivery September 05-06


Rail Manager Feb 2005, page 20

Mr Kenny admitted the delay in person to us and changed deadline to November.

Mark's Recognition Guide

Perfectly clean underside in grey, modified doors possibly with new buttons and warning buzzers, PIS display fitted, interior grab rails/polls should be yellow, slight seating modifications, new glass in all windows, headlight/taillights will be LED clusters, sand boxes for anti lock brakes, it will sound different since they are changing the GTO electronics so the classic buzz might be gone

[Kevin K Kelehan]

When are the majority of these units expected back?

[Mark]

Well done Gleeson! Power to the people!

I'll keep an eye out for them. Will they have to undergo some sort of testing when they get back?

Cant see the Prague pic by the way,

[Mark Gleeson]

Originally Posted by Kevin K Kelehan

When are the majority of these units expected back?

All 76 coaches where due to be back by December 2006, as of today I am aware of not one single coach which has returned, no way the deadline will be achieved which means a continuation of 6 coach DARTs for at least another year basically beyond what was orignally planned

[Thomas J Stamp]

Great letter, fair play.

[Mark Gleeson]

Originally Posted by Mark

Will they have to undergo some sort of testing when they get back?

Considering the plan is to strip the coaches down to a shell and rebuild its basically a new train with loads of new pieces, new electronics a full commissioning phase will be required.

[Kevin K Kelehan]

Have any of them completed this process?

[Mark Gleeson]

They are all still in Prague so the process hasn't even started it can only start when the units return to Fairview and reunited with a few pieces of equipment IE took off before they shipped

[Navan Junction]

Very, very good. Excellent.

Sick of all the smoke & mirrors

Fair play Mark.

[sean]

Strrrrike lol

You should post that on the Commuting/Transport Forum on boards.ie. Might convice someone <removed>. that P11 isn't "The Amiens St. Gang" anymore.

Admin EDIT: Reference to another person removed - Paul

[Mark Gleeson]

So can someone post it here http://groups.msn.com/irishrailwayne...a ll_topics=1

Cheers

[James Shields]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

They are all still in Prague so the process hasn't even started it can only start when the units return to Fairview and reunited with a few pieces of equipment IE took off before they shipped

Like the wheels! :-)

(I'm not kidding)

[craigybagel]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

So can someone post it here http://groups.msn.com/irishrailwayne...a ll_topics=1

Cheers

Done and done

[Mark Gleeson]

Originally Posted by craigybagel

Done and done

Cheers

[philip]

Excellent letter Mark. Hits all the big points. Let's see what Mr. Kenny responds with. It's difficult to defend the indefensible, but he'll try.

[Mark Gleeson]

Can't wait to see Barry's response, I've been waiting for several months for something like this to crop up. Its Barry's job to manipulate the situation to cover IE's ass, its our job is to expose the truth

I carefully phrased things so Barry can't pick holes. Barry's tactics are simple to tak about something else, so on Sligo the response will be 2 extra trains a day, more modern etc, he will ignore the fact the journey times increased

The DART issue is touchy but none have returned to service, they are late. Barry said there where in Germany I said they went to Prague, Barry will claim some units are now back, I never said they where still in Prague I simply said they hadn't returned (to service). The IRN crew reports the weekly circular has paths for testing next week that said the working timetable has paths for trains that never run such as the empty Fridays only Sligo Dublin

Note I avoided the fares issue as its too messy to get into

[Thomas J Stamp]

Interesting replies to this over on IRN.

As a by the way, I noticed that IE are taking nine Mk3 carraiges out of service this Sunday for a special. What service would these carriages usualy be on? We have already reported here that the mark 3's are working to capacity at the moment so I assume that someone's going to go back to Dublin on Sunday in an inferiour type of carraige.

[Mark Gleeson]

IRN don't seem sure what to say, Tim to be fair knows the business as he worked in it. Barry has had it far too easy and I have been waiting for him to stick his neck out

I got Barry on 4 key issues

DART refurbishment, it is late can't hide from that
Punctuality standards, can't hide either
Customer complaints, everyone knows you won't get an answer
Sligo, where do I start ?

The key thing is I can back up all these with hard fact

I have lots more ammunition, the Alstom DART coaches, the CDE sets, on train announcements and real killer the fact its slower to a lot of destinations than 20 years ago

The Knock train is either the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore or Cashel and Emily Knock pilgrimage it would appear to be spare