29000 DMUs - Poor Condition
 

Have IE any plans to refurbish the 29000 DMUs? I use these trains daily and most of them appear to have a very poor external appearance where there is evidence of filling and the paintwork is missing or very shabby

IE started repainting them in a new livery over 3 years ago but only a few seem to have been done. Why was the exercise to repaint them in the new commuter livery not completed?

Money

Externally doesn't look great but has no impact on reliability

The floors on these units also look a bit iffy. Plenty of places where it's been patched together, and the odd spot that seems a little bouncy underfoot.

It also bugs me how IE seem to go out of their way to pair an old livery set with a new livery one!

I'm sure it's all only cosmetic, and we all know IE's funding has been squeezed in every direction.

Floor is a known issue under investigation, its going to be expensive to address

Translation: it's not going to be addressed until IE find some more money. :-)

Living in hope that when they fix the floors, they will add better sound insulation.

From what I gather the issue is a lot more complex and no easy fix. Money may be a problem as well.

Are CAF liable in any way, given some were only built in 2005.

There is a floating floor on the 29k and 22k which sits on the real floor, this is to insulate from noise/cold

The framework of this is collapsing due the heavy loads and water ingress.

One coach was stripped down to see the scale of the problem

CAF are off the hook, warranty is well past at this point, the 29k's remain incredibly reliable

While the 29000s may be mechanically very reliable, the overall service in the GDA leaves a huge amount to be desired. It is a terrible rail service that is extremely slow and with regular delays. Adding in the poor appearance of the trains and many stations it just is not attractive to passengers.

They should not have started to repaint the 29000s if they could not afford to complete the project. The whole Dublin rail system is completely disjointed and even though it is a very small system it is not well presented to the public at all

And it is going to get even slower and less reliable when the fantasy 10 minute interval DART service is introduced !

Any updates on the 29000s? I recently saw one of them coming out of the Inchicore Paint Facility. Have they got the funding to make these presentable again?

Painting of the worst sets are continuing

There have been some patchwork repairs to the floors but its probably going to drag on until mid life overhaul