18:05 Connolly-Logford held at killucan 8/7/08
 

Arrived at killucan at 19:04. Driver announced there would be a 20 minute delay due to late running of the Sligo-dublin train. At 19:14 driver announced that Sligo train had just arrived at mullingar. We left Kiilucan once dublin bound train had passed us at 19:24. Arrived in Mullingar at 19:32

Why could we not have continued to Mullingar arriving at 19:12 approx? There are two platforms there that could have accomodated both trains and would have prevented our 20 minute delay getting in to Mullingar. Is there some problem with the points/signals at Mullingar statiion to prevent this?

Thats a (ix) (b) in the book.

Clearly you should have been allowed to Mullingar, in fact there are 4 platforms in Mullingar, 3 are fully useable. Yes it would require the signalman to manually route both trains, but thats easy

Totally unacceptable

I too was very mad about this situation, it is not a one off, we are often delayed in Killucan for over 10 minutes waiting for the Sligo train. I understand if it is not far away but in 7 minutes we could be in Mullingar and wait there to pass the Sligo train on one of the many "un-used" platforms.
:mad:

Timed
 

I timed the journey three times last week from Killucan to Mullingar. On average it took 7 mins 30 seconds

Exactly, so this proves we could be in Mullingar in shorter than the 10-20 minutes we wait in Killucan station. We could possibly even use one of the many disused platforms in Mullingar. The 18.15 was delayed in Enfield for 15 minutes yesterday waiting for the Sligo train again!

IR have informed me that the reason for the delay was that the police boarded the train as some people refused to pay for a ticket. Wierd that we were told the Sligo train wasn't even in Mullingar yet and also that this happens regularly. WHo knows what is true and what is not!!!

The waiting for the cops routine is a great excuse :D

Irish Rail are truly brilliant at telling passengers two totally different stories about what goes wrong.