Irish Rail's move to ICRs could almost be used as a case-study in inflexibility. It is nuts - the only way the system works cleanly is in blocks of 3 cars and there is no real way to adjust capacity outside of that.
They are obviously making matters worse in moving to 4-car sets as it is making things even less flexible with a dire shortage of 3-car sets. They are now effectively stuck with running an extra car for services that used to need 6 cars and even with that they only end up with another 30 or 40 seats over the 6 cars. I would say they are also running 4-car sets where 3 would do just to save the 3-car sets to make up 7.
The shortage of 3-car sets is leading to incidents like last Friday where they had to run the 1705 to Sligo with absurd levels over overcrowding.
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