Galway-Limerick slow speeds
 

Took the train from Galway to Limerick today and back, excruciating slow. I was curious why the trains go so slow, as most of the line is straight and level. There were several times when the train was crawling along at 5mph on straight track for no reason. This is a problem throughout the entire network, but Galway to Limerick seems to be the worst, can someone explain to me why this is?

the enginneers wont sign it off ! simple as that:(

But the track can physically sustain trains travelling at whatever the trackspeed is on the other parts of the route?

Not necessarily. While the rails and sleepers may be the same, you also have to factor in horizontal and vertical curvature, ballast/formation, super elevation (camber), level crossings, signals, over-bridge bridge clearance, underbridge design loadings, noise effects, etc. Axel loadings and vehicle design may result in train-specific limits, e.g. 201-class locos often have a lower speed limit than other rail vehicles due to their weight, even though they are capable of the high speed.

The two main factors on this route appear to be curvature and level crossings.

The NRA wouldn't get away with it, would they? If a section of HQDC or motorway was limited to 40mph for no good reason indefinitely somebody would be making a fuss. I bet if IE was separate track and operating the operating side wouldn't be shy about telling passengers it was infrastructure's fault.

That is precisely the practise that we were told do towards Network Rail when I was a driver for a TOC in the UK. Except many of the schedules in the UK are run so tight and have little or no recovery time in them so a minor speed restriction could result in delays of several minutes for the rest of the journey.

The speed limits are due to numerous level crossings with substandard sighting distances due in part vertical and horizontal curvature. Absolutely no discretion or exemptions are allowed as this is considered a new route.

The line was never built for passenger services and combined with a very boggy foundation has serious restrictions.

The line was reopened on the cheap to keep politicians happy, the consultants report looked at basically a new line from Limerick to Oranmore but came back at 600 million to 1 billion depending on spec/route.

So I am assuming there are no plans to bring this line up to a more suitable level? Also if the line was not intended for passenger services, what was it intended for? There are no heavy industries on that line. And to me it seems like the bad shape of the infrastructure will pretty much result in no one taking the whole route to Galway and instead opt for faster bus services.

The line was opened solely to shut up some politicians and local interests who were under the impression the line would be some kind of amazing solution to the west of Ireland's problems. It failed miserably to meet the very low passenger number targets.

The solution chosen by Government was the cheapest possible option to reopen the line, the fanciful 1 billion for a new line were ruled out. All investment proposals for the line where investigated and ALL failed to meet the minimum standard to justify investment, despite this the line was reopened

The line was originally built on the cheap in the Victorian era to transport cattle and sugar beet.

In order to make up the massive operating loss as a result of the line opening the Waterford Rosslare line which carried 3 times more passengers per train than Ennis - Athenry was axed.

the thing about Waterford/rosslare was the population wasnt big enough for starters plus trains were ran at peak commuting times and often ran empty !

i agree little or no promotion was done on it , connections at each end should been better

also the speeds on the line were quite good!

Waterford Rosslare had an average load of 20+ per train, 30-40 minutes faster than car

Ennis - Athenry is currently averaging 7, 30-40 minutes slower than car

ive been on that train more than 10 times isnt alot at stages i was the only person on-board and there was never over 15 when i was on -board.....

Just to prove how crazy up and down, left right the WRC is

http://www.flickr.com/photos/finnyus...57629698779844

http://www.flickr.com/photos/finnyus...7629698779844/

This has a massive impact on sighting distance and train performance and imposes unavoidable speed limits

For what its worth, I think its time to end the argument about the Ennis-Athenry line, for better or worse the boat on its reopening has long sailed.
Are the few people who use the route now rail users or not and have they no less right to be represented by the RUI.
Its all well and good saying I told u so but the line is open and now the focus must be on getting it to work.

First, there seems to be a fixation in Ireland with line speed vs cars, in my experience people with cars (unless commuting into a city centre) would rather eat their hat then use a train, when visiting friends in Ennis they always offer to drive to Limerick, thinking I'd have to be daft to get the train. I use trains because I have no car but like to move around.
There are in my experience 3 things this or any other line in Ireland needs to boost numbers and attract passengers.
1. More services, people, especially young people like the idea of turning up whenever and getting a train wherever, do you think the DART would carry 10% of its current passngers with only 10% of the services. All routes should have an hourly service, especially now we have railcars.
Connections, If I travel Waterford Limerick I have to wait a long time in Lmk Jctn for a train ???? The Dublin Galway train should connect nicely with the Athenry-Ennis service, they want to stop the Limerick Nenagh service, the last time I was tried to get it my Train from Ennis( the first for two hours) missed it by a matter of minutes. Time trains to arrive at junctions together and leave together. Try to go Cobh- Midleton, it takes over an hour outside peak.
Trains. Commuter sets are not ideal for Waterford Galway, its not as if they need the Density, Train Travel on 2200s or mark 4 is so much more comfartable, couldnt some railcars be modified for "regional work" to have a better set up for this route.

One last point, we are the only Country to my knowledge where the Government subsides express busses running the same route as trains while many large population centres have no bus service to speak of.

technically Expressway is not subsidised. Not directly, at least.

One would expect this comment from Alan Kelly with his track record of train services. Just as well Leo V hasn't ruled out a closure if numbers don't increase. Although its very unlikely to close, if IE can/do improve it, it changes nothing as people won't use it.

Bit hypocritical to be firing at Galway-Limerick. Don't remember ever reading about one of those trains turning back because it ran out of customers, as the Nenagh branch (or "LGV Kelly") has done at Birdhill from time to time as I understand.

That's right but this route has the business at the start and the end, just nobody want's to use the middle of the route.

Took a bit of a ramble from Galway to Dublin via Limerick and Nenagh a few days ago.

The numbers using varying services were interesting

1345 Galway/Limerick - 40 passengers leaving Athenry, 14 off, 18 on at Ennis.
1420 Limerick/Galway - 30 passengers off at Ennis, 25 departing Ennis

1540 Limerick Junction/Limerick (1400 ex Dublin, 1420 ex Cork) - 34 passengers arriving at Limerick.

1622 Limerick Junction/Limerick (1520 ex Cork) - 3 passengers.

1655 Limerick/Ballybrophy - 16 passengers leaving Limerick, 8 off at Castleconnell, 3 on, 2 off at Nenagh, 1 on, 2 off at Cloughjordan and 1 off at Roscrea.

1720 Cork/Dublin - 100 passengers leaving Ballybrophy.

1945 Heuston/Portlaoise - 55/65 passengers

2030 DART ex Howth, approx 500 seats, about 40 passengers inbound at Clontarf Road.

More interesting than you'd think.

you were very lucky with that ballybrophy service considering there was no service 8,9,10,11, and 15th July.

any idea how many of the passengers you observed were full ticket price paying?

is 25 or 16 passengers an acceptable figure?

Is a figure of 3 on a shuttle service acceptable?

the 100 passengers at ballybrophy would be paying a lot of money as they would ahve got on before then and would be going to dublin. Of course there would be a certain amount of Free passes on that too, maybe students.

is 40 an acceptable number on a frequent mid-evening post peak city service, as opposed to a mid afternoon intercity service?

what can be done to increase those numbers. None of them really are any good. Perhaps all of those services should be cut.

we should also read this thread in conjunction with these posts

http://www.railusers.ie/forum/showthread.php?t=14815

The Limerick J to Limerick shuttle when I have travelled on it, they have very light loads. I have being on the last 4 evening departures towards Dublin over the last year any and it's very common for below 15 on the services. At most 25 on afternoon services via the Junction from Dublin.

From being on the 17.20 from Cork a lot of the traffic is make up of a Rail tour group and OAP's with some commuter traffic to Mallow.

What we do know is that IE will need more savings from services next timetable so something will have to change.

Cork, Limerick and Galway will surly have to give some savings, It would be a bold and very unjustifiable move to cut Waterford again and IMO they can't as numbers on most services are quiet good and the fleet reconfiguration will save costs.

The numbers on some Galway services are appalling at times.

I'm not sure that the point hasn't been reached where cutting a service will cut revenue enough that it's self-defeating.

From that point of view, they'll either need to look at increasing revenues or cutting costs in other areas.

For revenue, there really are a few areas that you would think of as easy wins - selling newspapers on InterCity trains, selling hotel rooms on the website (all this needs is a link and an affiliate code) or extending that to rail/hotel packages. Yield management is more challenging, especially with the number of free passes around.

Costs? Well, do they have any form of continuous improvement system? That tends to be an all round good idea. Staff think they get listened to and are more accepting of change. The company gets to see reduced cost.

Yes it about improving yield however the Cork/Limerick route capacity is well above demand which is compressing revenue on the route. Over capacity is why they have introduced 9.99 fares on plenty of services. Reducing services will improve revenue and reduce costs which is what's needed. There is more services to Limerick per day than Cork when direct and indirect are included. You could easily cut a few shuttle services during off peak hours.

Like why do they have a 16.00, 16.25, 17.00, 17.25 services to Limerick daily, yes Cork services are slightly quicker however the costs savings will easily stack up if the shuttle was stopped.

Until capacity drops, yields won't increase at all in fact they could reduce more as the 9.99 fares can make people very flexible and these passengers who were paying lets say 20 euro will now pay 50% less.

It can't go on and IE will have to realise it sometime.

I would like to see a day on all intercity routes either a Tuesday or Wednesday the quietest days and we would get the real picture on loads.

I think Limk Junction-Limk balances out in the grand scheme of things passenger number wise given some services are very very busy (Friday evenings comes to mind) and some are rather quiet, like the ones mentioned here.

You have to be careful when talking about cuts to services, for what I think are sound business reasons.

These days, a train may make 3 to 5 single intercity journeys in a day. Some of these may be lightly loaded, but they are part of a longer link, so they can't be dropped without disrupting other services.

Also the marginal cost of train operation is probably much lower now: you don't need quite as many passengers to cover the costs of operating a 3-car ICR as you would have with a 201 and 9 MkIIIs.

When the hourly Cork service was introduced, it lead to increased patronage, even allowing for the general bubble-era boom in traffic. Good frequency attracts custom and lower frequency would also mean more stops on the Cork line and thus an even worse competitive situation vis-a-vis the motorway.

Jamie2k9: The Galway line had its service level increased this year, against the general trend, so I assume that business maust be good. (for what it's worth, the 2 trains I was on yesterday were well-filled)

It did but I would love to know if it added numbers on the route as from what I can see it just took from others, have not seen loads recently but its the summer so they will be lower anyway. The extra services just added major delays daily on the route and now most Galway services have up to 15 added from end of the month. I bet passengers will be delighted about this.

Fully agree but it can't be sustained, we are not talking about major cuts but if one or two services per day were cut it would add up over a year. Don't agree about more stops as the cuts wouldn't have any major impact.

It just comes down to better scheduling and I don't agree with your comment about longer link as it could all be sorted out.

In the evening peak, most Limerick-bound passengers would be using the direct trains from Dublin.

Fully understand where your coming from but does Limerick need 5 trains between 15.25 and 17.25. 5 trains in 2 hours how can IE justify this, they cannot say that there is demand for 5 trains. Even Cork only has 2 services in the same period.

Can you justify 5 services in 2 hours and there is no way IE can say yes there is demand for all these services and they are no carrying major losses. 1508 seats (includes 3 6 car direct and 2 3 car shuttle) point to point traffic to Limerick would be well below 500, I think around 200 in this period on an average weekday. It's its absolute madness that this carry on is happening when they are 22 million in the red and IE go after other routes and cut capacity when they know full well full capacity is needed.

the problem being that these shuttles connect with cork trains and also waterford ones?

So you have one shuttle from the ex-cork train, one from the ex-dublin train, one to the waterford train and one back? you can hardly go back to the time of the long long gaps hanging about in the junction. without the shuttles i think you would have a knock on in relation to waterford services.

surely its one train anyway? going to and fro to the junction?

16.25 Heuston-Limerick connects with the inbound Waterford services and the outbound services meets the 17.00 to Cork connects with it and the shuttle from Limerick.

I am just saying some better scheduling could deliver greater efficiency. The 15.00 to Cork doesn't connect for Limerick and I don't see a need for the 16.00 to either. Keep the 17.00 services which carries the most traffic, average 25-30 connection onto Limerick when I used it.

As for connections off Cork train, is demand high to justify such a large services, I have never saw double numbers connect. Oh and there is at least 2 trains doing the limerick shuttle.

As I said greater efficiency can and needs to be delivered.

As with so many things in Irish regional rail, it's the design of Limerick Junction that causes the problem here.

It ends up with running far too many services because a train to Limerick or Waterford can't connect with both a Dublin-bound and Cork-bound train at the same time.

If you can manage that part, you only need 1 shuttle and hour.

The question then becomes what are the operational savings and can they justify the capital cost of realignment.

The layout does cause problems but there is still room for improvement as it is.

This just appeared today:
http://www.irishrail.ie/cat_offers.jsp?i=4877

http://www.irishrailbreaks.ie/

as i am always saying - there are several coachloads of tourists every day in roscrea. do those tour organisers even know there is a railway line into the town?

depends on where they are coming from/going to no? Many of these tours may be door to door affairs so the train isn't necessarily the most convenient. Not being a naysayer, just trying to see how much of a sweetspot there actually is here.

all uk tourists so i assume they hit dublin somewhere. all it takes is for IE to approach someone like PAB and hit them with an offer.

Galway - Limerick
 

It is amazing that the ghosts of Beeching and Marples now haunt the Irish rail network i.e trying to make things as difficult as possible for the customer with connections etc. Istead of saying we have a line between two major centres of population now lets make it work. Has nobody heard of rail tourism like in Scotland where they put on steam hauled trains that are very well patronised. Putting on trains when people want to use them, having connections that work. All I seem to hear is that this line should not have been built. Lets rejoice that it has been and make it work. People campaigned long and hard for this to be reopened lets hear possitive suggestions not just negativity at all time. Why do people not have the same love of railways that exsists in the UK? Not a single major heritage line in the country I have long suggested Midleton - Youghal for this, but no one seems interested. The railways of Ireland are a wonderful resource in a beautiful country instead of trying to make the system more compact MAKE IT WORK!!