It should be noted that the Sister Company's timetables publish "55" as a Galway-Rosslare route (albeit composed of 40/55/51 service - still one change fewer than IE would have enforced back when South Wexford service existed).
The laugh is that while the Ennis-Galway section is not competitive vs the bus because of the upgrades to the roads, the failure to upgrade the N24 means the train is still pretty competitive with the bus between Limerick and Waterford and yet IE does little to exploit this while having dropped EUR100m++ on the Ennis-Athenry line.
Even with the low line speed and so on the timetabled journey Limerick Junction-Waterford is 17 minutes faster by train, is also faster Limerick Junction-Limerick but only manages 2h30m three times daily because of the 20min+ waits at the Junction to facilitate meeting Dublin-Cork trains. It's important that the train be
much faster over the distance because of the inconvenient station location in Waterford. Even if the second Waterford-Junction set was reinstated it is likely to be merely assigned to the same sort of duties, operating as a mainline feeder rather than a link between two decent sized urban centres. As discussed previously the Sunday/universities market is not currently sought because of staff costs.
In theory, if a slot and set (*cough* Nenagh Branch *cough*) could be found, Limerick Junction-Limerick could be done in 30 minutes, Limerick Junction-Waterford in 1h38 for a total trip in the 2h10 range - 40+ minutes faster than the bus while making all timetabled stops and offering a single seat service. With the elimination of the LJ connection were Ennis/Galway trains able to meet one or more of these services (let's not hope for through running) IE would be able to compete more aggressively in the Waterford-west of Limerick market also. Of course, the more likely scenario is that IE would make a token change which would be followed by the introduction of a BE 55X service.
