[Inniskeen]

What irritates me about Waterford/Rosslare, Ballybrophy/Killonan, Limerick Junction/Waterford and other lines is that large amounts of public money was expended on these routes with very minimal return in terms of useful public service. This expenditure continues with relaying north of Nenagh and the upgrading of Richhill AHB.

The dilemma in respect of Ballybrophy/Killonan is that a lot of resource has already been committed but that significantly more will be needed to make the route viable. I have no doubt it could perform on a par with other radial routes but only in the context of reasonably frequent through services to/from Dublin supplemented by appropriate local services at the Limerick end. Clearly bringing the Limerick (via Nenagh) line up to standard is not going to be achieved in the short term but there is nonetheless a case for keeping the line ticking over in some fashion until conditions permit the investment needed to restore the route to viability.

Bit puzzled as to why 2800s would need to travel from Waterford to Limerick for maintenance after the closure of the line between Waterford and Limerick Junction ???

Not sure that spending money on Limerixk yard will yield anything much in terms of service improvement given that the upgrading of Heuston was followed by a reduction in train speeds in the vicinity of the station.

Of course improvements between Limerick and Limerick Junction should take priority, particularly the restoration of the line speed to 80 mph.