Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson
NIR spent a lot of time on consultation, several thousand responses came back listing what passengers really wanted, Irish Rail never did that. I am aware of one UK based operator which took a group of passengers to the factory and got them to sit inside a new coach and asked to position the seats.
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I think this sums up the difference between IE and NIR.
IE got the engineers in Drogheda heavily involved in the design of the 2900. They made a lot of tweaks to make maintenance easy. They also left out anything that wasn't considered essential - such as bits that would make the ride smoother or the interior quieter (I had the pleasure of sitting over a failed generator motor this evening, which made fora much quieter journey). The good thing about this is that they almost never break down. The bad thing is that they aren't the most comfortable trains in the world. They are trains designed for engineers, not passengers.
NIR got passengers involved, and it certainly shows form looking at the interior of the 3CK. It's a lot more comfortable from a passenger perspective. However, despite sharing quite a few components with the 2900, the reliability is nowhere near as good. Clearly it's a train designed for people rather than engineers.
It's a shame we can't combine the two and take the best aspects of each of them, because they both have things that they do well. Alas, I fear if such a union were to occur, the result might be we'd get an organisation that couldn't handle engineering or customer service.