I travel with them quite a bit and it is amazing the difference across NIR recently, for a very long time they have been stuck in a slowly decaying limbo with no funding and a crumbling service held together with duck tape.
They have made big improvements with the small stations in the last two years, they are very basic but all the signs and information has been replaced and it makes a huge difference to the appearance.
It is hard to believe that Central is in fact the same building. It used to be the most miserable, dark, cramped and unpleasant station I had ever seen. It has been transformed completely.
The staff are indeed far more likely to be acting in a professional manner than the IE good/awful attitude lottery, except for a few incidents back in the bad old days I have never had any bad experiences with the staff.
I have to say I am not so enthralled with the C3K trains, they are a hell of a lot better than the 2900s but after 90 minutes on a crowded GVS-Derry train my back was feeling seriously nostalgic for a comfortable 80 class bench seat.
The design of the cars and the interior finish is good, if it wasn't for the geniuses who think they know how to make ergonomic seats they would be a great unit for their purpose.
I would love to know what the price difference between a car of that stock and a car of 2900 stock is. Almost every aspect of them is higher quality, somehow I doubt the cost savings for IE were worth it.
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