Too many staff?

[comcor]

I can't find a link to this now, but I have a memory that when Waterford-Rosslare closed it was reported that it was losing €4m a year of which €2.5m was the cost of manual level crossings. It seems a bit high considering there were only 12 crossings of public roads on the route.

Although it's more expensive than automating a crossing, surely the ideal is to build a bridge as it doesn't require signalling adjustments. Although it's not always going to be practical (e.g. the old Bridgetown crossing on Rosslare-Waterford was right in the middle of the village) and is made harder by the fact that crossing-keeper's cottages were often built next to the line.

[Mark Gleeson]

Level crossings are being replaced but its working through based on priority and also future plans. So if there are plans to build a bridge or close a road the manual gates remain (see Maynooth line)

So Dublin Rosslare/Galway/Westport/Waterford should be 100% automatic. Dublin Cork has a small number left which are being slowly eliminated.

The capital cost is about 1 million each and an ongoing maintenance cost, its generally rolled into the capital cost of signalling upgrades

[Goods]

Running down the service is step one and then the drop in passenger numbers is used as a reason to reduce volume on the line and finally closure is next. The only country where auto crossings appear as an issue is Ireland , abroad in many countries including France there is hardly a fencing along the lines yet here because of legal interests in running into court rail lines are protected in the extreme. Waterford to Rosslare was an important link, then again I suppose Cork to Rosslare was too before that closed as well.

[comcor]

Mallow to Rosslare

If it had gone Cork-Waterford-Rosslare, a Cork-Waterford section would probably still be hanging on, in the same way that Limerick Junction-Waterford is. Unfortunately, as Youghal was built as a terminus station, in a location where it was next to impossible to cross the Blackwater, a Cork-Waterford link was never possible by joining Youghal to Dungarvan, and splitting after Midleton to go via Lismore would have been second only to Bray Head in terms of Irish railway engineering challenges.

[ACustomer]

Mallow-Waterford had literally dozens and dozens of level crossings which would sooner or later have killed it off. Great for scenery, but not much regular passenger potential.

[Goods]

On the contrary this was the route linking Kerry/Cork to Rosslare and vice versa and was also a fast freight route to a port. The line was heavily used during the beet season moving beet from the rich south east to the sugar factory in Mallow all linked directly to the factory by rail. In our brains we shut down all the beet factories and now import sugar, a double loss. Along the route you had busy towns like Fermoy, Lismore, Cappaquin, Dungarvan and Waterford. The route ran along the spectacular Blackwater and was a treasure and would have had value today in taking container freight off the roads. Mindless destruction of national asset.

[comcor]

The beet went via Limerick Junction. I believe Mallow-Dungarvan closed in 1967, when beet from the South-East would have gone to Carlow (or maybe even another site back then).

Anyway, the status of long-closed lines shouldn't really be the point of this thread. The discussion should focus more on areas where capital expenditure can be used to reduce operational expenditure and improve the viability of marginal lines.