Category: General

Irish Rail’s new timetable is due to commence on 11th December with small changes overall. On the webpage announcing these changes, IR also listed the main suggestions for service improvements from the public consultation process and the reasons for such suggestions not being implemented – the main one being insufficient drivers.

One of the suggestions which I disagree with (and which IR swiftly and correctly passed over to the NTA) is that Newbridge should be brought within the Short Hop zone.

This is a ludicrous suggestion and would see a commuter in Castleknock (10km as the crow flies from Dublin City Centre) paying the same annual fare as someone in Newbridge (42km as the crow flies from Dublin City Centre).

Some would argue that the distance determinations should be based on actual rail mileage. I would argue against that as modern day commuters should not be punished for engineering and landlord appeasing decisions made over 150 years ago when railway lines were built.

If the NTA were to include Newbridge in the Short Hop Zone, they would similarly need to extend the zone to Drogheda, Wicklow Town and Enfield – not an appropriate definition of Short Hop.

A better use of NTA resources would be to move PSO bus routes in the rail short hop zone that are currently with Bus Eireann/Go Ahead Regional services to the Dublin Area contracts, extending such services into North and East Kildare, thereby standardising bus and rail services in one zone. I will declare an interest here, residing as I do in Kilcock and would therefore be a beneficiary of such a move.

People wonder why I don’t like Irish Rail. Things like this are the reason.

I should be getting the 13:32 ex Kilcock to Maynooth to transfer to the 13:45 ex Maynooth to Confey, to undertake volunteer litter picking on the Royal Canal.

However, as is not uncommon for Irish Rail, the first train (from Sligo) is late and there is no guarantee of a connection at Maynooth. The second issue relates to the single track west of Maynooth. The real time departures section of the Irish Rail website is currently reporting an impossibility:

The first section is showing an arrival at Kilcock of a train to Sligo at 13:42. However, the second section is showing an arrival of the train I should be on at 13:45. Due to the single track section between Maynooth and Enfield, this is a physical impossibility and the IR website is publishing a lie.

This post has nothing to add about this venture, an excellent synopsis of which was written by the late Brian J Goggin on irishwaterwayshistory.com.

I was reminded of this just now when looking for information on the navigation planned for Ballinrobe, Co. Mayo – the reason for this being background work I am doing in updating the Gazetteer map to include primary rivers and lakes.

This will allow me to move into the second phase of the Gazetteer – including canals/river navigations therein. These will take the same format as the railway gazetteer (a map with links to pages for specific features and a photo gallery). However, I am planning to also create separate webpages for each canal/navigation.

This will, in no way, attempt to usurp what Brian has done (very few people, least of all me, would be fit to walk in Brian’s footsteps) but will showcase these features in a different way.

‘We like the information you provide, just not your site.’

If you don’t like it here, don’t come here.

One of the activities I started a few months ago was a monthly volunteer litter picking event on the Royal Canal at Clonsilla.

I was supposed to be doing that today, but Gobshite Rail decided to not bolster capacity on the Sligo line for whatever bogball match is on in Croke Park, meaning that when the relevant train that should have brought me to Maynooth arrived at Kilcock, it was already full and no boarding possible. Needless to say, the PA at Kilcock remained silent about this.

As a State body, Gobshite Rail is required to favour all equally or not at all. I would like Gobshite Rail to explain why those travelling to bogball matches should be prioritised over every other recreational activity.

A traditional trope in Ireland when someone criticises something (especially the State) is to hit back with a suggestion that the person making the criticism should go and work there if they think they could do better.

For the record, I recently applied for a role in the company and received a generic email yesterday advising me that they would not be calling me for interview. I did offer to put my money where my mouth is, but a company like this would only be intimidated by someone who is as knowledgeable about their company (and its dead bodies) as I am.

Many accuse me of being tactless (I prefer the term “honest”). However, compared to these guys, I am a diplomat.

Many years ago, when the Kildare Route Project was being proposed as Irish Rail’s Celtic Tiger vanity project, I (unsuccessfully) lodged an objection to same, suggesting that an alternative (and cheaper) method of improving capacity between Inchicore and Hazelhatch and Celbridge would be to 4 track the stations and have commuter trains pull into the loops at such stations to allow mainline trains to overtake.

I was out and about in Dublin yesterday, which included taking me to Clongriffin Station. The DART I was on pulled into the loop on the Down side of the station and waited. The reason for this – to allow a Belfast bound train to overtake.

Amazing what can be done when you don’t have access to taxpayers’ money to spaff up against a wall.

I spent yesterday riding the rails in Dublin – my first time on a train in over 2 years.

One of the things I noticed was this appalling act of virtue signalling (apologies for the poor quality – daylight was fading when I took this shot):

For the benefit of the slow of learning, there are over 30 studies on the effectiveness of facemasks which show that they make no difference – even where properly applied in a medical setting, never mind when improperly applied and re-used as is the case amongst the sheep.

Industrialheritageireland.info has moved.

No longer living in beautiful Ballyfermot, I am now residing in Kilcock.

I was out and about today taking photographs for the Gazetteer (small number of short lived stations sites on the line between Howth and Drogheda via Howth Junction).

I finished up in Drogheda, taking a photograph of the approach to the original D&DR station in Drogheda, which was to the east of the present station and the site of which is now occupied by the Drogheda Traincare Depot.

View Larger Map

Looking at the photos I took and at the track layout on openstreetmap.org, there is effectively only one access point to the depot (technically there are two but they are side by side). This is not best engineering practice as if a train were to fail along the section of track covering the two access points, the depot (and potentially all trains therein) are stranded in the depot.

This is not an unrealistic prospect as this did happen in the Traincare Depot in Portlaoise.