[Article] Railway line to reopen after Cahir derailment

Victor

http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0830/train.html

Railway line to reopen after Cahir derailment
30 August 2004 17:26

A railway line closed for 11 months following an accident in south Tipperary is to reopen next month.

The Waterford to Limerick Junction rail line has been closed to passenger and freight traffic since October of last year following the derailment of a goods train at Cahir.

€2.6 million worth of repairs and upgrading work has taken place at the bridge and over the next fortnight safety checks will be carried out.

The service will be expanded with three return trips for passengers on the route and additional freight runs.

Iarnród Éireann said it had always aimed to have the line open in time for the beet season which starts in October.

An independent investigation into the accident, released in April, found that the unique combination of the older-type design of the freight wagon, and the weight of the cement and track, caused the 24-carriage train to derail sending 12 wagons into the River Suir.

Flukey

I remember that incident. It is good to hear it is opening again. Now if only thgey could re-open a lot of the other closed lines around the country that have been closed a lot longer than 11 months!

Hecate

Cork-Midelton should be re-opened in about 3 or 4 years as a commuter line.

Rredwell

Why don't they extend it out to Youghal?
And what about the old Waterford to Dungarvan line? (Not to mention the Waterford - New Ross line.)
More to the point, what about the Western Rail Corridor, from Ennis to Collooney, via Athenry, Tuam and Claremorris?

GerardKeating

Rredwell wrote:

Why don't they extend it out to Youghal?
And what about the old Waterford to Dungarvan line? (Not to mention the Waterford - New Ross line.)
More to the point, what about the Western Rail Corridor, from Ennis to Collooney, via Athenry, Tuam and Claremorris?

You are talking a few billion euro there.

Of the closed lines, there are quite a few which would make more economic sense than the WRC....

Dublin-Navan
Athlone-Mullingar
Kilkenny-Portlaoise
Edenderry-Enfield
Links to Dublin/Shannon Airports

dowlingm

Midleton - Youghal economics fell off a cliff in comparison to Cork-Midleton. Best to get Midleton a proven success. The same number of trains can make happy campers in Midleton and none in Youghal or equally unsatisfied campers in both places. When Midleton-Carrigtwohill grows (as it is doing) to the point where Castlemartyr-Mogeely, Killeagh and Youghal become proper satellites of the Cork area as the M-C area is now, well by then some fool will have sold the alignment and built over it hehe :rolleyes: I mean, then the Youghal line can be re-opened.

P11 Comms

The Athlone-Mullingar line is the key to developing seriously major rail services into the West of Ireland not just the Midlands.

As for the Western Rail Corridor, the West of Ireland already has the highest concentration of operating pasenger rail lines in the country and the west of Ireland has more airports per population than anywhere else in Europe.

The Western Rail Corridor is a joke from Sligo to Limerick for three trains a day filled with grannies on free travel passes to refill their holy water bottles at Knock and imaginary railfeight that does not exsist.

Now Galway to Limerick via Ennis... That's a "Western Rail Corridor" worth talking about about. 100,000 at one end and 200,000 at the other and 30,000 in the middle over a realitively short distance. That's some serious potenial for the future.

MG

I was going to add that Castlemartyr, Mogeely and Killeagh are very much within the Cork Commuter belt and are expanding rapidly, with all housing & commuting statistics verifying this.

However, I went to check up a statistic and I noticed something which lead me on to a lot of other things.

Firstly, the Faber Maunsell report on Cork rail doesn’t really go into the Youghal line at all. It relies mainly on the previous Atkins McCarthy and Over Arup reports. I then saw something I had never noticed before. The FM report says that Atkins McCarthy forecast “just two passengers in the AM peak hour in 2006”. This seemed very wrong so I looked for a specific Atkins McCarthy report on this. Although I couldn’t find one, the graphic on the CASP report seems to contradict this statistic with what by my reading appears to be a minimum 400 passenger peak demand on the Youghal-Midleton in 2020. (the Youghal demand appears from this graphic to be stronger than Mallow BTW).

Furthermore, I re-read the OA report and although the Youghal branch ranks poorly financially when it is ranked over a variety of factors (Financial, User Benefit, Decongestion, regeneration, environment, safety, integration, accessibility) it was joint best option. Moreover, the 2005 patronage figures mentioned must also be significantly higher than the 2 passengers mentioned in the FM report.

Also the statistics which OA relied upon all seem to be 1999 or earlier. I wonder how accurate these are as a baseline for forecasts given the extraordinary growth in the past 5 years.

Maybe I have misread this totally, but I wonder whether the Youghal question has been fully considered. None of this may make the extension of the Midleton line to Youghal viable, but it might make it closer than the previously accepted wisdom.

dowlingm

MG, I used to reside in the Castlemartyr for nine months of the year so I know about the new housing developments. I totally agree that some of the info needs updating. That said, an extension of the Midleton branch should also take into account any plans to bypass Castlemartyr and/or Killeagh, and it would be nice if the skew bridge over the line at Killeagh could be replaced

A lot of the new housing is along the N25 east of Castlemartyr, whereas it would be nice to see a joint development plan for there and Mogeely to create a small conurbation along the road linking them (which would need improvement). The route of any future bypass would affect this though (any moles in the NRA with more info?)

Crossley

and it would be nice if the skew bridge over the line at Killeagh could be replaced

And have traffic tear into the village at unabated speed ?

MG

DowlingM, the Mogeely-Castlemartyr "conurbation" is a good idea, maybe with the bypass cutting between the two. According to the CASP, there is no scheme proposed to bypass Castlemartyr, so it is probably another 20 years before that bottleneck is alleviated.