Commuter trains to be replaced by 33 new railcars

dowlingm

Seen at Irish Railway News: The Mark3 Pushpull fleet is to be replaced by 33 additional Rotem (22000 class) railcars.

Here's the press release:
http://www.transport.ie/viewitem.asp?id=8880&lang=ENG&loc=2126

MLM

The additional new trains are welcome, but its a bit ridculous that somewhere as far away as Athlone is considered part of the Dublin Commuter belt.

dowlingm

maybe some of them will operate Athlone-Galway?

MarkoP11

MLM wrote:

The additional new trains are welcome, but its a bit ridculous that somewhere as far away as Athlone is considered part of the Dublin Commuter belt.

They ain't additional

Now 183 on order
Total of 133 Mk3 coaches to be withdrawn (confirmed now)
Approx 40 Mk2 coaches to be withdrawn (by mid 2008)
Total being withdrawn approx 173

Net gain 10

Its all politics

yabadabado

u wud be surprised how many people commute from athlone every day

Red Alert

how many mark 3's does that leave assuming the mk 2's are kaput.

MarkoP11

Zilch

99 Mk3
9 Mk3a
all to go by 2009

As of today
24 Mk3pp
1 Mk3pp ex HST
all gone by 2009 ish

So for all the talk there is a small increase in the fleet but nothing magical, the numbers still don't add up with the promised capacity

Sarsfield

MarkoP11 wrote:

They ain't additional

Now 183 on order
Total of 133 Mk3 coaches to be withdrawn (confirmed now)
Approx 40 Mk2 coaches to be withdrawn (by mid 2008)
Total being withdrawn approx 173

Net gain 10

Its all politics

What's the gain/loss in seat numbers and trainsets?

MarkoP11

Swapping the push pull trains for the 33 new railcars is worth about 25% extra in seats

Passenger numbers where up 14% last year so that 25% extra means little it won't do much in dealing with people standing, no one should stand for more than 20 minutes so basically Sallins and outwards no train should have someone standing.

DerekP11

And lets not forget that these trains are predominently designed for inter city work. Off loading commuters through single doorways is not a good idea. They aren't designed for large numbers standing either.

It would appear lazy. A dedicated commuter unit designed for the distance would make more sense. But the IE/Irish Government combo meal, just isn't as good as KFC.:D

SeanW

http://www.transport.ie/viewitem.asp?id=8880&lang=ENG&loc=2126

33 new of those Korean InterCity railcars for commuter services to Athlone, Portlaoise and Carlow.

What baffles me the most though is that noone saw this coming, the first read of this, was a link to the press release in the P11 forums. Neither the P11 guys who, to their eternal credit, normally know what's going to happen 6 months before it does and almost always have the inside scoop, nor the IRN crowd whom I would have expected to have heard something, nor anything here on boards.ie. Just WHAM, there it is ... not that I'm complaining - more new high quality trains are always a good thing.

My guess is that the government just decided to do this recently, like in the last week or so. I've noticed that they've been getting busy recently, sorting out long overdue business with emergency legislation, buying bridges etc, my guess is they want to show they're actually capable of doing something in the run up to the election.

dowlingm

SeanW

more like FF candidates running to Bertie about getting dogs abuse on the doorsteps in Kildare, Wicklow, Meath etc. to me - cue a phone call to Korea!