Western Rail Corridor (all disused sections)

westtip

what_traffic wrote: »

Trouble is that its the NRA tasked with this job - just watch what they will do with the Dublin -> Galway route. Guarantee that they will put significant sections of it on the old N6 i.e converting the hard shoulders as they already have "responsibility" for this road. They have no interest in Greenways IMHO; they just want to protect their jobs; they will always take the easiest option.

Not sure I agree Varadkar is under pressure on this one, I know that Waterways Ireland have already all but agreed to the tow paths been geenway - the real pressure is on Irish Rail to go to Varadakar and say have these old railways we don't want them, because they are a drain on our resources.

The Idyll Race

Welcome to the infamous Western Railway Corridor thread, where half a dozen guys hope that they can replicate their hero Tod Andrews and destroy more of the railway so that SIMI, private buses and connected landowners can get more of the public purse

Sponge Bob

The Idyll Race wrote: »

SIMI, private buses and connected landowners can get more of the public purse

There is no economic justifcation for the WRC, cheap and frequent buses deliver a much better outcome all the way from Sligo to Cork. Reopening substandard light railway alignments, and at great cost, do not.

You will note that nobody is calling for the Sligo - Dublin Galway - Dublin and Westport - Dublin railway lines to be closed and converted to Greenways either...despite their being of somewhat dubious utility and value nowadays.

Cornwall (EG) has a population AS GREAT AS CONNACHT AND CLARE TOGETHER...and one heavy railway line with branches.

WOT expect a grid and multiple main lines out in Connacht which is way bigger and less populated. This is quite insane. Heavy Rail is for Heavily Populated Areas.

corktina

The Idyll Race wrote: »

Welcome to the infamous Western Railway Corridor thread, where half a dozen guys hope that they can replicate their hero Tod Andrews and destroy more of the railway so that SIMI, private buses and connected landowners can get more of the public purse

What rubbish you spout!

The "new" part of the WRC was built against IEs wishes at a cost of €106 million , carries an average of 9 passengers per train and loses €3 million a year. It's a fait accompli, so I'd like to see something made of it rather than just shut it again, but it's hard to see how when it is and always will be much slower than the parallel Motorway. I'd also like to see more real effort made on the other 2 or 3 lines teetering on the brink, but I fear they are a lost cause.

SIMI would gain virtually nothing out of closed lines as it is part of Rails problem that most people already have access to a car and like to make the most of their investment understandably.

Private Bus operators wont gain either, as they are not subsidised (unlike BE!)

Landowners wont gain either as I think you'll find that all the motorways alongside the threatened lines have been built

The winner from trimming these lines will be the taxpayer in having the subsidy reduced and the traveller on the core lines from having resources freed up to spend on them. We really should be devoting these resources to imroving these lines to a 21st century standard, from the 19th century standard they now represent.

end of the road

corktina wrote: »

The winner from trimming these lines will be the taxpayer in having the subsidy reduced and the traveller on the core lines from having resources freed up to spend on them.

i bet you it wouldn't work out like that though. the closures in the 60s and 70s were supposed to save money and help the others thrive and free up money and resources to spend on the core lines, what did we get? nothing that we wouldn't have got anyway, new trains, the new signalling system, yet the lines are slower or as slow as they were back then.

corktina wrote: »

We really should be devoting these resources to imroving these lines to a 21st century standard, from the 19th century standard they now represent.

the only way that can happen is if the government decides to give the railway a huge investment, and someone who has a clue on running a railway becomes chief whip at irish rail and spends the money on improving speeds, neither are going to happen.

The Idyll Race

corktina wrote: »

What rubbish you spout!

The "new" part of the WRC was built against IEs wishes at a cost of €106 million , carries an average of 9 passengers per train and loses €3 million a year. It's a fait accompli, so I'd like to see something made of it rather than just shut it again, but it's hard to see how when it is and always will be much slower than the parallel Motorway. I'd also like to see more real effort made on the other 2 or 3 lines teetering on the brink, but I fear they are a lost cause.

SIMI would gain virtually nothing out of closed lines as it is part of Rails problem that most people already have access to a car and like to make the most of their investment understandably.

Private Bus operators wont gain either, as they are not subsidised (unlike BE!)

Landowners wont gain either as I think you'll find that all the motorways alongside the threatened lines have been built

The winner from trimming these lines will be the taxpayer in having the subsidy reduced and the traveller on the core lines from having resources freed up to spend on them. We really should be devoting these resources to imroving these lines to a 21st century standard, from the 19th century standard they now represent.

If I am talking rubbish, why do you bother jumping on it then?

We've tried that before - killing the peripheral parts of the railway was supposed to "save" the railway. In fact this attitude was a legacy of the takeover of the GSR by the DUTC creating the CIE monolith. Before this the DUTC was in the thirties taken over by the management of the General Omnibus Company - the suitably Fianna Fail connected Percy Reynolds.

Essentially a bunch of FF busmen took over the railways and closed chunks of the system even before CS Andrews wielded the axe over Harcourt Street, the Howth trams and the West Cork and West Clare railways.

Andrews was connected with the owners of a well known company that manufactured road aggregate and performed accordingly.

What works out in practice - killing chunks of the railway in order to save it is about as effective as a bunch of people fúcking for virginity and with none of the pleasure. The railways get removed for reasons such as commercial operators seeking to get business, or blatantly in the case of M3 Parkway being stuck behind a toll barrier, and not one of the WRC opponents has denied that landowners have made hugely inflated sums off the back of motorway construction.

What is hilarious about all this is the grim determination from the hivemind here that there never will be any chance to use the railway north of Athenry. I can only ascribe this to a education under the twin grim reapers of Sean Barrett of Trinners and Moore McDowell of Donnybrook Polytechnic.

If Barrett had been listened to in the 1970s and 1980s there wouldn't be a scrap of railway anywhere in the country. Hugely increased population, traffic and travel issues proved him spectacularly wrong. Claremorris to Collooney as part of a strategic cross country line, which is what the local authorities want, wont be rerailed anytime soon but preventing it from ever happening will be proved to be short sighted folly. Tuam to Athenry connecting onwards would be useful, Limerick to Galway would have been useful if Irish Rail ran it properly. If you really want to see what tearing the railways out of the country does in practice, go to Monaghan. Go to Omagh. Go to Letterkenny. Go to Enniskillen. Go to Donegal. Go to anywhere in a huge swathe of the country north of the Sligo line and south of the Belfast-Derry line and try and get there in a reasonable amount of time and in any degree of comfort. Good luck with that.

corktina

Claremorris to Colooney was only ever a Light Railway. When there was no competition to the Railways, it lost money, it's trains crawled along at a legal maximum of 25mph, it survived on the cattle trade, as a feeder to the moribund SL&NCR....

Talk of it as a Strategic Cross Country route, is laughable. There is virtually no rail traffic between Limerick and Galway , two of Ireland bigger cities, how on earth do you think there will be anyone wanting to travel from Sligo(a small town) to Claremorris (an even smaller town)?

dowlingm

Idyll

I hope you would agree that there are areas of the existing network which could be significantly enhanced with the cash required to extend the network north of Athenry. Why should the Irish taxpayer reinstate yet another 40-50mph single track line with dozens of grade crossings when the same cash could allow the existing trackage to carry as many additional passengers (I would argue many more). This is before one reflects on the single track between Athenry-Galway which such a service must co-exist with Dublin and Limerick service, into a station with only two platforms.

I'm thinking of projects like more double track Maynooth-Mullingar, improving speed and capacity Limerick-Ennis, at least some triple/quad track between Connolly and Howth Junction, additional passing track Cherryville-Waterford and Greystones-Wicklow and so on.

Adding loops, extending platforms, maybe some LC closures or overbridge remediation - not sexy stuff a politician can make his name on - but in terms of increasing revenue and loads on the services far more cost-effective.

There was discussion above about how much was spent on the existing lines but how much capacity has been removed from the system, with consequent effects on journey times because of waiting at signals, because when CTC/miniCTC was put in many manual loops were lifted and replaced with tangent track because of the cost of the additional signalling? That money spent was really to avoid fatal derailments but the money started to dry up when the projects to increase capacity were coming through, with only the truncated KRP to show for it.

Sponge Bob

The Idyll Race wrote: »

If Barrett had been listened to in the 1970s and 1980s there wouldn't be a scrap of railway anywhere in the country. Hugely increased population, traffic and travel issues proved him spectacularly wrong. Claremorris to Collooney as part of a strategic cross country line,

It wasn't nicknamed the Burma road for nothing in its latter decades.

From West on Track themselves.

http://www.westontrack.com/history01.htm

The Burma Road" enjoyed a rail service consisting of one train each way every weekday. The "up" train originated in Sligo at 8.50 a.m. arriving in Limerick at 2.35 p.m., with the "down" train leaving Limerick at 3.15 p.m. and reaching Sligo at 8.35 p.m. Leisurely travel indeed and one can, perhaps, envisage prolonged stops at stations en route, reminiscent perhaps, of that memorable scene at "Castletown Station" (or Ballyglunin, to be precise) in the film "The Quiet Man"

5 Hours and 20 Minutes to do what ....150 miles at most??? I think there was a Waterford-Sligo through service that took 8 hours or more at one point

rainbowdash

I was speaking to somebody who got the train from newcastlewest (change at limerick) to ballina in the 1940's. He sad he got off in athenry and strolled around for a while because the train used to go into Galway city and back out again before going to sligo. Maybe this is where the 5 hrs 20 comes from - the spin into Galway and back out?

The Idyll Race

dowlingm wrote: »

Idyll

I hope you would agree that there are areas of the existing network which could be significantly enhanced with the cash required to extend the network north of Athenry. Why should the Irish taxpayer reinstate yet another 40-50mph single track line with dozens of grade crossings when the same cash could allow the existing trackage to carry as many additional passengers (I would argue many more). This is before one reflects on the single track between Athenry-Galway which such a service must co-exist with Dublin and Limerick service, into a station with only two platforms.

I'm thinking of projects like more double track Maynooth-Mullingar, improving speed and capacity Limerick-Ennis, at least some triple/quad track between Connolly and Howth Junction, additional passing track Cherryville-Waterford and Greystones-Wicklow and so on.

Adding loops, extending platforms, maybe some LC closures or overbridge remediation - not sexy stuff a politician can make his name on - but in terms of increasing revenue and loads on the services far more cost-effective.

There was discussion above about how much was spent on the existing lines but how much capacity has been removed from the system, with consequent effects on journey times because of waiting at signals, because when CTC/miniCTC was put in many manual loops were lifted and replaced with tangent track because of the cost of the additional signalling? That money spent was really to avoid fatal derailments but the money started to dry up when the projects to increase capacity were coming through, with only the truncated KRP to show for it.

The KRP really sums up what is wrong with Irish Rail and CIE in general. It was sold strongly on what it had the potential to deliver - a fifteen minute headway on commuter trains into Heuston, which of course never happened, especially when rolling stock got rapidly decommissioned. Funny that. Instead, the lasting legacy of the KRP has been car park charging at Hazelhatch etc which has had an impact on pax numbers.

The pragmatic mentality says that there is a finite or shrinking amount of money available for the railways. Given that there is a seeming infinite amount of gravy available for road scams schemes then this is bullshít.

Breaking away from the failed CIE model is the way to get out of that limiting mindset that only serves to destroy the railways. Separating the infrastructure from service provision makes sense. The railways become part of the national transport infrastructure, maintained by the state in exactly the same way as road, and users pay similar amounts back to the state to use the railways as do road users. Fair and equitable. We all know that the relay of Ennis - Athenry cost €106m but no figure is being bandied about for the M18. The taxpayer's exposure is miniscule then in comparison.

The railways then are open to those who want to provide the services. Instead of road enthusiasts micro analysing the performance of any one part, then the service providers run services where they get a return. Depending on demand services on any railway could be anything from Parry People Movers to full size mainline expresses, subject to NTA timetabling. Anyone from West On Track to DB and even Irish Rail if they behave themselves could run services then.

Those who favour railways should not be afraid to fight like thinkers to protect and enhance services and route availability. Meekly acquiescing to the destruction of the peoples' infrastructure is bollocks and does not have to happen.

Sponge Bob

The Idyll Race wrote: »

Meekly acquiescing to the destruction of the peoples' infrastructure is bollocks and does not have to happen.

Of course, they can be used as greenways and fibre optic routes. I am dead set against their being taken out of public ownership.

end of the road

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Of course, they can be used as greenways and fibre optic routes. I am dead set against their being taken out of public ownership.

which is exactly what the closed railways should have been used for. if your suggesting closing the lot then it would be a waste of time as it would achieve nothing

foggy_lad

The Idyll Race wrote: »

If Barrett had been listened to in the 1970s and 1980s there wouldn't be a scrap of railway anywhere in the country. Hugely increased population, traffic and travel issues proved him spectacularly wrong. Claremorris to Collooney as part of a strategic cross country line, which is what the local authorities want, wont be rerailed anytime soon but preventing it from ever happening will be proved to be short sighted folly. Tuam to Athenry connecting onwards would be useful, Limerick to Galway would have been useful if Irish Rail ran it properly. If you really want to see what tearing the railways out of the country does in practice, go to Monaghan. Go to Omagh. Go to Letterkenny. Go to Enniskillen. Go to Donegal. Go to anywhere in a huge swathe of the country north of the Sligo line and south of the Belfast-Derry line and try and get there in a reasonable amount of time and in any degree of comfort. Good luck with that.

Good luck with that indeed! How long would the fastest journey be on the Monaghan to Glenties express? Bear in mind it would have to travel via Sligo, Omagh and Londonderry to make it worthwhile! Ah but level crossings and mountains and lakes don't slow down trains at all do they? My guess would be a day each way with several long waiting times at stations because it is just single track.

now imagine the cost of all the level crossing staff as well as track walkers and other maintenance staff and there is another great reason the railway doesn't serve Donegal and Cavan\Monaghan\Leitrim.

dermo88

The Idyll Race

Welcome to the infamous Western Railway Corridor thread, where half a dozen guys hope that they can replicate their hero Tod Andrews and destroy more of the railway so that SIMI, private buses and connected landowners can get more of the public purse

Aw diddums with his lego and his crayons does'nt like those who disagree with him. Poor diddums, heres a soo soo.

Wow, its been a few years since I read anything resembling this guy on IRN by the name of Alan Helfner. There was another called Brian Guckian. He was a railway maniac and crayonologist of the highest order. During the Celtic Tiger era it was a constant repetition of 'Roads bad', 'Railways good'. 90% of us on the forums regarding them as cranks and idiots. Their disconnection from reality was scary. It was so scary it was funny. I had a good time baiting and trolling them. It was safer to show films with Mohammed than annoy them, but thats the fun with these loonies.

Andrews closed most of what needed to be closed and invested in the rest. There were SOME mistakes, but in hindsight, relatively few.

Hugely increased population, traffic and travel issues proved him spectacularly wrong. Claremorris to Collooney as part of a strategic cross country line, which is what the local authorities want, wont be rerailed anytime soon but preventing it from ever happening will be proved to be short sighted folly. Tuam to Athenry connecting onwards would be useful, Limerick to Galway would have been useful if Irish Rail ran it properly. If you really want to see what tearing the railways out of the country does in practice, go to Monaghan. Go to Omagh. Go to Letterkenny. Go to Enniskillen. Go to Donegal. Go to anywhere in a huge swathe of the country north of the Sligo line and south of the Belfast-Derry line and try and get there in a reasonable amount of time and in any degree of comfort. Good luck with that.

The GNR closures were regrettable, but what would survive if they had got past 1957 and a more pro-rail Government like the Republic?

Portadown-Derry.
Omagh-Enniskillen.
Portadown-Monaghan-Clones-Enniskillen.

The rest would close. Strabane in Donegal would be the connecting point for buses in Donegal in an ideal system.

Finally, some advice.

1. Please get a Primary school Geography textbook and look up the section dealing with population density, core and periphery.
2. Please look up the Father Ted episode where Dougal has the difference between dreams and reality explained. Its somewhere on youtube.
3. Thanks for the melodrama and excessive emotion. I suggest a future career in comedy after crossrail. If that fails, try failrail.
4. Have fun with your crayons. Crayola are full of ideas.

I bet references to Crayons would be the next banned word in the Soviet Socialist Empire of boards.ie, but thankfully since Chris has disappeared, it might survive as a word yet. If that goes, I will use coloured pencils instead.

The Idyll Race

foggy_lad wrote: »

Good luck with that indeed! How long would the fastest journey be on the Monaghan to Glenties express? Bear in mind it would have to travel via Sligo, Omagh and Londonderry to make it worthwhile! Ah but level crossings and mountains and lakes don't slow down trains at all do they? My guess would be a day each way with several long waiting times at stations because it is just single track.

now imagine the cost of all the level crossing staff as well as track walkers and other maintenance staff and there is another great reason the railway doesn't serve Donegal and Cavan\Monaghan\Leitrim.

I've cited examples of closures, not made any kind of suggestions regarding them. All I have suggested on this thread is maintaining/rebuilding existing railways under public ownership. Yes, I would like to see railways in the places I mentioned but there is no practical way of restoring them.

I do not want to see existing railways ripped up where there is a chance of restoring them. If that's a thought crime here then it isn't my problem.

end of the road

dermo88 wrote: »

Chris has disappeared

and may the curse of the WRC be upon him.

westtip

The Idyll Race wrote: »

Welcome to the infamous Western Railway Corridor thread, where half a dozen guys hope that they can replicate their hero Tod Andrews and destroy more of the railway so that SIMI, private buses and connected landowners can get more of the public purse

What a load of twoddle. I have never advocated the closure of any rail line. True I don't think re-opening the WRC north of Athenry will add any value to the economic well being of the west of Ireland - whereas I think a greenway actually would - as has been proven not just in Mayo but all over the world where this happens to long since closed rural rail llnes. The re-opening of the Ennis Athenry line with much fanfare was flagged up as a massive potential failure from day one which has proven to be the case; no one takes pleasure in this - its just a simple matter of demographic facts - we ain't got the people to justify it, its failed now please give me a valid argument to waste further money and btw go and find one statement on this thread or the predecessor in which I have advocated closing an existing rail line.

Victor

dermo88 wrote: »

The Idyll Race

Welcome to the infamous Western Railway Corridor thread, where half a dozen guys hope that they can replicate their hero Tod Andrews and destroy more of the railway so that SIMI, private buses and connected landowners can get more of the public purse

Aw diddums with his lego and his crayons does'nt like those who disagree with him. Poor diddums, heres a soo soo.

Wow, its been a few years since I read anything resembling this guy on IRN by the name of Alan Helfner. There was another called Brian Guckian. He was a railway maniac and crayonologist of the highest order. During the Celtic Tiger era it was a constant repetition of 'Roads bad', 'Railways good'. 90% of us on the forums regarding them as cranks and idiots. Their disconnection from reality was scary. It was so scary it was funny. I had a good time baiting and trolling them. It was safer to show films with Mohammed than annoy them, but thats the fun with these loonies.

Andrews closed most of what needed to be closed and invested in the rest. There were SOME mistakes, but in hindsight, relatively few.

Hugely increased population, traffic and travel issues proved him spectacularly wrong. Claremorris to Collooney as part of a strategic cross country line, which is what the local authorities want, wont be rerailed anytime soon but preventing it from ever happening will be proved to be short sighted folly. Tuam to Athenry connecting onwards would be useful, Limerick to Galway would have been useful if Irish Rail ran it properly. If you really want to see what tearing the railways out of the country does in practice, go to Monaghan. Go to Omagh. Go to Letterkenny. Go to Enniskillen. Go to Donegal. Go to anywhere in a huge swathe of the country north of the Sligo line and south of the Belfast-Derry line and try and get there in a reasonable amount of time and in any degree of comfort. Good luck with that.

The GNR closures were regrettable, but what would survive if they had got past 1957 and a more pro-rail Government like the Republic?

Portadown-Derry.
Omagh-Enniskillen.
Portadown-Monaghan-Clones-Enniskillen.

The rest would close. Strabane in Donegal would be the connecting point for buses in Donegal in an ideal system.

Finally, some advice.

1. Please get a Primary school Geography textbook and look up the section dealing with population density, core and periphery.
2. Please look up the Father Ted episode where Dougal has the difference between dreams and reality explained. Its somewhere on youtube.
3. Thanks for the melodrama and excessive emotion. I suggest a future career in comedy after crossrail. If that fails, try failrail.
4. Have fun with your crayons. Crayola are full of ideas.

I bet references to Crayons would be the next banned word in the Soviet Socialist Empire of boards.ie, but thankfully since Chris has disappeared, it might survive as a word yet. If that goes, I will use coloured pencils instead.

Constructive posts only please

Moderator

dermo88

Constructive? Dear moderator, what have I said that is destructive? Could you please elaborate?

corktina

cool it dermo, we don't want to lose you again...we like having you round.

Sponge Bob

Guckian was so emmmmm 'productive' he had a special thread just to keep an eye on his antics for a while. Now gone.

The Idyll Race

I thought about making no reply to the comments earlier, but I will limit it to this.

I have had run ins before with the infamous AhelfnerMGWR elsewhere over the Luas Green Line. I'm not him. I'm not Mr. McGuckian either. It seems that Dermo88 and I see eye-to-eye over the main GNR lines, much to my surprise. That was nice. But to be offered a "soo soo" and then to be lectured about not having enough of a Shakespearian turn to my posts is frankly a load of arrogant shíte and if I had that sort of chat put at me in real life I would have fukked my pint at least at the person saying it to me. Just because we are sitting at computers does not excuse speaking like a cock to anyone else.

I have posted about extending the Sligo line to Donegal. Guilty as charged. There will be a hell of a lot of Donegal people using the Sligo line tomorrow. I do know that there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of the line being extended from Sligo, but the usage would be there. That is my opinion. Other opinions exist.

I have also made the modest suggestion here on this thread that a change in the way the railways are owned and implementing Europes desire to split infrastructure from operation could make lower density services viable. The posters on this thread can only make suggestions. The decisions are made elsewhere.

Sponge Bob

The Idyll Race wrote: »

I'm not Mr. McGuckian either.

Oh Oh. Only someone around boards a long time would have known about the "Mc" bit. And you registered in July.

The Mc bit was a wordplay on MacGuffin and I should know because I started that long gone thread!

dermo88

My apologies for being rude, but sweeping hyperbolic remarks such as:

Welcome to the infamous Western Railway Corridor thread, where half a dozen guys hope that they can replicate their hero Tod Andrews and destroy more of the railway so that SIMI, private buses and connected landowners can get more of the public purse

Describing those who.....do not advocate regional lines, and Todd Andrews as a hero is pretty misleading. The W.R.C. has done a great deal of damage to the future development of railways in Ireland, and it would be (very) wise to at least acknowledge that. It was known long before it was built that it was not socially viable. It is certainly known now. Meanwhile Navan STILL does not have a rail link. The Interconnector is stillborn, and Dublin has been shafted for the second time. The culchie bogtrotters got their Choo choo, and the joyriders from Britain got their jaunt and photo opportunities with their 071 and Mk 3. Where are they now? Nowhere to be seen.

Fail, fail, fail, failrail on every count. Wrong, wrong, wrong again, and NONE of those people has the balls to come and apologise for this to the people of Ireland. In fact, they come along and demand more of the same failrail.

Are you AWARE for one moment that all who were against the W.R.C. would be rejoicing if it were a success, because it would prove once and for all that rail transport in Ireland is a viable alternative. I'd be apologising and eating humble pie on the boards. Instead......I get to gloat at those who banned me at I.R.N. I get to gloat at Guckian, and as for Helfner, lets hope he stays in that well known suburb of Galway, New Jersey.

The Idyll Race

I am going to look up my archives, and later I will edit to insert a link. Some years ago, I did write an alternate scenario of what happened if the GNR survived.

Donegal would have retained a token railhead at Strabane. Although Letterkenny has grown exponentially in the past 20-30 years, partition between 1922-1992 did a great deal of economic damage to Derry, and surrounding counties. After 1992, with the single European market there is a chance of progress. BUT Recession, economic depression, emigration, not to mention a civil war (Lets not use that 'nice' euphemism, the troubles and call a spade a spade) were not going to help any railway.

The Idyll Race

I have posted about extending the Sligo line to Donegal. Guilty as charged. There will be a hell of a lot of Donegal people using the Sligo line tomorrow. I do know that there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of the line being extended from Sligo, but the usage would be there. That is my opinion. Other opinions exist.

There were proposals, I recall from the top of my head as follows:

Standard gauge 5'3" extension from Sligo to Bundoran proposed by GNR, MGWR and SLNCR at various times between 1860-1910. Never built.

If it was'nt build when the railways had a monopoly position, if it was'nt built when the GNR was spitting out a nice 5% divvie, and MGWR paid 2% divvies on GOLD currency, then it never could be built.

As for usage, we do know that the GNR Portadown-Derry line was heavily used and should never have been closed. But the Donegal narrow gauge lines were dying by 1959, despite numerous innovations. Regrettable though the closures were, I doubt much beyond Strabane-Letterkenny could survive beyond 1976 in any alternate history timeline.

Mass closures would have happened anyway. Nothing on the scale of the sheer brutality of the UTA Northern ones could be justified, but some pruning was needed for the remainder to survive and thrive.

One more exercise, take a map of Ireland by population density, over lay the railway network over it, and it tells another story completely. One which the 'going for growth' advocates here follow. Railways work where population density is greatest. Donegal has none of those ingredients. Beyond the regret that Portadown-Derry line did not survive, and perhaps two or three more, mainly in the North, the network we have now is pretty good for a country of our population density and wealth.

end of the road

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Oh Oh. Only someone around boards a long time would have known about the "Mc" bit. And you registered in July.

maybe he just came on and read threads for a good while before registering? well thats what i did so maybe he did the same?

end of the road

dermo88 wrote: »

Mass closures would have happened anyway.

absolutely, but their were mistakes here in the south as well, not many but their were some. i'm surprised more didn't close though, all though if they did close any more they may as well have shut and lifted the lot, all though the way IE are running it at the moment thats probably what will happen in 20 years, or less, or more.

dermo88 wrote: »

Nothing on the scale of the sheer brutality of the UTA Northern ones could be justified

to be honest i'm surprised they didn't rip up the lot.

dermo88 wrote: »

some pruning was needed for the remainder to survive and thrive.

but is the remainder thriving? apart from dart and commuter + bellfast and cork, some would say yes, some would say no.

dermo88

end of the road

but is the remainder thriving? apart from dart and commuter + bellfast and cork, some would say yes, some would say no.

Sligo is. Galway suffers from Bus competition, Waterford is slowed down by the Kilkenny reversal. The rest is just 'ticking over' pretty much. It could thrive, but it needs private sector minds and initiative to get things going. Nothing will ever happen as long as CIE exists in its present form. It is the Taliban of Transport companies.

The Idyll Race - as promised

The Sligo line never ends up in Donegal. In fact here is a post I made on the GNR surviving a while back on 10.11.2011

Great Northern.......what if?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=74876749

I quote as follows:

Maybe its a sense of a 'tidy mind' on my part, but that rail network "hole" in several counties looks unbalanced.

Northern Ireland is a curious case study. Rail services have 80% of the population of Northern Ireland within a 10 mile radius of a railhead, and its fairly well integrated with other transport modes. But there are significant large towns that are not served, such as Omagh, Strabane and Enniskillen, and no amount of pipe dreams are likely to change that scenario, however much we'd like that. Many of the old formations have been wiped out and used for bypasses.

foggy_lad

The Idyll Race wrote: »

I do know that there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of the line being extended from Sligo, but the usage would be there.

The usage would be there once every 20-30 years!

Sponge Bob

end of the road wrote: »

but is the remainder thriving? apart from dart and commuter + bellfast and cork, some would say yes, some would say no.

To be frank that is where I would see the network ending up under Varadkar and with nothing west of Athlone , Limerick Junction and Mallow or south of Kilkenny and Gorey...bar Greenways of course and possibly some Cork Commuter.