Waterford/Rosslare Strand Railway reaches the buffer stops (again)!

GM071class

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

only 6 miles of it is new CWR, layed by an engineer I vaguely know

Me thinks it's either end of the line. The rest is all 'Clickety-Clack-Track'.

If there's one thing IÉ do brilliantly is Mothballing. Be it perfectly useable carriages, young locomotives, and now the south-Wexford line....

Judgement Day

Mothballed like Tubbercurry on the Burma Road



or perhaps Youghal?



an earlier view of Youghal below.

lord lucan

More like Moate!!

Judgement Day

Can you imagine what it is going to cost when the Mullingar/Athlone section is reopened - whereas an annual visit by the spray train and spot resleepering would have kept it operational at a minimum cost. In any good Communist state whoever was responsible for this sort of ****e would be stood against the nearest wall and shot.

lord lucan

Judgement Day wrote: »

Can you imagine what it is going to cost when the Mullingar/Athlone section is reopened - whereas an annual visit by the spray train and spot resleepering would have kept it operational at a minimum cost. In any good Communist state whoever was responsible for this sort of ****e would be stood against the nearest wall and shot.

Most of the sleepers i seen were rotten,most of the rail was GSR from the 1920's with some rails being MGW!! The station building is completely overgrown outside and the old MGWR shelter is about to fall down.

Judgement Day

lord lucan wrote: »

Most of the sleepers i seen were rotten,most of the rail was GSR from the 1920's with some rails being MGW!! The station building is completely overgrown outside and the old MGWR shelter is about to fall down.

Point taken, but you have to remember that a railway is like a living thing where things wear out in the course of things. The line would have had minimum expenditure on it for years before closure. The oldest/worst rails tend to be on station sidings and I have seen MGWR rail from the 1870s in use at other stations on the Sligo line. The point is though that instead of spending a small amount annually to keep the route operational, it has now reached the stage where it will have to be ripped up totally WRC style and rebuilt at massive cost.

Hungerford

Judgement Day wrote: »

The oldest/worst rails tend to be on station sidings and I have seen MGWR rail from the 1870s in use at other stations on the Sligo line.

I have seen GS&WR and GNR rail in a siding on the Northern Line.

lord lucan

Judgement Day wrote: »

The point is though that instead of spending a small amount annually to keep the route operational, it has now reached the stage where it will have to be ripped up totally WRC style and rebuilt at massive cost.

Without doubt,most of it is fit for scrap and would have to be relaid from scratch.I don't know how they'd even get an engineering train down it these days! Surprisingly most of the 'damage' is from mother nature going unchecked and not from vandalism.

DWCommuter

Judgement Day wrote: »

Point taken, but you have to remember that a railway is like a living thing where things wear out in the course of things. The line would have had minimum expenditure on it for years before closure. The oldest/worst rails tend to be on station sidings and I have seen MGWR rail from the 1870s in use at other stations on the Sligo line. The point is though that instead of spending a small amount annually to keep the route operational, it has now reached the stage where it will have to be ripped up totally WRC style and rebuilt at massive cost.

JD

Im sure you understand that even when this line was operational in the 90s it was used as a shortcut for relaying trains during the great and all powerful on track 2000 programme that conveniently forgot this line itself and the Waterford-Rosslare/Limerick Junct/Ballybrophy/Killonan, blah, blah, blah etc.

Even under a care and maintanence programme the Mullingar-Moate line was so run down, that if reopening was a runner, it would still require substantial work such was its state at the stage of closure. The only bonus is the very simple fact that it was built to a fairly high standard in the first place unlike any part of the WRC. Even the lines I mention above share the same build quality. A shame that lines of such quality are now wild life reserves or reserves in the making.

purplepanda

A Railway Gazette interview with Dick Fearn in 2005 makes interesting reading:mad:

http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/single-view/view/10/economic-growth-boosts-irelands-railways.html

Mentions that Rosslare Waterford has 70 plus commuters a day so why the decrease in passenger numbers since then or is someone cooking the books??? Or perhaps running down the line by stealth????

Also pledges that no railway lines will be shut:mad: More lies from IE!!!:mad: The whole article is enough to make one sick!!!

Some choice examples...................

"‘You can fly from Dublin to Cork, you can drive, or you can catch a train. We want to make it the first choice for passengers to get a train, and we will do it by the tried and tested principles of inter-city; we’ll go more frequently, and we’ll go faster.’

‘It isn’t worth us spending billions on a TGV network, the population and the state aren’t big enough. But we have got a good rail network from Dublin to the cities and provincial towns.’ The 1 600 mm gauge track and the signals have been upgraded on most of the passenger network to give ‘decent line speeds’ with work underway ‘to fill in the gaps’.

In 2002 IÉ placed an €117m order with CAF for 67 coaches for use on Dublin – Cork services. These will arrive in Ireland later this year, and airconditioned MkIII stock dating from the 1980s will be cascaded to other lines.

‘The previous Transport Minister Seamus Brennan said that we don’t close railways now; that is not part of our philosophy. So we have to make better use of them.’ Small-scale improvements are being made on the rural routes, with modest resources. Two-car DMUs, maintained in Limerick, have replaced loco-hauled trains.

‘Every opportunity’ is being taken so that rail can be ‘seen to play a bigger part’ in regional transport. ‘There is enough critical mass to make it worthwhile in Cork, and it is becoming that way in Limerick. It is a little bit off in Galway, but I can see it happening. It is nice that people are looking to us and saying that we can play a part in this.’

There are now ‘modest levels’ of commuting on the line between Cobh and Cork, and a €90m project is in hand to reopen to passengers the mothballed Cork – Youghal freight line as far as Midleton by 2007 (RG 7.04 p390). This includes expanding commuter services beyond Cork to Mallow, providing a double-ended route bringing commuters into the state’s second city. The region’s population is growing fast, and the line is expected to be self-financing by 2013.

The branch line from the regionally-important city of Limerick to Ennis is now ‘doing very nicely’. Until 2003 it had a token service of two loco-hauled trains per day, but since modernisation and the introduction of a two-car DMU shuttle, traffic has seen ‘nice steady growth’.

Across the country Fearn sees there is ‘more we can do on that basis. Even Galway, Limerick and Waterford have road congestion now.’ There are 50 to 70 people commuting on the Rosslare – Waterford route, ‘small numbers, but relevant to the communities served.’

osslare Europort is thriving. ‘We own it, and it is a profitable venture. But it is a roll-on roll-off port, not a walk-on passenger port. The boat train concept is dead, people do not do walk-on and walk-off ferries any more.’

gar beet traffic amounts to 150- 200 000 tonnes/season, an important tonnage with significant scope for expansion, but it is seasonal traffic, requiring careful use of resources. The beet is moved by rail from a collection point at Wellingtonbridge on the Waterford – Rosslare line to a refinery at Mallow. Irish Sugar’s other refinery at Carlow closed earlier this year, increasing the demand for traffic to Mallow. As well as increasing traffic at Wellingtonbridge ‘we’re going to need another terminal somewhere in the Carlow catchment area.’ The beet season is widening, which is good news for IÉ as it can improve the use of resources and track capacity.

I have to say, particularly in a railway undergoing so much expansion and investment, it is a great advantage to be working in a vertically-integrated environment. I can work alongside the director of new works and dovetail everything we do as colleagues. I feel that I have the levers I need to pull, and I can pull them all in the right order.’

The future is bright for Iarnród Éireann. ‘No longer should anyone say that this is a backwater; the word is completely irrelevant!’

GM071class

Thanks 'purplepanda'.

It's difficult reading that to find a single thing that wasn't propaganda sh!te...

THEY KILLED ROSSLARE FOR PASSENGERS.
THEY RUINED THE PROFITABILITY OF THE SOUTH WEXFORD LINE
THEY KILLED OF RAIL-FREIGHT (beet excepted)
THEY WROTE OFF USEABLE CARRIAGES & LOCOMOTIVES
THEY RUINED THE TRACK SPEEDS

GM071class

lord lucan wrote: »

More like Moate!!

Are there still any signals down there....

Might grab the screwdriver and head down.... haha,

lord lucan

GM071class wrote: »

Are there still any signals down there....

Might grab the screwdriver and head down.... haha,

Our man in Havana

The spectacles seem to be broken from most of those signals.

lord lucan

Haddockman wrote: »

The spectacles seem to be broken from most of those signals.

Hungerford

Haddockman wrote: »

The spectacles seem to be broken from most of those signals.

Judging by the pictures, I suspect that the broken spectacles are the least of the obstacles facing the running of trains on this officially open line. :eek:

Judgement Day

http://irishrailways.blogspot.com/

With reporting like this is there any hope for this railway or Ireland in general? The media have a lot to answer for in relation to the state of the country.

foggy_lad

Judgement Day wrote: »

http://irishrailways.blogspot.com/

With reporting like this is there any hope for this railway or Ireland in general? The media have a lot to answer for in relation to the state of the country.

are they using 22000s on that line now? what a waste of an inter-city train for only a handful of passengers while sligo and other services are left with short hop commuter railcars

KC61

foggy_lad wrote: »

are they using 22000s on that line now? what a waste of an inter-city train for only a handful of passengers while sligo and other services are left with short hop commuter railcars

No they're not - a 2-car 2700 is used.

He's getting on a different train in the picture (despite the caption).

Hungerford

Just to continue from the Fianna Fáil apologist quoted in the article linked to above, there seems to be a glaring issue in terms of Iarnrod Eireann's economics.

Firstly, they have provided a series of inconsistent figures about the cost of running the line: we've had €1.9 million, €2.5 million and, most recently, €4 million per year. The difference between the highest and lowest of these figures is more than 100%.

Secondly, an interview recently came to light with Tricky Dicky from 2005 where he stated the line had 70 passengers per day. Not an enormous amount but the figure, if IE are to be believed, now stands at 25. Somewhere along the way, Dicky has lost over 50% of the line's passengers.

What's going on?

foggy_lad

Hungerford wrote: »

Secondly, an interview recently came to light with Tricky Dicky from 2005 where he stated the line had 70 passengers per day. Not an enormous amount but the figure, if IE are to be believed, now stands at 25. Somewhere along the way, Dicky has lost over 50% of the line's passengers.

What's going on?

people get fed up of trains being noisy and uncomfortable and deciding the bus is better, there may also be less people needing the train now living in the area, less going to colleces in cork or limerick etc there are any number of reasons the passenger numbers will have dropped off and it may not be the fault of irish rail.

Judgement Day

foggy_lad wrote: »

people get fed up of trains being noisy and uncomfortable and deciding the bus is better, there may also be less people needing the train now living in the area, less going to colleces in cork or limerick etc there are any number of reasons the passenger numbers will have dropped off and it may not be the fault of irish rail.

You're obviously missing the point here, the timetable has been so mucked around with that it is no use to anybody anymore.

If you come off the boat and head west on the morning train you have a four hour wait in Waterford for an onward connection.

If you travel to Waterford from Enniscorthy or Wexford you can NEVER come back and incidentally the 06.25 ex. Enniscorthy now only runs on Mondays and is now 'officially' replaced by a bus Tues/Sat which has unofficially been the situation for some time.

The commuter service to Waterford serving south Wexford stations is badly timed and the return trip from Waterford in the evening is run at a time that suits the train staff who need to get back from Rosslare to Waterford rather than for the passengers.

You couldn't make it up!!! The service has been systematically run into the ground by CIE for decades and you seem to have missed this point and it is nothing to do with travel patterns/population movements etc.

Southsider1

foggy_lad wrote: »

people get fed up of trains being noisy and uncomfortable and deciding the bus is better, there may also be less people needing the train now living in the area, less going to colleces in cork or limerick etc there are any number of reasons the passenger numbers will have dropped off and it may not be the fault of irish rail.

Ah don't be so stupid!! There's a population in excess of sixty thousand in the Wexford/ Enniscorthy/Rosslare area and in excess of a hundred and fifty thousand in the Waterford region. If they had a regular, reliable service at useful times it would be used. Logic!! Note the bit about useful times! Meaning times that would tie in with the ferries, normal working day times and a middle of the day service. Not exactly rocket science. All CIE have to do is to start catering for it's customers instead of it's cosseted staff!

fishguard1

It's now impossible to travel from Rosslare to Dublin and back the same day, connecting with the Stena ferry to Fishguard. The 5.00p,m, from Dublin now stops short at Wexford, so severing the connection. This seems a pointless exercise forcing passengers on to the roads.

DWCommuter

Hungerford wrote: »

What's going on?

Both you and I know exactly whats going on.;)

wild handlin

fishguard1 wrote: »

It's now impossible to travel from Rosslare to Dublin and back the same day, connecting with the Stena ferry to Fishguard. The 5.00p,m, from Dublin now stops short at Wexford, so severing the connection. This seems a pointless exercise forcing passengers on to the roads.

Its all part of "closure by stealth" aka Run a service with no connections at times which are useless to pretty much everyone, then state that no-one is using the service and its not worth running, then take it away completly.
Its the oldest trick in the book - which CIE seem read on a daily basis...

foggy_lad

wild handlin wrote: »

Its all part of "closure by stealth" aka Run a service with no connections at times which are useless to pretty much everyone, then state that no-one is using the service and its not worth running, then take it away completly.
Its the oldest trick in the book - which CIE seem read on a daily basis...

well if that is what they want to do why not let them? the only losers in the long run will be themselves and irish rail staff who will be out of work when irish rail is wound up, then maybe a proper rail network can be started from scratch with trains going to relevant areas and trains going into town centres but really expecting any more than a couple of trains a day from this area is ridiculous as the numbers have never and will never justify even a single railcar. i would think that a connection between leterkenny and sligo or cross border to mullingar would be far more important than a centuries old obsolete line servicing an obsolete port where foot passengers are a thing of the distant past!

purplepanda

Southsider1 wrote: »

Ah don't be so stupid!! There's a population in excess of sixty thousand in the Wexford/ Enniscorthy/Rosslare area

The total for Wexford County is fast approaching 150,000 & could be even higher.

Hence the county getting an extra TD in the next election, up from 5 to 6

Judgement Day

Labour TD Joe Costello is the new party spokesman on Transport and I've just dashed him off an email asking him if Labour are going to give a commitment to the future of the railway in their next election manifesto - I'll post the reply here, if and when, I receive one.

I'm sure that he would like lots more Boardsies to get in touch with him and you can reach him here: joe.costello@oireachtas.ie

invinciblePRSTV

purplepanda wrote: »

The total for Wexford County is fast approaching 150,000 & could be even higher.

Hence the county getting an extra TD in the next election, up from 5 to 6

It is?!?? i haven't seen any recommendations from the constituency commission suggesting this is the case so i doubt it.

Furthermore, seeing as TDs are allocated to represent 20,000 - 30,000 citizens, Wexford would need to be approaching nearly a population of 200,000 people in order to justify an additional seat.