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

Sponge Bob

The line is not closing in its entirety, obviously Waterford Port and IE have an agreement not to close the western section of it.

http://www.portofwaterford.com/documents/WaterfordContainerTerminal_000.pdf

Call for Expressions of Interest to Lease Belview Container
Terminal, Port of Waterford, Republic of Ireland

Belview Container Terminal comprises:
• 400 metre Lo-Lo berth serviced by two high output, long span gantry
cranes
• Sheltered berth with 8 - 10 metres alongside at L.W.S.T.
• Dedicated road link (N29) linking terminal to N25/E30 National Primary
Road and Euroroute
• Direct access to national railway line, with rail sidings on terminal

dowlingm

If IE owned Belview there's a good chance it would be torn up by now, like North Esk.

Judgement Day

Even if the plan to close the remainder of the route goes ahead it will need an Act of Parliament here, and in the UK, for it to proceed as the route belongs to the Fishguard & Rosslare Railways & Harbours Company see newspaper item from 1977 here - trying typing that when you're half cut after watching rugby as I have just been so excuse any typos...

Judgement Day

I forgot to say that I finally tracked down FG Chief Whip/my local TD, Paul Kehoe, today and put him in the picture as to the weasel ways of CIE/IE regarding this closure. He already has questions in and I am supplying him with more info tomorrow - watch this space.

dowlingm

An odd arrangement, that FRRHC. Apparently Stena own the Fishguard railway station and thus that station is exempt from the smoking ban! I have tried searching for more on this company on the web but there is very little info apart from that Stena inherited 50% from its purchase of Sealink, which itself was a carveout from BR.

Abandonment seems to be covered by Transport Act 1966, Section 3. (irishstatutebook.ie)

Hungerford

dowlingm wrote: »

Abandonment seems to be covered by Transport Act 1966, Section 3. (irishstatutebook.ie)

What's interesting is the FRRHC still has preference shareholders, who still receive a payment of 3.75% per annum.

Abandoning the line would substantially cut the book value of the company - there's one London-based investment fund who holds 66% of these preference shares. They could make life very interesting for CIE if they wished.

Judgement Day

Hungerford wrote: »

What's interesting is the FRRHC still has preference shareholders, who still receive a payment of 3.75% per annum.

Abandoning the line would substantially cut the book value of the company - there's one London-based investment fund who holds 66% of these preference shares. They could make life very interesting for CIE if they wished.

I'm intrigued - what is generating the income for their payments? Does the FRRHC own Rosslare Port rather than CIE/IE?

Shayman

Hungerford wrote: »

What's interesting is the FRRHC still has preference shareholders, who still receive a payment of 3.75% per annum.

Abandoning the line would substantially cut the book value of the company - there's one London-based investment fund who holds 66% of these preference shares. They could make life very interesting for CIE if they wished.

Yeah but 3.75% of what? Remember CIE/IE are always whinging about all the money they're losing...

corktina

3.75% of the face value of the shares.

Judgement Day

The Facebook group to save the line has already got 696 members - don't forget to sign up and check out the pages.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=367387502018

Southsider1

Sadly I doubt any of the decision makers to do with the closure will take any notice of a face book petition - if they even know what facebook is - they're hardly capable of answering a phone, most of them...

Judgement Day

€8m plan to upgrade Rosslare port

RTE Business. Friday, 28 September 2007 12:51

Iarnród Éireann is planning to invest €8m in infrastructure at Rosslare Europort in County Wexford. The railway company, which runs the port, says the investment is to cater for future growth and shipping business needs.
The bulk of the investment will replace the Linkspan on Rosslare Europort's Berth 2, at a cost of €6.8m. This work will be complete in late 2008.
Iarnród Éireann says Rosslare Europort is the fastest growing roll-on roll-off (RoRo) port in the State, with a 14% increase in freight volumes in 2006, and 10% this year to date.
Advertisement

Consultant engineers are also to conduct a feasibility study into deepening Berth 2 to a depth of nine metres, enabling the port to handle a new class of larger RoRo ships developed in recent years, called 'Humbermax'.
Rosslare Europort generated a profit of €3.1m last year from revenue of €11.4m.

---

By my warped logic if Rosslare Port fell into CIE's hands as part of the Waterford/Rosslare FRRHC, then the money the port generates should be used to subsidise the railway - ring fenced and kept out of the paws of CIE. Looked at from that point of view the line could be taken out of CIE control and operated independently and the entire entity would be self-financing (a profitable port and a loss making railway).

Judgement Day

Southsider1 wrote: »

Sadly I doubt any of the decision makers to do with the closure will take any notice of a face book petition - if they even know what facebook is - they're hardly capable of answering a phone, most of them...

How do you think the line has weathered the last forty years of attempted closures - public pressure - I assure you! Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Hungerford

Judgement Day wrote: »

I'm intrigued - what is generating the income for their payments? Does the FRRHC own Rosslare Port rather than CIE/IE?

The FRRHC owns Fishguard Harbour, Rosslare Europort and the Rosslare-Waterford railway.

It also owns the undisposed of trackbed of the Waterford-Mallow railway line. Its Irish operations are run by Iarnrod Eireann and its Welsh ones by Stena Line.

It remains in existence because nobody has figured out how to convince the remaining preference shareholders to sell their guaranteed incomes. The shares are still listed on the London Stock Exchange though FRRHC seems to have been quite naughty and not sent out any shareholder notifications since 2004.

Hungerford

Judgement Day wrote: »

By my warped logic if Rosslare Port fell into CIE's hands as part of the Waterford/Rosslare FRRHC, then the money the port generates should be used to subsidise the railway - ring fenced and kept out of the paws of CIE.

Your warped logic is just how a normal joint venture would be run along commercial lines. But FRRHC doesn't seem to operate on those lines - it seems to just give the cash from Rosslare to CIE and the cash from Fishguard to Stena Line. There's actually enough money being generated from the FRRHC's operations to keep the railway open.

Judgement Day

Hungerford wrote: »

The FRRHC owns Fishguard Harbour, Rosslare Europort and the Rosslare-Waterford railway.

It also owns the undisposed of trackbed of the Waterford-Mallow railway line. Its Irish operations are run by Iarnrod Eireann and its Welsh ones by Stena Line.

It remains in existence because nobody has figured out how to convince the remaining preference shareholders to sell their guaranteed incomes. The shares are still listed on the London Stock Exchange though FRRHC seems to have been quite naughty and not sent out any shareholder notifications since 2004.

You are just confirming what I always suspected i.e. that contrary to what they always put out in the media, CIE/IE do NOT own Rosslare port, they own a share in it. What exactly is the breakdown in shareholding? It does back up my point that the FRRHC is a profitable concern, regardless of the losses incurred on the Waterford/Rosslare line and it should be taken out of CIE control.

Are shares in the FRRHC traded on the stock market? Can private buyers purchase them through a stockbroker?

DWCommuter

Well done Hungerford, you've been a busy bunny. I'll add a few more tit bits.

The registered address of the FRRHC is;

Charter House
Park Street
Ashford, TN24 8EX
United Kingdom

It has four directors and one of them is John Keenan, who has been on the board since 2006.

Judgement Day

DWCommuter wrote: »

Well done Hungerford, you've been a busy bunny. I'll add a few more tit bits.

The registered address of the FRRHC is;

Charter House
Park Street
Ashford, TN24 8EX
United Kingdom

It has four directors and one of them is John Keenan, who has been on the board since 2006.

That's not the John Keenan from CIE/IE is it? The one who was sacked as Human Resources Manager in Irish Rail: http://forum.platform11.org/showthread.php?t=11938

702 members on Facebook page now see here:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=367387502018

Hungerford

Judgement Day wrote: »

What exactly is the breakdown in shareholding? It does back up my point that the FRRHC is a profitable concern, regardless of the losses incurred on the Waterford/Rosslare line and it should be taken out of CIE control.

Are shares in the FRRHC traded on the stock market? Can private buyers purchase them through a stockbroker?

The current split is 50% CIE / 50% Stenaline in terms of ordinary shares. The preference shares are held by various investment funds.

FRRHC preference shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange but they rarely, if ever, come up for sale. That's the issue which has prevented the dissolution of the company for the past sixty years.

John Keenan is the former Iarnrod Eireann director. I think Stena appoint two directors and CIE appoint the other two.

Hungerford

From the facebook group:

"I was at Campile, Ballycullane, Wellingtonbridge and Bridgetown today.

I found Wellingtonbridge in good condition and clean. Correct timetables on display etc. The others were like something out of a war zone.

Ballycullane and Bridgetown were displaying the December 2007 timetables. At Campile the timetable ...was torn down and was on the track. The stations were filthy and the shelters were vandalised. The approch roads to Camplie, Ballycullane and Bridgetown were full of pot holes and loose stones and the car parks were not much better.

I found signage to the stations very poor. It is very clear that IE are making 0 effort in making the stations user friendly."

Good to see that Dick Fearn has a well-thumbed closure by stealth manual on his desk.

Judgement Day

I can't believe that John Keenan is still a CIE appointed director given his dismissal from IE? What was the result of his dismissal case?
I just had a look at the CIE Annual Report for 2008 here: http://www.cie.ie/about_us/pdf/47574%20CIE%20AR08%20EN%20web.pdf

One would need a degree in accountancy to make head or tail of anything in it. I can remember earlier CIE annual reports which used to list the numbers of carriages, locomotives etc and was vaguely understandable to the layman but not this garbage. There is only vague reference to Rosslare and no mention of the the FRRHC shareholding that I could see. I can't say that I'm surprised as one day there will have to be a tribunal to establish what has been going on at CIE for decades. Remember this is the company whose directors routinely used to refuse to sign off on the accounts of the Great Southern Hotel chain as they 'suspected' that it was trading while insolvent.

Transportuser09

That facebook group is a great idea, but you would wonder how many on it will actually use the line, particularly on a regular basis. Not that I mean to be cynical, but it has around 28 times amount the people who regularly sue the service... Every little helps though...

Judgement Day

Transportuser09 wrote: »

That facebook group is a great idea, but you would wonder how many on it will actually use the line, particularly on a regular basis. Not that I mean to be cynical, but it has around 28 times amount the people who regularly sue the service... Every little helps though...

You're missing the point - as presently timetabled the route is unuseable and anyway nobody in the Facebook group is stating that they are daily users of the railway. The plain facts are that with a proper timetable, proper marketing, proper connections, etc.etc. a much higher level of useage could be expected. To make any decisions on the future of an important piece of rail infrastructure based on the farcical timetable now in operation would be folly. Incidentally, the 25 regular users quoted by IE is a lie - not spin - a lie.

corktina

this line should be a special case because the road journey is so much longer than the rail one. I note one of the cutting posted talked of converting the rail bridge to a road bridge, that doesnt sound too practical to my mind. There is also talk of a Heritage takeover, more to the point, i think the only salvation would be a takeover by an organisation dedicated to running the line as is and improving it.Would such an organisation be practical? Im not sure. (I feel a heritage based line would eventually end up as sunday only joyrides on a limited strech of the line.

Hungerford

Judgement Day wrote: »

One would need a degree in accountancy to make head or tail of anything in it.

What is clear are a couple of things:
1. CIE is accounting for Rosslare Europort as though they own it - which increases their assets by around €30m. This is very naughty and I'd love to know their argument for doing that.

2. Rosslare Europort makes a profit of around €3 million per annum - which goes straight into CIE's coffers. If it remained within the FRRHC, it would be sufficient to cover the railway's losses.

3. John Lynch is executive chairman which is also very naughty under modern corporate governance codes.

Hungerford

Judgement Day wrote: »

To make any decisions on the future of an important piece of rail infrastructure based on the farcical timetable now in operation would be folly. Incidentally, the 25 regular users quoted by IE is a lie - not spin - a lie.

It would also help business if they erected an accurate timetable at stations. From what I've been able to ascertain, it seems the average Waterford-Rosslare train is half full, despite what IE claims.

FlameoftheWest

Transportuser09 wrote: »

That facebook group is a great idea, but you would wonder how many on it will actually use the line, particularly on a regular basis. Not that I mean to be cynical, but it has around 28 times amount the people who regularly sue the service... Every little helps though...

Still, it is an impressive response. The Facebook page and the very clever ideas being aired on it (and here) might just be the achillies heel that we all knew the Monster of Tara Street had. I am actually fairly excited by all this. I finally sense a real anger from ordinary Irish people about what CIE are doing in the SE which I have never come across before in regards to a railway line in this country. The likes of FB allows people to view their opinions on issues without going though the state sanctioned Government propaganda filter of RTE, or having the Irish Times get a soundbite from some bishop. It's really refreshing. I think for the first time in Irish history we are witnessing a real community lash-back from the people by the people, and not one invented by the clergy for the trainspotters.

Hungerford

FlameoftheWest wrote: »

The Facebook page and the very clever ideas being aired on it (and here) might just be the achillies heel that we all knew the Monster of Tara Street had.

We rarely agree on anything but I think that you are the money there. This is the first closure proposal to ever be put forward in the modern internet age - the last proposals came in 2002.

Arenas such as Facebook give ordinary commuters and members of the public an opportunity to pool resources and discuss the situation on-masse in a way that hasn't been possible before.

Digital cameras allow people to take photos of such things as outdated timetables etc. and share them to provide tangible evidence of how CIE has attempted to shut the line by stealth.

What's particularly interesting is that the bulk of the campaigning seems to be driven by locals and campaigners with an interest in sustainable transport, not trainspotters.

IRN has been unusually quiet on this issue - presumably because there's not a huge amount of photograph on the line.

I actually anticipate that the WRC launch could become an awkward affair for IE, particularly if the right hacks come along.

Transportuser09

I see what you mean. It is good that it is getting the issue across to a wider audience. Some people may become more aware of the route and its potential.

There was some debate on IRN, theres one on railusers.ie as well.

dowlingm

There's a concept here in Toronto and doubtless elsewhere of guerilla gardening. This is where you take a piece of ground not being used and you plant things in it.

Now... let's suppose one Sunday a bunch of people (who didn't let IE in on it by announcing it on facebook) turned up at one of the rundown halts, erected some signs on the approach roads, took some pictures and then spent a couple of hours cleaning it, posting accurate timetables and the like, and then sent the "before" and "after" pictures to the media... better than any number of online petitions I reckon.