Level Crossings at Coolmine and Clonsilla

quazzy

Hi all,

I'm not sure if I imagined it but did I read (or hear) about planning to by-pass the level crossings at Clonsilla or Coolmine train stations?

I did a quick search but couldn't find anything concrete.

Regards,

Q

Larbre34

If I remember correctly it was proposed to bypass them as part of the electrification of the Maynooth line as part of the DART upgrade/city undergrounding. The increase in frequency would have made so many at-grade road crossings impracticable so they were going to spend the money and bridge them. That is now completely shelved so no prospect of it happening soon

beauf

Well they are closing the one, at Porterstown RD. There is Dr Troy bridge to bypass the Coolmine one.

The clonsilla one they can't close. TBH even closing the coolmine one would gridlock Dr Troy bridge.

But unless they make the train > cars people won't switch. Always packed at peak on the trains as it is.

daymobrew

Larbre34 wrote: »

The increase in frequency would have made so many at-grade road crossings impracticable so they were going to spend the money and bridge them. That is now completely shelved so no prospect of it happening soon

I dispute the (Irish Rail) claim that the level crossings would have been impracticable - the busy crossings on the DART line seem to manage.

beauf wrote: »

Well they are closing the one, at Porterstown RD. There is Dr Troy bridge to bypass the Coolmine one.

The councillors had to vote on this and there were a lot of objections to the closure. I made submissions to the road closure and the proposed pedestrian bridge. The vote should have happened by now.

dodzy

daymobrew wrote: »

I dispute the (Irish Rail) claim that the level crossings would have been impracticable - the busy crossings on the DART line seem to manage

totally different story when you approach clonsilla station in a car from westmanstown direction and the gobshîte controller pulls the gates 10 mins before sight or sound of a train. Ridiculous.

L1011

Porterstown should have been closed by now (but hasn't), Reillys is being bridged now. Gradual process unfortunately.

daymobrew

dodzy wrote: »

totally different story when you approach clonsilla station in a car from westmanstown direction and the gobshîte controller pulls the gates 10 mins before sight or sound of a train. Ridiculous.

The train line is broken into segments and a train cannot enter a segment unless it is clear (and level crossings within the segment are down). Unfortunately the segment are strangely long on the Maynooth line. They are shorter on the DART line.

muckwarrior

daymobrew wrote: »

The train line is broken into segments and a train cannot enter a segment unless it is clear (and level crossings within the segment are down). Unfortunately the segment are strangely long on the Maynooth line. They are shorter on the DART line.

That may be so but there's still a large discrepancy between the time controllers take to lower/raise the gates. At Ashtown there's one particular guy who will leave them down while 5 or 5 trains pass, whereas the rest of the controllers will raise them in between to alleviate traffic.

daymobrew

muckwarrior wrote: »

At Ashtown there's one particular guy who will leave them down while 5 or 5 trains pass, whereas the rest of the controllers will raise them in between to alleviate traffic.

The manual method at Ashtown involves leaving a phone off the hook as the indicator that the gates are closed.

When a train comes into the section the gate keeper gets a call from central control room. He then closes the gates and tells the control room. They then change the signal lights to tell the train that it can enter the section. When the passes the Ashtown gates the gate keeper can tell the control room that he is going to open the gates and they will change the signal lights on the track. I guess that the control room tells the gate keeper the time before the next trains and the gate keeper decides that it is inefficient (or too much work or inconvenient) to open the gates for a short period.

beauf

I was stopped at the ashtown crossing the other day, don't normally pass through there. I thought they were closed for a very long time. More than I've experienced at coolmine in years. Seemed to be only one train.

Hilly Bill

daymobrew wrote: »

The manual method at Ashtown involves leaving a phone off the hook as the indicator that the gates are closed.

When a train comes into the section the gate keeper gets a call from central control room. He then closes the gates and tells the control room. They then change the signal lights to tell the train that it can enter the section. When the passes the Ashtown gates the gate keeper can tell the control room that he is going to open the gates and they will change the signal lights on the track. I guess that the control room tells the gate keeper the time before the next trains and the gate keeper decides that it is inefficient (or too much work or inconvenient) to open the gates for a short period.

They get a buzzer that tells them to close the gates . Once they are closed and the keys that are on the gate gets entered into a panel in the hut the buzzer goes off and the signal changes. They could have only reopened the gates and the buzzer could go off again.
Same idea with Clonsilla apart from the actual closing of the gates .
There are plans in the pipeline to do the same in Clonsilla as whats proposed for Porterstown . A new bridge was meant to be built across the canal and the tracks at the back of St Mary's hospital somewhere.