Irish Rail

corktina

mickydoomsux wrote: »

Davy r wrote: »

You do realize that the employees pay into the pension, right?

Just like any other pension in any other job.......

not every pension is contrib, mine wasn't

end of the road

Davy r wrote: »

Ive worked for them 4 years ago im a 4 th year apprentice electrician and applied for apprenticeship . How am i ahead of my myself ya nut. Who wouldnt wanna get in there and do nothing with a pension and all job for life. leathcheann

hmmmmmmm, we have a "hit and run" here

devnull

steveblack wrote: »

True to form, in real life the rabid anti CIE people you meet are full of hate because they got turned down for a job with CIE. It would appear its the same here with the haters.

It's pretty clear that the poster was caught out, but to say all of the anti CIE people are full of hate because of some bitterness is ridiculous too.

Hilly Bill

Davy r wrote: »

Losty Dublin wrote: »

I think he may be getting a little bit ahead of himself



Ive worked for them 4 years ago im a 4 th year apprentice electrician and applied for apprenticeship . How am i ahead of my myself ya nut. Who wouldnt wanna get in there and do nothing with a pension and all job for life. leathcheann

You havent a clue to be honest, job for life but you dont work there anymore . If it was that good, why did you leave? work to hard for you?

Hilly Bill

devnull wrote: »

It's pretty clear that the poster was caught out, but to say all of the anti CIE people are full of hate because of some bitterness is ridiculous too.

Not far from the truth though.

Losty Dublin

Hilly Bill wrote: »

You havent a clue to be honest, job for life but you dont work there anymore . If it was that good, why did you leave? work to hard for you?

Perhaps Phil Verster limited him to Earl Grey, Barry's Classic Blend or Darjeeling for his tea breaks:)

BoatMad

I just finished reading the 2013 strategic rail review. It does not make good reading for IR.

Despite a relatively massive investment in stock ( and I agree IR had more then adequate stock and didn't need more) IR is loosing passengers, particularly on its heavy rail lines, and particularly outside the Dublin commuter belt. Lines doing very badly include Dub- Galway and Dub Belfast. But numbers have fallen everywhere.

Freight operations have to all intents and purposes stopped beyond a few specials, and IR is rapidly loosing the ability to resurrect its freight operations , even if it wanted to, which it doesnt ( freight doesn't vote of course).

The fact is now, if you closed all except the commuter belt, the increase on the roads would hardly be noticed. Its fallen to theses lows

IR will rapidly reach a situation in the next few years, where a decision to subsidise it properly or shut it down will be reached. You cannot run a business where all you do is cut back every so often, eventually you have no business model that works


IN my view either the taxpayer is willing and able to fund it "properly" and that includes running low volume lines or in practice you may as well shut the lot down, cause that will no real transport impact ,other then some redundancies. ( deploy into Irish water like everyone else maybe !)


IR has arguably mismanaged its network in an incredible way. It purchased completely new rolling stock , let only a few years before had purchased locomotives that are capable of 125mph. These are now stored. ( stored for what, it has now no carriages that they can pull, I mean its ridiculous Its had carriage stock that was good for years more. Currently it has virtually no ability to expand its intercity services as its has just removed any ability to add extra passenger services. ( Nor can it now respond to peaks in demand , specials trains etc)

Yet of course getting shiny new trains is good publicity, what not good, is the fact that despite a 30 year effort, its has more speed restrictions on mainlines then ever before. Trains are now running slower then there were in the 1970s , ( never mind the 1870s).

We have 125mph capable rolling stock , with no likelihood of ever having a 125mph railway, what bright spark purchased all this stuff

And of course to save embarrassment, IR are now cutting up the whole fleet of Mk3s, have stored the 201 locos ( until they and the 071s can be quietly scrapped)


Quite frankly IR is "playing trains" and generating nice projects for its "engineers". what its completely forgotten is its passengers.

example. Take the Limerick to waterford, despite the Rosslare section being closed the schedule is unchanged with two trains running the same "boat train " schedule for the last 30 years. ( yet it now doesn't even make rosslare)
No sunday trains,

result = no passengers = close it = "keep the minster happy, till the next crisis "

The same thing is being done on the wexford rosslare, remove the train from the boat pier and stick the "station", 900metres away , funnily a bus runs from wexford direct to the ship

result - no passengers = close it .. etc


All of this is because IR has forgotten that it exists to run a railway, rather then simply amuse itself playing trains, till a minister shouts and they "offer up the next "cost saving" experience.


They are simply dismantling the network piece by piece

Hence , we either fix it, and pay for it or, or in my view shut it completely, its becoming a transport irrelevancy.

As to local communities and rail, the fact is its serving virtually no one. I am reminded when tod andrews received a delegation lobbying from the retention of the west cork line, he asked them how they travelled to Dublin ( by car)

IR is a business that purely exists for its employees. It provides no transport function, outside high demand commuter areas.


WRC ( western rail corridor) is just a joke. all it is now doing is draining financial resources, away from lines that could be made work, like Limerick -Waterford or elsewhere. Its a rail political football and no doubt in time it will be closed again. The line was cheaply restored ( anyway IR never wanted it) and has a ridiculous low speed limit.


We have two simple decisions

Should IR run a railway , No , despite lots of shiny new toys they have consistently lost passengers since 2006 ( funnily just when they introduced the new toys , which goes to show thats not what the passengers needed)

Should we stop using "financial viability" as a metric and concentrate on "running a railway that offers service to its customers" - well are we prepared to pay, the answer would seem too be NO. if so close it, as thats the inevitable end result of what is happening.

Oh and stop giving IR engineers/managers shiny new projects , they have messed up all the ones so far,


PS its clear we should be filling Dublin with Light rail

end of the road

BoatMad wrote: »

I am reminded when tod andrews received a delegation lobbying from the retention of the west cork line, he asked them how they travelled to Dublin ( by car)

like limerick waterford/rosslare, another example of a line deliberately ran down to irrelevance. trains didn't even connect to dublin trains apparently. to add insult to injoury every single bit was ripped up, and for what? how much did it cost to do that rather then just suspending services and leaving the infrastructure even if it was just left and squatters dealt with. thats even if they gave the lads doing the stealing (sorry lifting) barely anything at all. i agree with more or less everything you said though. personally i believe we should wake up and pay for the network we have, it has a chance if payed for and invested in, and journey times improved to the fastest and shortist possible. but the government isn't interested. never has been, all we have for the investment is as you said shiny new trains that aren't flexible to demand not enough of them and which can't reach their full potential. and of course the use of stock on the basis of whats operationally convenient (intercity speck stock on commuter runs and commuter stock on long distance services) . along with stored and the needlessly scrapped mark 3 stock.