DART Delays

0gac3yjefb5sv7

Seriously why does the dart have to stop in random places and crawl along ages. It's ridiculous they can't organise a proper schedule!!

LXFlyer

Pheonix10 wrote: »

Seriously why does the dart have to stop in random places and crawl along ages. It's ridiculous they can't organise a proper schedule!!

The "random places" tend to be where signals are located, which are there to control train movements and prevent accidents happening.

0gac3yjefb5sv7

lxflyer wrote: »

The "random places" tend to be where signals are located, which are there to control train movements and prevent accidents happening.

But why can't they just schedule the trains to run so they don't have to stop. Isn't that the main benefit over say traffic in a car. I can accept if this happens once in a while but it seems to be the norm.

Captain Chaos

Can happen for lots of reasons, train failures, points failures, having to wait longer at stations for wheelchair passengers because there is no staff to get ramps ect. A regular one now causing delays is passengers fainted because of overcrowding.

LXFlyer

Pheonix10 wrote: »

But why can't they just schedule the trains to run so they don't have to stop. Isn't that the main benefit over say traffic in a car. I can accept if this happens once in a while but it seems to be the norm.

You can schedule for what is foreseeable but it's a bit tricky if something unforeseen happens.

Trains can be delayed for any number of reasons.

Jamie2k9

Yesterday was an incredibility bad day from start of service until end of service. A lot of signal failures and multiple train failures and then not IE's fault but a medial emergency on top.

Imagine if a 10 minute DART wast operating :eek:

Pawwed Rig

Between Clontarf and Connolly is particularly bad for the go slow (as I call it). I always seem to be on the one when they switch drivers too.
Guess it is a lack of capacity in the network.

0gac3yjefb5sv7

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

Yesterday was an incredibility bad day from start of service until end of service. A lot of signal failures and multiple train failures and then not IE's fault but a medial emergency on top.

Imagine if a 10 minute DART wast operating :eek:

What exactly is a signal failure and can they not reduce these!?

flyingsnail

Pheonix10 wrote: »

What exactly is a signal failure and can they not reduce these!?

Signal failure is more of a catchall term rather than a specific problem, cable theft, power failure, broken rail, points failure, short circuit, broken wire, blown fuse, broken bulb ect. Can all cause a signal failure.

Signalling systems are designed to be failsafe, ie when something breaks, the system fails to a safe state. In railway terms it means the signals turn to red.

LXFlyer

Pheonix10 wrote: »

What exactly is a signal failure and can they not reduce these!?

The previous post explains what a signal failure is.

The signalling system is complex and there are several different systems in use at present on the different lines in the Dublin area.

It needs upgrading and this is happening with the ongoing city centre re-signalling project.

The signalling on the lines between Malahide and East Wall Junction (including the Howth branch) have already been renewed.

Currently the work is focussed on between Connolly and Sandymount and this is due for completion later this year.

0gac3yjefb5sv7

lxflyer wrote: »

The previous post explains what a signal failure is.

The signalling system is complex and there are several different systems in use at present on the different lines in the Dublin area.

It needs upgrading and this is happening with the ongoing city centre re-signalling project.

The signalling on the lines between Malahide and East Wall Junction (including the Howth branch) have already been renewed.

Currently the work is focussed on between Connolly and Sandymount and this is due for completion later this year.

Thanks for this. Just to the outside it seems the rail line has been running for 20+ years and they still have issues everyday.

tabbey

Pheonix10 wrote: »

Thanks for this. Just to the outside it seems the rail line has been running for 20+ years and they still have issues everyday.

It has been running for over 180 years, it has been, and will continue, evolving.

Captain Chaos

Speaking of delays and failures, it is very regular lately. Friday evening at 16:00 the Maynooth train had "technical difficulties" at Pearse and blocked up everything going northbound. Yesterday at 15:00 there was a singnal failure at Tara Street station again delaying everything northbound by up to 45mins.

Just happens.

Jamie2k9

Pheonix10 wrote: »

Thanks for this. Just to the outside it seems the rail line has been running for 20+ years and they still have issues everyday.

It requires a lot of maintenance to ensure it operates normally, it doesn't matter if the system is bran new or old.

tabbey

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

It requires a lot of maintenance to ensure it operates normally, it doesn't matter if the system is bran new or old.

Very true.

Nevertheless there seems to be more failures of one sort or another per train km, on IR than on other systems.

If Swiss railways can operate reliably using older stock on less sophisticated infrastructure, for example timber OHLE poles, why can we not do the same.
There seems to be an acceptance of unreliable equipment here, not just 2700 class railcars, but especially single cars 2751 & 53, which always ran coupled to their classmates, lest they would fail.
If British companies, and operators elsewhere can run single engined cars on lightly used lines, IR should be also. In fact we should have a load of them for Nenagh, Clonmel, Ballina andeven other routes at less busy times.

Buses run reliably on single engines, here and elsewhere, a railcar should be equally reliable.

lucernarian

Friday 22nd April was rather a joke. For at least the second time in a year, there was a points failure at Killester late in the evening. That section of line is closed yet again this weekend - probably only to facilitate the signalling upgrade.

The reason why the points were an issue was because a DART had to stop at Killester when someone took ill, according to the driver announcement on one.

Presumably other trains bypassed this using the other track. I'm guessing when the point was to be set back to its default position, it failed.

Are points not maintained by Irish Rail until they're broken?! The points at Mosney sometimes made a loud bang when travelled over especially on the Enterprise in the run up to being replaced....

Eugene Norman

tabbey wrote: »

Very true.

Nevertheless there seems to be more failures of one sort or another per train km, on IR than on other systems.

If Swiss railways can operate reliably using older stock on less sophisticated infrastructure, for example timber OHLE poles, why can we not do the same.
There seems to be an acceptance of unreliable equipment here, not just 2700 class railcars, but especially single cars 2751 & 53, which always ran coupled to their classmates, lest they would fail.
If British companies, and operators elsewhere can run single engined cars on lightly used lines, IR should be also. In fact we should have a load of them for Nenagh, Clonmel, Ballina andeven other routes at less busy times.

Buses run reliably on single engines, here and elsewhere, a railcar should be equally reliable.

I find the dart more reliable than the train I used to take to London. For me it's about 99% reliable.

Also the fact that commuter diesels, darts and an intercity share that line makes the signalling much more difficult than other places.

0gac3yjefb5sv7

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

Between Clontarf and Connolly is particularly bad for the go slow (as I call it). I always seem to be on the one when they switch drivers too.
Guess it is a lack of capacity in the network.

This seems to happen on every dart so surely it can't just be switching drivers. As well as stopping right outside Connolly for ages. So frustrating. I'd love to know the reasons for this or if it's just incompetent scheduling.

Pawwed Rig

It has gotten alot worse since the tunnel opened. Out of the last 20 trains I have gotten 14 have not been on time. This morning was chaotic.

0gac3yjefb5sv7

I'd love to know if it's just **** management which Id expect or actual unavoidable.

marno21

One of the whole points of DART Underground was to solve the issue of congestion at Connolly. Yet the solution we took was to introduce more trains into the Connolly area. Is this the main issue?

Pawwed Rig

They rarely explain why there are delays. This morning would seem to have been multiple signal failures coupled with ambiguous announcement. This evenings delay was not even mentioned over the tanoy.

Rashers72

Yes, I think today was another disaster for morning commuters. Delays up to 70 mins inbound from Drogheda, I was on a train for an hour and not a single announcement. And then 10-15 min delays tonight, again no announcements. The IE twitter account shows just how frustrated passengers are becoming. Don't know exactly what the reason this morning was. I know points used to freeze at Howth Junction but I thought they had bought heaters to solve this. So not sure what went wrong, and why it took such a long time to fix. But just like for the last weeks, complete silence from drivers.

marno21

The jam packed trains and constant delays because of "signalling faults" or "points failures" or "low rail adhesion" are starting to annoy people alright. It's something else every day.

devnull

When there were a spate of failures two years ago at the same time almost every time constantly for weeks on end they couldn't work out what it was that was causing it, until some experts from abroad came in and apparently sorted it in about 5 minutes.

That doesn't give you confidence they will fix a re-occuring problem very quickly.

Rashers72

devnull wrote: »

When there were a spate of failures 2 years ago at the same time almost every time constantly for weeks on end they couldn't work out what it was that was causing it, until some experts from abroad came in and apparently sorted it in about 5 minutes.
That doesn't give you confidence they will fix a re-occuring problem very quickly.

Actually I remember that now! Did not know how they got it sorted though. Thought is was classified as a 'computer issue'!

devnull

Rashers72 wrote: »

Actually I remember that now! Did not know how they got it sorted though. Thought is was classified as a 'computer issue'!

It was a computer issue with the signalling system, From what I heard it was bad data that was fed into the system that made two systems crash simultaneously at some point between 5:40 and 5:55 on every occasion, there was a huge spate of issues for about a 2-3 week rolling period where the same problem would regularly happen.

You'd have thought it would have been a dead giveaway when it happens exactly the same time that it's something related to what happens at that particular time, but it was a good 2-3 weeks before they actually got it resolved properly and from what I read elsewhere and heard, it was thanks to some outside help, whether that was in person or not I don't know, but I heard it came from outside these shores.

goingnowhere

It was the original equipment vendor GE who had to investigate, there was no fault on Irish Rail at all or in the hardware. Both signalling computers crashed at the exact same moment which pointed to a software issue.

A subtle change in schedule resulted in a sequence of events which came down to a request to lower the Lansdowne Rd level crossing causing a task list to overflow. The actual software in use was from 1984, they had piles of problems with task lists back then but once they had them figured out the system uptime was measured in years, I believe that in the 25 year previous only a single systems failure had occurred

Yesterday was human failures, bad maintenance, bad communication and bad recovery planning

thomasj

Just been tweeted another points fault. Somewhere north of Connolly

0gac3yjefb5sv7

Can they not fix this **** or is it public sector at its finest?

Riskymove

thomasj wrote: »

Just been tweeted another points fault. Somewhere north of Connolly

Yep

Sitting on 1819 Newbridge service at Tara Street for about 5 mins now

Trains have begun to move but big delays again

Also a bus crash affecting traffic around college green westmoreland Street area!!

Kh1993

They tweeted it was north of east wall road, nearer to Clontarf Rd, so nothing to do with the tunnel allegedly. Possibly another frozen points, like what happened in the *freezing weather last friday at Howth Jct. Single line working for a while tonight.

(by freezing we mean 6 degrees)

devnull

Always a awful service in the winter unfortunately.

We had the 2014 winter epidemic of signal failures, The 2015 winter where the 6.30am train on the Malahide branch regularly would not run without any advance notice because it was before 7.00am and the station staff cannot get any info until then.

This year it seems that points failure is the issue of choice. I simply stopped bothering using IR in the winter and used the bus instead or drove, longer journey but was much more reliable and prevented me from getting into serious issues at work.

Jamie2k9

devnull wrote: »

Always a awful service in the winter unfortunately.

We had the 2014 winter epidemic of signal failures, The 2015 winter where the 6.30am train on the Malahide branch regularly would not run without any advance notice because it was before 7.00am and the station staff cannot get any info until then.

This year it seems that points failure is the issue of choice. I simply stopped bothering using IR in the winter and used the bus instead or drove, longer journey but was much more reliable and prevented me from getting into serious issues at work.

Be fair points faults have not been massively common this winter.

Leaf fall on the other hard is getting inexcusable given current weather conditions and has been for a number of weeks.

They tweeted it was north of east wall road, nearer to Clontarf Rd, so nothing to do with the tunnel allegedly. Possibly another frozen points, like what happened in the *freezing weather last friday at Howth Jct. Single line working for a while tonight.

(by freezing we mean 6 degrees)

Would be very surprised if freezing points were the cause,

Kh1993

Delays tonight through Connolly purely down to congestion.

When will they finally admit it's due to the timetable not being able to cope with the new half full tunnel trains?

devnull

Kh1993 wrote: »

Delays tonight through Connolly purely down to congestion.

When will they finally admit it's due to the timetable not being able to cope with the new half full tunnel trains?

Services like this will take time to build numbers, it won't happen overnight.

Don't fall into the trap that Irish Rail want you to fall into....

Kh1993

devnull wrote: »

Services like this will take time to build numbers, it won't happen overnight.

Don't fall into the trap that Irish Rail want you to fall into....

Nothing against the service. Just that it's delaying pre-existing services every single evening. And tonight at Pearse the hazelhatch train was given priority over what ended up as a packed and already late Dundalk train which was due to leave before it.

Rashers72

Yes, another bad night. I actually think the 16.30 ex Greystones to Malahide started all the problems. They held DARTs and Drogheda trains to let that come through, as it was 10 mins late between Greystones and Bray.
Believe it or not, I have it in writing from IE that the PPT services would not impact the existing DART, Maynooth or Northern Suburban Services. Glad we invested all that taxpayers money in signalling around Connolly and Pearse to prevent this.

ChikiChiki

devnull wrote: »

Services like this will take time to build numbers, it won't happen overnight.

Don't fall into the trap that Irish Rail want you to fall into....

If the existing infrastructure can't cope with increased volume of traffic, what hope is there with increased numbers?

devnull

IE spent so much money on re signalling over the past number of years and did not foresee any problems on this scale and the investment was supposed to allow even greater numbers of services and if it's failing with a small increase of services then there has to be an investigation into why that is.

It's either a failure of management to adequately plan and implement the improved infrastructure to deliver the benefits that it is supposed to have done, or simply that the infrastructure is good enough and that IE are completely incapable of running a proper service.

Either way if they are unable to manage the signalling, PPT, infrastructure upgrade and a relatively small number of additional services, it raises serious questions of how on earth they would be able to handle a much bigger infrastructure upgrade such as DART underground and similar things.

Personally if it carries on going like this the NTA should get external experts in to work out what is going on Considering around €100m has been spent on signalling and the PPT opening this is simply not good enough.

0gac3yjefb5sv7

Can anyone explain why every dart stops on the way in and out of Connolly towards Clontarf road (don't even get me started on the station at Clontarf road!)!!!

Commotion Ocean

flyingsnail wrote: »

cable theft

I've heard this before.

Who does it?

What fo they want with (presumably) copper wires.

Why would anyone be so stupid to interfere with 10000's of volts?

Why would anyone be so selfish to damage infrastructure that benefits close to 1,000,000 people?

tabbey

Pheonix10 wrote: »

Can they not fix this **** or is it public sector at its finest?

Fix what? - the spelling of the poster's name?

tabbey

dfeo wrote: »

I've heard this before.

Who does it?

What fo they want with (presumably) copper wires.

Why would anyone be so stupid to interfere with 10000's of volts?

Why would anyone be so selfish to damage infrastructure that benefits close to 1,000,000 people?

Signal cable is not high voltage. It is high value.

Criminals do not give tuppence for the public or anyone else.

Commotion Ocean

tabbey wrote: »

Signal cable is not high voltage. It is high value.

Criminals do not give tuppence for the public or anyone else.

Surely it's know then if it is a common occurrence. Is there a specific gang engaging in this? Are they known?

If so, it can be easily nipped in the bud.

0gac3yjefb5sv7

tabbey wrote: »

Fix what? - the spelling of the poster's name?

Oh smartass, same reason your username isn't boards1, because someone took it. You have any input or just smart comments?

Jamie2k9

They have a valid reason today!

Delays to services through Lansdowne Rd. Station due to a cygnet fault #Swansontheline The neck of them! Staff trying to remove.

thomasj

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

They have a valid reason today!

wonder will they get done for trespassing?

L1011

That one was, surprisingly enough :pac:, not encoded in the automatic excuse system and had to be announced from CTC

GM228

Nice to see IE have a sense of humour.

https://twitter.com/IrishRail/status/807170711987122176?s=01