Mark 4 - 3 spare carriages?

TheSunIsShining

Hi

Irish Rail website seems to say there are 67 Mark 4 carriages? It implies there are 3 spare standard class carriages? If that's correct, why don't they make 3 of the sets be 9 carriages, rather than 8 given how busy the Cork-Dublin route is getting? Time it to use the 9 sets on say the 7am out of Cork and the 5pm and 6pm out of Dublin. Am I missing something obvious? I

TranslatorPS

Operational spares are a must ;)

TheSunIsShining

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122313453#Comment_122313453

There is a full trainset kept as a spare i think?

TranslatorPS

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122313501#Comment_122313501

There is, but if something stacks up together and that spare is gone out then you'd be left with nothing altogether – this, combined with turnaround shuffling, allows to keep as much on the road as possible, instead of reducing train lengths.

TheSunIsShining

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122317021#Comment_122317021

I'm genuinely interested in this? Would it not be better to run 9 carriage trainsets and have no spares - and if a carriage needed to come out for repair on the 8 train sets for any reason, to allow that one to drop down to 7 if you had to? And if you were down to 7, then be smart in terms of what times the 7, 8 or 9 sets run on?

The_Wanderer

Ah the armchair experts are out ;) ;)

Six sets are required to run the service with sets "7" and "8" being the running maintenance set and heavy maintenance sets respectively. If you diagrammed more train sets to service, the limiting factor is there is only one spare GC (Generator Control), FO (First Open),RB (Restaurant Buffet) and (SOE) Standard End vehicles. For example if you have 7 sets diagrammed and your spare GC is in Inchicore undergoing heavy maintenance and you lose another GC vehicle (for whatever reason) you are then short a complete set as you've no vehicle to replace the newly defective vehicle. This would result in A cancellation of services or B replacement by a 22000 Class but that needs to be taken from elsewhere so you need to reduce capacity on several services across the board.

You cannot run 9MKIV in normal service as several platforms are only long enough for 8 vehicles, indeed Ballybrophy is "just" long enough to fit a 8MKIV set and special stop boards are in place to ensure trains are fully berthed on the platform correctly. Some other platforms which can only take 8 are Cork, Mallow, Thurles etc.

The six sets work through a cycle of diagrams over a the 7 day period so they reach Inchicore for their maintenance exam so even if the platform issue was limited to just one or two stations it still would be hard to make up a 9pce train and keep it to one block of services.

Hopefully that explains some of the reasons behind the rational of why things are the way they are.

W

TheSunIsShining

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122318830#Comment_122318830

Thanks! So with Cork-Dublin so busy, what could be done? Like does the route allow for half hour running at peak times or would there be a signalling issue/capacity issue for platforms in Cork or Dublin? Or are there new trainsets for the route ordered given the lead time for our Irish gauge?!

Or would the planned Cork commuter to Mallow impact there as well?

Hadn't copped that 9 is too long for lots of the stations - thanks for explaining that!

L1011

There's nothing ordered or under tender for that line

DART+ will, over time, release 22ks that currently operate various commuter services (Hazelhatch - Heuston/GCD services, M3 Parkway services and filler elsewhere) which could operate Cork, as could the few extra sets that the centre car order will create.

Albeit there won't be enough 22k First/Premium cars to go around - I expect Waterford may lose its declassified First cars in that case (if they even still have it?). The Belfast hourly is going to need more of these also; until its replacements are delivered - and they are not ordered yet.

TheSunIsShining

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122319169#Comment_122319169

Does the line have capacity to go beyond hourly? And given the lead in time, probably need to order soon no? What's the expected lifetime of the Mark 4s?

The_Wanderer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122319193#Comment_122319193

You could run 6 trains an hour south of Portarlington to Cork, bear in mind you also need 1 path for Limerick and 1 for Tralee as well and between Portarlington and Heuston a lot of those paths are already used.

The strategic plan is to go 1/2 hourly in the peak hours, additional stock would be required which could be freed up by sets released by the DART+ orders.

No plans on MK4 replacement yet as far as I understand.

goingnowhere

There were discussions back in the early days of the hourly service to have 2 9 coach sets to target the busiest trains

Mk4's never delivered the reliability expected and were plagued with faults and minor rebuilds so those spares came in handy

TheSunIsShining

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122332002#Comment_122332002

That's a pity, esp now with so many of the 8 carriage trains full. Thanks for the info