Ennis Limerick rail line

Great to see that there is a good bit of rail infrastructure being upgraded.

Dont know if you use twitter but @TipperaryRail will be putting up some photos and videos of the track upgrade being carried out near Cloughjordan station next month. Interesting to see how the process is done.

The success of the Limerick - Ennis line is a great motiviation for other "rural" railways to keep campaigning for improvements.

I think its just platform re-construction to bring it up to modern standards. Guessing one platform will be closed at a time and they cannot cross and trains at the station for the duration of works.

It does appear slow unless they are complexly replacing platforms.

Speed restrictions on the line. Think its mainly due to amount of level crossings. The service should be no more than 1hr30, considering the car can do it on a good day in 1hr 15m.

As posted above, the platforms at Ennis are being rebuilt, meaning that during the works two trains cannot pass one another in service there.

So the timetable had to be adjusted to allow the trains to pass at Gort.

Quite simply it's impossible to deliver a decent end-to-end timetable while this is ongoing, particularly in the evenings, due to the constraints of the single track between Galway and Athenry being full in the evenings, so retiming departures was not possible, and the desire to maintain the existing Limerick-Ennis timetable for local commuters.

If the person beside me coughs one more time with no mask or even into their elbow I might actually murder them !

Presumably it is the ongoing works at Ennis station and the engineers need a full possession.

It doesn't help that the shortest Galway-Athenry running time is, I believe, 18 minutes (and that's without stopping in Oranmore), meaning that the most frequent service possible on that section - if we assume an alternating down and up train - is every ~38-40 minutes each way at best...

What is the impact of this turnout being worked on ?

Larger turnout = larger train? This turnout always existed right ?

The passing loop at Oranmore is definitely happening. Funding has been committed towards it.

i have noticed the platform currently under construction now has a step/ramp down from the door to the platform whereas before it was step/ramp free. Does this mean the new platform is much lower than the previous version?

Photo: @FearghaloM on twitter

I’m afraid that the passing loop won’t really have any impact on journey times, but it will make it easier to schedule more trains between Galway and Athenry by allowing them to pass at Oranmore.