DART+ (DART Expansion)

still seems a bit mad to move them by road, is there no flat bed wagons that could be used to shift them by rail?

Oh, I do love when construction pictures finally appear on infrastructure threads 🙂.

if they've no bogies and the flat bed wagons are about the same height as bogies would be, they should fit, but who knows.

One thing to note about the UK is that a lot of what they built was cheap "headspan" catenary. It was cheap and visually un-obtrusive, but not always reliable. Any more substantial structures built in recent years for catenary are probably a reaction to that.

The 8200s aren't going for refurb; unless this was decades ago you may have seen the one that's been cut up to use as a trainer by the NTA going somewhere sans bogies

Is this not relevant only to multiple tracked areas? For single or double track, single masts are the overwhelmingly dominant choice all over Europe. The heavy structures in recent UK electrification have a long horizontal girder arm holding the overhead for 2 tracks.

The 8200s have never had a refurb. I think you're confusing them with the 8100s

yeah

RTE too

I assume this has been posted before, it's the first time I've seen it so maybe a few others will benefit too. Really good overview of DART+ (and the "CART" 😆)

The works planned for Bray Greystones are actually the original plans from the 1990's

The FG by election pr stunt spoke of a loop at the level crossing, known locally as Redford, even a possible future station. When reality hit as to how expensive it was the bare bones minimum was built

You could get almost a mile of double track from the tunnel before you hit issues

The line was built for 2 tracks originally so there is space but the overbridge on the La Touche Road presents a major challenge

The simplest fix today would be a set of trap points on the north end of Greystones station would allow parallel arrivals into the platforms from each end

If BEMUs are used from Connolly (or Pearse) to Drogheda, with about 23 miles on Battery power from Malahide to Drogheda, how much time will be needed to get a sufficient battery recharge to get safely back to Malahide? If it's more than 10 minutes, this will surely effect utilisation rates for BEMUs. Talk of Irish Rail being a pioneer of BEMU operation is perhaps a bit misleading; its more a matter of Irish DoT, NTA, TII, or whoever, being very reluctant to do what everyone else in Eurpe does: electrify highly-used rail lines.

Only in Ireland could a <2 mile track doubling be described as a massive job. A bit like electrification, the powers that be are spooked at making investment decisions. Why soed Ireland seem so exceptional in this (even worse than the UK in some respects)?

The guy mentions a time of 18 minutes in the presentation, I can't recall if it was for recharging or turnaround.

@Economics101 We are electrifying the line. The choice was between replacing diesel rolling stock with electric trains in 2025, or waiting until the electrification gets all the way to Drogheda.

If you're not aware, the DART+ Coastal North project, starting later, but running in parallel, is going to extend the 1500 V electrification all the way to Drogheda, but that's not happening overnight. IÉ took the right approach, and decoupled their rolling-stock renewal project (critically needed) from the line electrification project: it's almost like they knew what happens to large projects in planning, and mitigated against that risk.

As for distance, the battery range is given as 80 km. The unelectrified stretch to Drogheda is 38 km. The trains will be able to top up their charge sufficiently at Drogheda to make their return to the electric stretch without a particularly long dwell time, as they can also charge by drawing power from the overhead lines.

I don't think there was much of a sales job needed by Alstom: the BEMU option significantly de-risks the electrification of the former diesel commuter lines.

In Drogheda’s case, the plan is to stop at all stations to Connolly, so I suspect the time benefits of electrification will be cancelled out by the need to stop at more stations on the way.

Thanks, but I was thinking more about (a) how long it has taken to start electrifying main suburban routes in the GDA generally. and (b) the zero real plans for long-distance routes (apart from the sensible Irish Rail policy of 25kv AC beyone Hazlehatch).

On the 80km range using battery power, given that some cars can now manage 400km, and remembering the much lower rolling resistance of trains, the 80km range has always seemed to me to be very low. Any thoughts?

The RTE report said that they will carry 550 passengers, am I right in thinking that when in operation, each train will consist of two such units? How does that compare to whats used at present, full DART set and the commuter sets?

They would be much heavier alright, plus heavier again with a multiple of passengers. Although the train would have much lower rolling resistance than the bus and much smaller frontal area and so lower coefficient of drag.

Although this may not be very important with the lower speeds of DARTs and busses, the sheer heft of getting a heavy object moving would be very energy intensive.

There will be an extra station at Cross Guns for the Metro, and in the longer term, if Metro West is ever revived, at Porterstown. Would two more stops cancel out any gains?