Cross-border review of rail network officially launched

Confirmed ~4 weeks ago that its in the current capital budget; but the financial situation is so poor up there (and in GB, for that matter) that that means nothing.

The odd way the Barnett Formula works - with big English infra often being claimed to be national infra to stop them having to give the devolved governments money - might actually help there though. Perversely.

Agree, what actual transport need it fulfills is beyond me. People who want to go from Cavan or Mullingar to Belfast I guess. 🤔 apparently it's a similar route to some old pre automobile narrow track routes back when Belfast was the biggest city.

An extension from Navan to Cavan would even be more practical because people actually make such journeys. The armagh to portadown section probably has merit.

This article from 24th May has information on all four commuter rail projects in Cork (Kent platforms, re-signalling, double tracking, six new stations). In relation to the double tracking, it says that IE, “expects a contract for this work to be awarded next month, and the project is expected to be completed by the end of 2026.” It’s now August so something must have turned sour.

https://www.rte.ie/news/munster/2024/0524/1450928-rail-stations-cork/

No, the railway order was actually approved last Nov:

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-41263978.html

IE then announced that they were moving to tender, and that article from May indicated that contract signing was imminent.

Preparatory works for the doubling are slated in to start from September looking at the engineering works schedule on the Irish Rail website.

My post was pretty clear I thought in terms of the information and where I got it from.

My understanding is that a Stuatory Instrument is required to commence the RO. There doesn’t appear to be an SI relating to this RO.

https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/statutory.html

I think doubling sections of the Galway line will come before any of that.

• Assuming that level-crossing removals and line works and speed improvements to facilitate 200 (or 160) km/h running are an ongoing project, then these are all things that can be done incrementally that would improve service time and reliability, and prepare for electrification…

1. Double-tracking (in this order):
   - Athenry–Galway
   - Portarlington-Athlone
   - Kildare–Kilkenny
   - Maynooth–Mullingar
   Galway should be obvious. Doubling the lines beyond Portarlington and Kildare allows services to Waterford and Galway/Westport/Ballina to make up time they may lose due to commuter-service interference on the current Portarlington-Hazelhatch stretch, or waiting on the remaining single-track sections. Maynooth Mullingar last, because the benefits only come into play when the new Mullingar-Athlone and Maynooth-Hazelhatch links arrive.
   
2. The curve at Limerick Junction to allow Limerick line trains east of the Junction to seamlessly join the Cork Line. The benefit isn’t huge without line-speed improvements, but it is cheap, and could connect South Tipperary and Cork with a reasonable service even before any other line improvements. (Waterford is still too far away until the line is improved)

Then these two medium-size new projects:

1. Maynooth—Hazelhatch
   
2. M3 Parkway—Navan (probably as a DART line)
   

That’s the easy stuff, then there’s the bigger ones:

1. New Inter-city western approach, Portarlington&Kildare–Hazelhatch. Electrified from the start.
   
2. New Inter-city Northern approach, Clongriffin–Drogheda. Electrified from the start.

The order of electrification is a different problem, but the engineer in me leans toward using the Waterford line as a pilot line for this, given that it’s relatively short, and doesn’t branch, so the impact of problems here on other services would be limited.

Wow, is the Dublin-Cork tender for a consultant to design electrification of the entire route? That's quite a job, it would possibly be the longest electrification project in Europe right now.

McWilliams' piece sounds a bit like guff to me.

Some years ago, Irish Ral took a failed signalling project in-house and delivered a series of mini-CTC signalling projects quite successfully. There are probably other examples whan compaiies are left to do work on their own network (they know how things work), whereas at present we have a flying circus of NTA, TII, DoT, IE, numerous consultants, etc all spending endless time and energy on discussion, planning, evaluation and so on. And we are about to add a Department of Infrastructure to this clown show.

Keep it simple!