Irish Railway Record Society

IÉ 2010 Timetable

MARK HEALY

TIMETABLE

The annual timetable change took place on 29 November 2009. As a result of the withdrawal of the final Mk III stock in September 2009, this year’s timetable is the first since the coming of the railways which includes no conventional locomotive hauled trains. All trains are now either railcar or push-pull formations. The other major change is the re-introduction of services on the rebuilt Ennis–Athenry section. With a 13.6% fall in passenger numbers in 2009, it is not surprising to see that service reductions have been applied on several of the existing lines. Minor changes are not noted in the review below.

Weekday trains operate Monday-Saturday, except those noted as Monday-Friday (MF).

DUBLIN - CORK

The current clockface timetable is largely maintained, except for the cancellation of the 20:00 down (Dublin-Cork) and the 19:30 up (Cork-Dublin) services. A major change is that all trains in both directions, with the exception of the 15:00 ex-Dublin, now call at Limerick Junction. Additional stops have been imposed on many of the services, with all but one train in each direction now including Thurles as a stop. The extra stops have impacted on journey times with the standard in the up direction now being 2 hours 55 minutes. With the motorway between Cork and Dublin due to be completed in the first half of 2010, these times are unlikely to attract custom to the railway. The 06:30 Cork-Dublin was initially timetabled to serve Mallow only, so allowing for one service on the route which offered a journey time approaching express timings of previous years at 2 hours 30 minutes. However, on 15 December a timetable revision saw a stop at Limerick Junction added which brought the overall journey time up to 2 hours 45 minutes. The 08:00 and 09:00 down trains, and the corresponding 11:30 and 12:30 up services, are now to be worked by 3-car Intercity Railcars (ICRs). The Sunday timetable is largely unchanged.

MALLOW - CORK – COBH & MIDLETON

The previous high frequency service of 30 trains per weekday between Mallow and Cork has been reduced to 24 with the majority of services now provided by Dublin-Cork trains and local trains scaled back to the morning and evening peak periods. There are no longer any through trains from Mallow to Cobh. On the Cobh branch itself there are no significant changes. Services on the Midleton branch are maintained as per the timetable introduced when the line reopened in August 2009.

DUBLIN - LIMERICK - ENNIS

Limerick now has 16 weekday services from Dublin, an increase of one on 2009, but loses three direct services at 09:25, 11:25 and 13:25. In their place, connections into Dublin and Cork services at Limerick Junction are now provided from all Dublin-Cork services bar the 15:00. In the up direction, the 12:35, 14:15, and 17:35 direct services are similarly cancelled and connections instead provided to trains ex Cork. Journey times of the direct up trains at 05:35 and 07:35 have been extended by three minutes in the first instance and reduced by five minutes in the second instance. Oddly, the published timetable saw the former 06:35 departing at 06:55, running via Limerick Junction station and scheduled to arrive in Heuston at 09:15. In a revision issued on 15 December this train reverted to a 06:35 departure running direct to Dublin where it arrives at 09:00. The fastest direct train is now allowed 135 minutes for the 128 mile journey.

A new innovation is the provision of an early morning direct service to Limerick from Thurles at 07:30 arriving at 08:29. Whilst there is no equivalent evening direct service, passengers can of course avail of one of the many connections to Limerick Junction which feed into Dublin bound trains stopping at Thurles.

DUBLIN / CORK - TRALEE

The most significant change to weekday Dublin–Tralee services is that the only direct train from Dublin has now been brought forward to 17:05 from 18:30. The last down Tralee service is now via a connection off the 19:00 ex Dublin which is an hour earlier than previously. In the up direction, the early morning direct service ex-Tralee now leaves five minutes later at 07:20 while still arriving at 11:15. Other services from Tralee depart at 05:20, 09:15, 11:15, 13:15, 15:15, 17:15 & 19:15. The 05:20, 17:15 and 19:15 operate through to Cork, while the remaining services terminate at Mallow. Both the 21:15 Tralee-Cork and 22:20 Cork-Tralee are cancelled. Dublin-Tralee journey times are generally reduced by five minutes, although Tralee-Dublin journey times are extended by up to ten minutes due to additional stops on connecting Cork-Dublin trains. Many Tralee-Cork-Tralee journey times have increased substantially due to the removal of most of the connecting Mallow-Cork local trains. Tralee-Cork services now take as long as 2 hours 40 minutes, which doesn’t compare favourably with the competing Bus Éireann service which takes 2 hours 15 minutes.

DUBLIN - WATERFORD

The Waterford line sees minor timetable changes to most services. The most significant change is the inclusion of a 07:10 express service from Waterford to Dublin. This train completes the journey in two hours exactly by using the Lavistown Loop and making only one stop, Carlow, at 08:06. The following 07:40 ex Waterford serves all stations to Dublin. However, journey times for all other services remain uncompetitive with road. The 07:10 and 07:40 are both rostered as 3-Car ICRs resulting in severe overcrowding on the latter service to date.

DUBLIN - GALWAY

Although not completely clockface, services on this line have been recast with the majority of departures from Dublin at xx:30 and those from Galway at xx:05. Interestingly, the 07:30 and 15:30 departures from Dublin consist of two 3-car ICR sets, which split at Athlone with the rear set forming an onward train for Westport. In the up direction, a new service from Galway at 06:05 will join the 05:15 ex-Westport at Athlone and work forward as a single six-car train. Despite this being a route that sees huge competition from three bus operators, journey times are largely unaltered.

DUBLIN - WESTPORT / BALLINA

Services on this line have been increased by one to four trains in each direction per weekday. In the down direction two of these are formed by splitting trains at Athlone, while in the up direction one train joins with a service from Galway in Athlone. The remaining services operate through to or from Dublin.

A new ‘early bird’ service from Westport departs at 05:15 and arrives in Dublin at 08:50. Departures from Dublin are now at 07:30, 12:30, 15:30, and 18:30, while those from Westport are at 05:15, 07:15, 13:15, and 17:45.

There are no significant changes to services on the Ballina branch.

DUBLIN - SLIGO

The majority of the weekday timetable on the Sligo line remains unchanged. The 06:43 from Enfield now starts in Longford at 05:45. This change eliminates previous empty carriage workings Longford-Dublin and Dublin-Enfield. The only other change of any significance is that the 17:05 Connolly-Sligo now stops at Maynooth, Kilcock and Enfield so offering a much called for express option for Co. Kildare commuters.

Journey times, constrained as they are by the availability of passing loops, remain largely unchanged.

DUBLIN - MAYNOOTH

Docklands station remains closed to all non-peak services but is expected to be the terminus for services from Pace when that line opens later in the year. The remaining services to and from Docklands continue to operate to and from Clonsilla. Maynooth now has 42 trains to and from Dublin on each week day.

DUBLIN - ROSSLARE EUROPORT

The Rosslare line has had major investment in mini-CTC since the previous timetable was instigated, but there are few changes as a result. The previous midday service to Gorey now runs only as far as Arklow and departs 30 minutes later than before at 12:05. The previous 16:40 to Gorey has been advanced to 16:30 and now runs to Wexford. Similarly the through service from Maynooth at 17:30 has now been extended to Wexford from Enniscorthy. The 06:15 Enniscorthy-Rosslare, which connects into the 07:00 Rosslare Europort–Waterford train has been retained but the evening return service has now been cancelled.

The last train of the day is now the 18:30, which arrives at Rosslare Europort at 21:30. Journey times remain poor and uncompetitive with competing bus services, with the average speed of the 18:30 being 33 mph. Most services are now allowed just under an hour for the 191/2 miles between Dublin and Greystones, an average speed of around 20-mph. Generally, Rosslare services now immediately follow stopping DART trains between Dublin and Greystones rather than immediately preceding them.

DUBLIN - BELFAST

This line sees only minor changes to its schedule. Departure times in the down direction (to Belfast) are now 07:35, 09:35, 11:00, 13:20, 15:20, 16:50, 19:00 and 20:50 with up trains departing Belfast Central at 06:50, 08:00, 10:35, 12:35, 14:10, 16:10, 18:10 and 20:10. Journey times have lengthened on most services with the fastest train on this line still being the up 08:00. However it now takes 2 hours for the 1131/2 mile journey whereas heretofore it was allowed 1 hour 55 minutes. The Sunday timetable is unchanged.

DUBLIN - DROGHEDA - DUNDALK

The main change to Northern suburban services is that the majority of trains now have extra stops at Malahide and Portmarnock. These are to compensate for the reduction in DART frequency at these stations. A side effect of this is that the journey times of Dundalk and Drogheda services are even further extended. As overcrowding was already an issue on these trains, it remains to be seen how they will cope with two extra stops.

Little attempt has been made to align outer suburban schedules with the now (almost) regular interval DART service. This has resulted in unnecessarily extended journey times and further erosion in service quality.

LIMERICK JUNCTION - WATERFORD -ROSSLARE

Some of the extra services introduced in recent years have now been removed with the cancellation of the 11:45 ex Limerick Junction and the 09:35 ex Waterford. As before, the focus is on connections into and out of Dublin-Cork trains, rather than providing a Waterford-Limerick service. There is still no Sunday service on this line.

On the South Wexford line, the current minimal service of one train each way per day is retained. The morning service from Rosslare Europort has been advanced by five minutes to 07:00 arriving in Waterford at 08:20. The evening return service no longer runs through as a single train from Limerick Junction, but instead lays over for fifteen minutes before departing at 17:20. Advancing this train by fourteen minutes is likely to inconvenience many of the existing working commuters. In addition, as mentioned above, it is no longer possible to return to Enniscorthy, as the train now terminates at Rosslare Europort and remains there until the following morning to operate the return service to Waterford. It is difficult to understand why this service continues to depart ahead of the incoming afternoon train from Dublin Heuston, the 15:05, which now arrives 13 minutes after the departure of the South Wexford service.

BALLYBROPHY - LIMERICK

There are no significant changes, although the recently introduced 18:45 from Nenagh-Limerick has been cancelled.

LIMERICK - ENNIS - GALWAY

This year’s timetable sees the re-instatement of scheduled passenger services north of Ennis for the first time since April 1976. The line between Athenry and Ennis has been rebuilt in total and re-signalled under a mini-CTC scheme with a 60mph line speed. However, despite the higher line speed now, trains in 1963 were allowed 5 minutes less (55 minutes) for that section at a time when the line speed was only 50 mph. The new service sees five trains each way between Limerick and Galway on weekdays and four on Sundays. Weekday departures from Limerick are at 06:00, 09:35, 11:55, 14:15, and 18:30, while from Galway they are at 06:40, 09:45, 12:10, 14:30 and 17:25. Sunday trains are at 09:00, 12:40, 16:10, and 18:30 from Limerick and 08:25, 12:05, 16:25 and 18:40 from Galway.

The Cork–Galway corridor is an extremely busy route for bus operators with Bus Éireann providing 12 services each way daily and CityLink a further 6. It is then disappointing that no attempt has been made in the rail timetable to offer any sort of competing service by running the new services through to Limerick Junction. Instead the timetable has been cast as a Limerick–Galway service only, with no attempt to provide any meaningful connections to/from Cork. Waits between connections from Limerick onwards to Limerick Junction can be as long as 46 minutes, with the worst case in the opposite direction being 54 minutes. Journey times as a result are, in the main, hopelessly uncompetitive with the bus alternatives. Just one journey option beats the bus timings on the route and that is provided by the connections from the 12:30 ex-Cork which completes the journey in 3 hours 43 minutes, 2 minutes faster than the CityLink competition. However, even this is unlikely to appeal to the average passenger, given that there are two changes involved and the 2700s used for the bulk of the journey are inferior to the coaches now being used by the bus operators. In the reverse direction, the best time is 4 hours 10 minutes.

Trains between Limerick and Ennis are boosted as a result of the new Galway services. There are now 11 trains from Ennis to Limerick on weekdays and 9 on Sundays.

DUBLIN - KILDARE - PORTLAOISE

There is a new service from Portarlington at 05:50, which runs ahead of the 05:05 from Athlone, and arrives at Heuston at 06:40 having made one stop at Kildare (06:03). The pattern at Portlaoise remains much as before with a long gap in services for up trains between 08:51 and 11:20 and a similar gap in the down direction between 13:00 and 15:25. There are new services to Portlaoise at 08:30, 09:15 and 10:15, which are formed using stock that previously ran empty to the Traincare depot. In total, there are now 17 up and 16 down trains serving Portlaoise.

The remainder of this article appears in IRRS Journal number 171, published February 2010.