The state of Irish railways

[citybus]

By getting rid of some of the more obscure lines the network was rationalised. But the biggest failure of Ireland has been to squander what viable rail lines they have- something that Britain has been much better at.

Some other factors that have contributed to Ireland's decline:

-Both northern & southern governments have tended to be very dismissive of the welfare state, it's not like Britain where post 1945 you had Labour administrations. Therefore those in power have not had an appetite for subsidising the 'public' railway industry, while perversely having no qualms for subsidising the 'private sector' roads lobby. And I'm not sure how relevant it is to the topic of railways, but the De Valera regime was reasonably contemptuous to the working classes and urbanity in general. An economy based on small farms mightn't have been ideal for the train industry's point of view

-By this stage there are large areas of the country where there is no ingrained tradition of many people using the train. Go to any of the halts in Northern Ireland for example, even the ones with okayish service, and you'll find plenty of households who are completely ignorant of what services public transport provides- as they drive everywhere. In recent decades very little has been done to make trains more attractive. Instead the state has stood by and watched car parks proliferate in Belfast city centre. I suspect Dublin isn't much different.

-Even in the South, where there has been massive investment in rail in the last decade- and had there been no recession this would have continued in spectacular fashion- but this has been largely divorced from planning policy, which has been to construct low density neighbourhoods completely unsuited for efficient public transport. On the other hand there are too many airports serving underpopulated regions whereas more effort could be made to improved transport within the country rather than going abroad.

 

[IR-Mark4/ICR]

We should discuess this early next year, currently late Jan 2013 when there will be big changes accross the network Cork and Galway service will see major changes as will Waterford to an extent. Sligo services could see a slight reduction as was leaked to media today but nothing major.

 

[Cyberbeagle]

Hi all,

I'm just wondering from a sociological perspective why Ireland's railways are so behind those on the continent? 3 particular angles:

1. Why has the Enterprise line never been upgraded for high speed travel? I believe its the slowest intercity route in Europe. Why has there been no pressure to upgrade the line and trains into a high speed line? Surely a 1hr Belfast-Dublin train would be massively popular? Has there ever been a movement to put the line out to tender to someone like Virgin / First / Stagecoach?

2. Why were 2/3rds of the network shut down after the 1920s? Is there any movement to bring back these lines?

3. Until the Irish Civil war was the network part of British Rail? Why was the decision taken to isolate the Northern Irish sector from the rest of the nation? Surely British Rail should have also looked after Northern Ireland's railway infrastructure?

I'll take these in reverse order...

Not quite getting the history here. There was no British Rail prior to 1948, but rather the Big Four in Great Britain and other independent companies in Ireland.

Ireland's secession from the UK was a messy affair, resulting in partition. This resulted in the creation of Northern Ireland in 1921 as a devolved region of the UK, while the rest of the island left the UK to form an independent Dominion (the Irish Free State) later leaving the Commonwealth and becoming the Republic of Ireland. Basically extreme nationalism took over after 1916 through a series of events that turned most people in the south away from constitutional nationalism (think SNP in Scotland) to violent republicanism and insurrection. The majority of the people in the north-east were opposed to secession and thus remained part of the UK, with a level of devolution equivalent to that enjoyed today by Scotland. The Irish Civil War was a separate fight between those republicans opposed to the treaty signed with London, and those in favour.

So, the situation the new Northern Ireland found itself in railway wise was that there were three big railway companies operating here, with some smaller ones - the LMS (NCC), the Great Northern, the Belfast & County Down, and also the Sligo Leitrim, and Co. Donegal and Lough Swilly (last two narrow gauge).

The LMS owned and operated the Northern Counties Railway here in Northern Ireland as the LMS(NCC) as an integral part of its operations, same livery, same operations, York Road pioneered many diesel prototypes that would go on to new life in GB, Derby built all the engines - the only difference was the gauge, which mattered little to the LMS bosses.

It is a *very* sad fact that many so-called experts on the LMS conveniently forget about the NCC operations and think the company finished in Stranraer. Such a narrow-minded view.

When the Railway Executive was formed in 1948 technically the NCC became part of the fledgling British Railways for a number of months. However at the same time the devolved NI government at Stormont was faced with what to do with the struggling BCDR. The BCDR had suffered a huge catastrophe at the end of WW2 with an horrific accident at Ballymacarrett just outside Belfast, and the compensation paid out as a result brought the company to its knees.

The decision taken was to nationalise the BCDR and take over the NCC from BR/Railway Executive, and combine them with the NI Road Transport Board (which ran the buses) into a new Ulster Transport Authority, which would "co-ordinate" bus and rail in the Province.

The GNR(I) was left out for over a decade due to the fact that it was a cross-border organisation and needed the agreement of the Republic's government, and at the time relationships weren't the best

If the NI government had wanted to set up a British Rail (Northern Ireland) region, then it's perfectly possible that they could've done. And most likely it would've worked out better for the railways here. However, since NI was devolved this meant it was easier to take control of the network themselves, as to give it over to BR would mean London control and not Belfast control, leading to a messy administrative setup.

Trouble was, the politicians in Stormont made Dr. Beeching look like a railway enthusiast, with one high-profile elected representative describing the railways as "as obsolete as the stagecoach". Motorways here there and everywhere were the answer, and the Stormont government had great fun closing down as many lines as possible, promising replacement motorways (which often never happened), even when the UTA itself (reknowned as being pro-bus and anti-rail) objected to the closure of the Warrenpoint branch and the Portadown-Londonderry line (unheard of before).

It is also worth noting that Dr. Beeching probably looked at the closures in Northern Ireland! The Benson Report was virtually contemporary with the Beeching report.

You will note that most of the other lines closed in NI and ROI are in and around the border area. While such lines would not present a problem now with the EU, back then the introduction of the border meant the introduction of customs checks and a lot of administration. As soon as the former GNRI lines became part of the UTA the Stormont government made a unilateral decision to close the cross border ones, much to the annoyance of the Dublin government who offered to take over the running of lines such as the Irish North West through Enniskillen - an offer unpalatable to the unionist government.

So why is the Enterprise so slow? Bit of a legacy from that as well... The Belfast-Dublin line was the mainline of the GNRI, and when it was divided between the UTA and CIE, it was jointly operated by them. So basically any improvements in the service have to go through two separate government and railway boards. For instance the Mk3s could've been on the service, but they'd have to pass NIR's regulations. Or some of IE's new CAFs-on-steroids, but again they have to be passed by NIR.

I do know NIR's GM wants to plan to upgrade the line to 125mph running, but the real pain of the Dublin line is that it slows to a crawl once it reaches Dublin due to local services. If priority was given to the Enterprise, it wouldn't be as slow as it is now. But politics, politics, politics!! And I mean railway company politics!!!

Hope that helps a little bit.

 

[exile]

It's difficult to see how a island of 5 million people is going to justify a high speed rail network. The bus is king of public transport in Ireland except in the Dublin area and along a few selected routes, as distances and passenger numbers aren't enough for rail to exploit its advantages in speed and capacity.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

There's a very splendid paperback:
Irish Railways a new history, by Tom Ferris (Gill & Macmillan, 2008).
I picked it up in Dublin last year.
Covers all of Ireland and many of the issues raised in the long posts above.
An eye-opener for me.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Some excellent material there , fascinating.

Apart from fuel driven early dieselisation on CIE , one gets the impression that CIE largely carried on as before , apart from some deeply rural closures - e.g 6 wheel coaches of the Victorian area hauled by GM's!

 

[jopsuk]

One of the oddities- quite why Ireland ended up with broad gauge, especially given that it was Westminster that wrote that into law in the same act that ended broad gauge in Great Britain.

 

[PFX]

It was a similar situation to that in the UK, whereby there was no 'standard' gauge and various companies were using different gauges, ranging from 4' 8 1/2" to 6' 2". Two alternatives were suggested as part of an investigation by the board of trade. However, the man charged by them with reporting on a common gauge, noted that the average was 5' 3" and recommended that to the board of trade.

 

[Cyberbeagle]

It was a similar situation to that in the UK, whereby there was no 'standard' gauge and various companies were using different gauges, ranging from 4' 8 1/2" to 6' 2". Two alternatives were suggested as part of an investigation by the board of trade. However, the man charged by them with reporting on a common gauge, noted that the average was 5' 3" and recommended that to the board of trade.

Suppose you can't blame him, how was Major-General Pasley of the Royal Engineers in the 1840s to think that in early 21st Century there would only be a few rolling stock suppliers in Europe, and that regauging of stock would prove an issue?

Though part of you does think if Westminster was introducing legislation to introduce *a* standard guage they'd use one right across the four home nations.

But better to annoy ALL three Irish railways rather than just two, I suppose...

 

[PFX]

how was Major-General Pasley of the Royal Engineers in the 1840s to think that in early 21st Century there would only be a few rolling stock suppliers in Europe, and that regauging of stock would prove an issue?

How ridiculously short-sighted of him...

 

[jcevans]

Thanks everyone for your replies, particularly cyberbeagles excellent reply!

Thanks all