North Atlantic Skyline - - Photographs from the west of Ireland (Galway, Mayo, Clare, Limerick, Roscommon and even Leitrim)

Down the line

Iarnród Eireann (aka Irish Rail) ran adverts last year that haven't done my blood pressure any good at all. That's probably because (a) I'm a customer, and every Iarnród Eireann customer ends the year with more grey hair and higher blood pressure than when they started it, and (b) the gap between reality and the fantasy presented in the ad is just a bit too much.

They started the year with an ad which showed a grinning celebrity booking his seat on the internet and then showing up to take his nice comfy seat, stretching out on the journey as the sun-drenched countryside whizzes by outside. The film crew must have been just lucky the day they picked to film the ad - otherwise, they might have filmed an advert where the celeb arrives at his seat to find a skanger with a can of lager already in his seat, with little inclination to move.

The bane of every regular commuter's life is the stag or hen party travelling 'down the country' for the weekend. Every Friday, gangs of them will take over carriages, numb what little brains they have with lager, chain-smoke with gay abandon, and treat the rest of the train to their "rare ould Dublin wit". Still, mustn't complain too much - most of them sound like they haven't been west of Inchicore before, and for every dozen of them inside the train travelling to Galway, there are twelve less outside chucking rocks at the train as it leaves Dublin.

The tag-line of the original ad was "How easy is that", and funnily enough, I often asked myself the same question when travelling on the train. Why can't you buy a newspaper on the train ? Why can't you get a decent cup of coffee or tea? There's a guy in the weekend market in Galway that has a mobile coffee shop on the back of a three-wheeler. Want a cappuchino ? No problem. Latte ? Here it is. On the train, however, tea and coffee service consists of a poor unfortunate dragging what is essentially a giant flask on a trolley, doling out instant tea or coffee dust mixed with water. A couple of weeks ago, the guy doing the tea/coffee service went through the train (dragging his trolley) and prefacing his "Tea/Coffee" enquiries with a short explanation that, because of 'technical problems', the water had only heated to 50 Celsius, and might not be as nice as normal. Unsurprisingly, the reaction he got wasn't as nice as normal either - he was one of our 'new Irish', so hopefully he might not have understood all the 'terms of endearment' that he received.

Ah yes - technical problems. You know how Eskimos are supposed to have 50 different words for snow, or how Gort people have 50 different words for rain ? Well, Iarnród Eireann have at least 50 different problems that afflict their services on a regular basis, and use the same phrase for all of them - signalling problems.

Blocked toilet on the early morning intercity ? Outbreak of the ebola virus in Athenry ? Train just didn't turn up at all? That would be signalling problems. It always amazes me that an engineer at NASA can issue instructions to a small wheelbarrow trundling around MARS 20 million kilometres away and get a response within 20 minutes, and yet, ask a member of Iarnród Eireann when the next train will arrive (as opposed to when it is scheduled to arrive), his eyes will narrow, he'll stare out into the distance where the rail-lines converge to nothingness and mutter softly, "Soon….any day now". Estragon and Vladimir only had to wait for nothing to arrive twice in Waiting for Godot - train commuters get to experience that every week on any given railway platform in Ireland.

As it happens, the signalling system in Ireland is pretty good, and technically, it would be possible to show exactly the location of the train on the line. It needs to be good because, at least on the Dublin to Galway line (as well as many others), the track is single line. Trains can only pass each other at designated points, and they can only arrive at those points if they can 'see' (via the signalling), that their path is clear ahead. But then, if one could see the exact location, passengers might see that when trains are late, it's because a train never set off on time in the first place.

Now, you might have read about the new trains that have been bought. I've read about them too, and that's as close as I've got to one. The new trains are all locomotives - i.e. each carriage can propel itself, so in theory, a breakdown only affects a single carriage. Apparently, the heating works on them too. The current trains appear to have a system that guarantees that every second carriage is a sauna (with the other carriages providing the equivalent of an icy plunge pool) - it's as close as Iarnród Eireann will get to a Scandinavian rail service. The current crop of trains on the Dublin to Galway line also have a problem with the doors. Either they won't open or they won't close. I once watched three members of staff at Athenry have to put their shoulders against a recaltricent door, slowly but surely push it back into the closed position, so that the train could leave. Another time, a door wouldn't close at all so they staff blocked off the carriage and the train took off with the door open. Sometimes, a door or two won't open at all, and I often wonder what would happen if an emergency occurred.

There is a pecking order to how trains are assigned. Top of the heap is the Dublin to Cork line which is one of the most lucrative and busiest service in the country (all those "Dubs" going home for the weekend). They get the shiny new trains first - God knows the whinging if they didn't. Further down the line (so to speak) is Dublin to Galway, and Dublin to Sligo. The Dublin-Sligo line is legendary, but not in a good way. Years ago, my sister had to use it every weekend to get to and from Sligo and it was never less than half an hour late (and that was the best it got). More recently, the staff were forced to leave the locomotives running all night because they weren't sure the engines would start in the morning if they were switched off. The Dublin to Westport line is at the bottom of the pile - the carriages on that line bear the logo of British Rail from the 1960s and watching a Westport-bound train trundling along is reminiscent of a WWII movie - you'd half expect to see Frank Sinatra in a German uniform running after it.

Apparently, the reason for the non-appearance of the new trains on the Dublin-to-Galway is that the new marshalling yard in Portarlington is not yet ready. Now, I haven't been to Portarlington station in years - when I was 13, I was stuck there for 3 hours waiting for a connection and it took my parents several weeks to coax back my will to live. I'm sure it's a lovely place now, but back then, it was only one hobbit short of middle earth. The reason for the marshalling yard is that, for any service, there's needs to be a place to keep spare locomotives in case of a breakdown, and that place needs to be roughly halfway along the line. The new trains can run between Dublin and Tullamore, no problem, because they can send a spare engine from the main marshalling yard in Inchicore. But to run a service to Galway, we must await the construction of Gare du Portarlington. Alas, when I passed through Portarlington a few weeks ago, there didn't seem to be much progress on the construction work. Still, Frank Fahey has stated that we will have the new trains in May, so whom am I to doubt?

You'd think that it shows a marked lack of optimism to plan for the breakdowns before launching the new, and allegedly more reliable trains. And you might scratch your head at the logic of refusing to run a very reliable new service without a comprehensive breakdown recovery strategy, given that the alternative (and current reality) is to run an utterly unreliable service without any breakdown strategy. A highlight of my commuting year in 2007 was travelling to Athlone, only to have the train conk out on the bridge over the Shannon (about half a kilometre from the station). After a delay, the train was restarted and made it to within 100 metres of the platform, where the locomotive conked out again, this time permanently. Within sight of the platform, we waited for more than an hour while another locomotive came down from Inchicore in Dublin to help us complete the journey. A member of staff tried to cheer us up by telling us that the new trains , when they arrive, will have increased redundancy. I know where I'd like to start with increasing redundancy, and it wouldn't be the trains.

Still, I don't want to seem unduly negative. The regular staff are helpful, friendly and treat the challenges of their work with a sense of humour (though the passengers need an even greater one). The price I pay for living in Galway is commuting an 120 mile round trip into the interior every day, and I couldn't do that without the train service.

Over the last decade, the government have begun investing heavily in the nation's infrastructure. But throwing money at a problem without figuring out how all the elements should work together is usually a recipe for a disaster [Exhibit A: the Health Service]. Trains and platforms are getting a long-overdue upgrade and that's good. But most people don't live or work right beside a train station. A typical example was when Irish Rail decided to change the time of the morning service from Galway to Dublin in early 2007. Without warning passengers [you know, something complicated like mentioning it in advance on their website], they moved the train time from 7.45 to 7.15. They didn't tell Galway Bus either, meaning that the only way to get to the train was to drive [and you know how easy it is to park near Eyre Square]. As for cycling, I was told by a member of staff at the station is that it is company policy to remove any bikes they find and dispose of them. No - there's no bike shed either.

Getting back to the Irish Rail adverts, the grinning lug was replaced by illuminated stands in all the stations proclaiming the arrival of the shiny new trains in the spring of 2007. But they have all disappeared since the beginning of 2008. That's not a good sign…

irish, rail, iarnrod>, eireann, train, western, corridor, ireland, galway, irishblogs, photoblogs, photography, photographs, pictures, galwayblogs, blog, monasette, north atlantic skyline, john smyth, Canon, 5D, january, 2008

Posted by Monasette at January 29, 2008 10:57 PM