Lack of trains and lack of catering on trains.

Of course specific towns like letterkenny alone would not support a train or motorway but the route from dublin to there does pass through populous areas. Similar to other routes across the country where there are trains and motorways.

Derry isnt an option as the train only goes to belfast. Youd need to drive to derry to then get a train all along the coast to belfast and on down to dublin. Thats not reasonable. And theres no motorway to derry - there shoukd be, with a spur off towards letterkenny/north west.

Theres an equality/discrimination argument too. The government/politicians should address this and invest in this region. It isnt fair, to put it simply.

Wandering_Dazed said:

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the Railway Network map below.

Click to expand...

The map is accurate, but what it doesn't show is that a signficant part of the lines that disappeared between 1920 and 2020 consisted of low-quality, narrow-gauge (3' or 3' 6") single-track lines that largely ran along or alongside existing roads. They were established and designed to compete with the only alternative, which was horse-drawn traffic, and with average speeds of between 20 and 40 km/h (but slower on uphill inclines) they could do that. But, even then, most of them never made a profit. Once lorries and buses came along, their fate was sealed. Even if the money were there, it would have beem impossible to upgrade them to double-track, standard Irish gauge lines; a complete new route would be required.

Letterkenny is mentioned in the thread. In 1920 it was possible to travel from Dublin to Letterkenny by rail. The route would be:

• Dublin to Dundalk on a standard gauge line
• Change at Dundalk or Portadown for Derry, again on a standard gauge line.
• At Derry, change stations from Waterside to Foyle Road. You'll have to do this on foot, or hire a cab.
• Derry to Letterkenny on a narrow-gauge line.

Total travel time is 8.5 to 9 hours, not counting connection times at Dundalk and at Derry, which depend on timetables (and services on the smaller lines were not frequent). The last section, from Derry to Letterkenny, takes two hours.

There's an alternative which involves alighting at Strabane and taking a different narrow gauge railway to Letterkenny, but the total travel time is longer. Plus the connections might require you to overnight at Strabane, which I wouldn't wish on anybody.

So, even in the good old days the rail service to Letterkenny was dreadful. Donegal had quite a dense railway network of which Letterkenny was actually one of the hubs, but the entire system had a 3' gauge , and average speeds of 15-20 kmh. On certain sections of track an express service could get up to 30 kmh, but these sections were few, and not lengthy. None of this was because Letterkenny was considered unimportant; it was because the terrain in Donegal doesn't lend itself to anything except light, narrow-gauge railways. And of course that hasn't changed since 1920.

Tl;dr: the 1920 rail network was extensive, but much of it was of low quality. Even at the time it wasn't financially viable, so there was no capital available to upgrade it. It couldn't provide a service that anybody nowadays would choose to use and, given the routes along which the narrow-gauge lines in particular ran, even if cost were no object upgrading to standard gauge simply wasn't an option. For many of the lines that were closed, the alternative of investing to upgrade to a service that people would use wasn't available at any price. For others, it might have been possible if funds were unlimited, but it still wouldn't have been a wise use of those funds.

There are, of course, lines that were closed that could have been upgraded, and we might thinks should have been — the branch from Portadown to Derry is often mentioned. But even on the most favourable view the rail network in 2020 was alwasy going to be much smaller than in 1920.

And theres no doubt that a rail service to the NW woukd cost money and woukdnt sustain itself but there still shoukd be 1

T McGibney said:

What was your point then in asking

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Because if a statement that a population the size of Letterkenny would not support a train service then logically a smaller town must not support a train service. Obviously I don't believe the first statement is based on evidence so I am not actually asking for the service to Sligo to stop! Merely pointing out that a statement was made by Brendan which was pretty flippant and not backed up by anything.

Ceist Beag said:

Because if a statement that a population the size of Letterkenny would not support a train service then logically a smaller town must not support a train service.

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You're missing the obvious point that the current rail service to Sligo survives serves a long line of towns and areas west of Mullingar. Extending it northwards to Letterkenny at vast marginal cost would only serve one more country. The economics of that extension would never stack up.

Wandering_Dazed said:

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the Railway Network map below.

Click to expand...

TomEdison said:

The map is accurate, but what it doesn't show is that a signficant part of the lines that disappeared between 1920 and 2020 consisted of low-quality, narrow-gauge (3' or 3' 6") single-track lines that largely ran along or alongside existing roads. They were established and designed to compete with the only alternative, which was horse-drawn traffic, and with average speeds of between 20 and 40 km/h (but slower on uphill inclines) they could do that. But, even then, most of them never made a profit. Once lorries and buses came along, their fate was sealed. Even if the money were there, it would have beem impossible to upgrade them to double-track, standard Irish gauge lines; a complete new route would be required.

Click to expand...

From what I understand all the lines in 1920 would have been private and many used primarily for goods and as you say single track. With the advent of cars etc they were no longer profitable and were going out of business. The state via CIE stepped in and bought / took over Great Southern and a Dublin transport company I think.

The population densities were ever there to support them once the commercial need ended. So it's not a case of the state closing the railway lines but not nationalising them all and funding them via decades of losses.

ArthurMcB said:

Theres an equality/discrimination argument too. The government/politicians should address this and invest in this region.

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Back in the early 90's I spend a year attending Sligo RTC (as it was then). The train cost £17.50 student return from Dublin if I bought the ticket in Dublin and £12.50 return if I bought the ticket in Sligo. The Train took over 3 and a half hours.
There was also a private bus service. It left at 9PM from the Pro-cathedral in Dublin. It took 2.45 minutes and cost £8.50 return.

I took the bus.

T McGibney said:

You're missing the obvious point that the current rail service to Sligo survives serves a long line of towns and areas west of Mullingar. Extending it northwards to Letterkenny at vast marginal cost would only serve one more country. The economics of that extension would never stack up.

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I'm not missing that point at all. I made it clear what my point was. As others have said, obviously it would cost a lot. That's a different argument. The North West has always been badly served and it always comes down to an argument about cost. Kerry on the other hand has been able to achieve so much more even though it is very similar in terms of distance from Dublin, terrain, population, etc.

TomEdison said:

Tl;dr: the 1920 rail network was extensive, but much of it was of low quality. Even at the time it wasn't financially viable, so there was no capital available to upgrade it. It couldn't provide a service that anybody nowadays would choose to use and, given the routes along which the narrow-gauge lines in particular ran, even if cost were no object upgrading to standard gauge simply wasn't an option. For many of the lines that were closed, the alternative of investing to upgrade to a service that people would use wasn't available at any price. For others, it might have been possible if funds were unlimited, but it still wouldn't have been a wise use of those funds.

There are, of course, lines that were closed that could have been upgraded, and we might thinks should have been — the branch from Portadown to Derry is often mentioned. But even on the most favourable view the rail network in 2020 was alwasy going to be much smaller than in 1920.

Click to expand...

This, all day. My mother always says that the late 1950s dismantling of the rail network was phenomenally popular as the service it provided was slow, unreliable, expensive and dirty. The broad mass of people preferred that resources be concentrated on roads.

Ceist Beag said:

. The North West has always been badly served and it always comes down to an argument about cost.

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It's more an argument about resources than cost. Even last night the leader of the loony NI Green Party was on BBCNI TV arguing that the badly needed upgrade of the notoriously dangerous A5 road (70 deaths over the past 25 years,10 in the past 27 months) should be long-fingered to enable the upgrading of rail links.

faketales said:

From what I understand all the lines in 1920 would have been private and many used primarily for goods and as you say single track. With the advent of cars etc they were no longer profitable and were going out of business. The state via CIE stepped in and bought / took over Great Southern and a Dublin transport company I think.

The population densities were ever there to support them once the commercial need ended. So it's not a case of the state closing the railway lines but not nationalising them all and funding them via decades of losses.

Click to expand...

All of the railways were orgininally privately built and owned, but a lot of the smaller lines relied on public subsidies (mostly from local government) right from the start.

The high point of the system was reached in 1920. The system suffered badly from the Civil War — both because of disruption to trade and traffice, and because of direct attacks on railway infrastructure. The Free State government paid compensation but by the time the damage had all been repairied the railways were suffering badly from motor traffic competition. Post-war inflation had seen a huge rise in wages and costs which was not being matched by increased revenue from passengers or goods. Many of the smaller companies were effectively bankrupt.

Matters came to a head when the largest company, GSWR, which operated the lines from Dublin to Rosslare, Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Galway, told the Free State government that it could not continue to trade. The government hastily arranged an amalgation of all the railway companies south of the border, which took effect in 1925 - the new entity was called Great Southern Railways. This enabled some rationalisation and cost-saving but that wasn't enough to make the system as a whole profitable. So GSR was also given the power to compulsorily acquire its competitors; it promptly acquired the Irish Omnibus Company and closed down all the services that competed with its rail services.

Matters limped along until the Emergency brought further pressures, which the government attempted to alleviate by adding DUTC, which operated the Dublin bus and tram network, to the amalgamated concern, which was renamed CIE. But that still didn't bring financial stability, so eventually CIE was taken fully into public ownership in 1950.

Quite a lot of the smaller lines were still open at this point, so they were in fact closed after the system was taken into public ownership. In relation to cross-border lines and lines serving border areas the government's hand was effectively forced when the NI government unilaterally terminated most rail services operating north of the border. The southern "stumps" of those lines, and other lines in the south that only made sense because of connection with them, could not survive and were rapidly closed.

Ceist Beag said:

Letterkenny is largest town in the northwest with a population on a par with Athlone, Mullingar and Portlaoise.

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A Letterkenny train route should link up with Derry which would open up the northwest and provide more passenger traffic

Ceist Beag said:

Kerry on the other hand has been able to achieve so much more even though it is very similar in terms of distance from Dublin, terrain, population, etc.

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Are you saying that the provision railways, and a massive marketing spend attracting US tourists over the decades has made a difference to Kerry when compared to Donegal?

Purple said:

Does the Limerick-Ballybrophy rail line still cost the State €550 in subsidies per passenger journey? The DART costs €0.80 per passenger journey.

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Yep.

But blah blah blah bicycle shed in Leinster House, blah blah blah, we deserve it even though we rarely if ever use it, blah blah blah. (Repeat ad infinitum.)

Personally, as a chap who lives within 10 km of the old West Cork line, I want that one reopened, so I can use it - with my free travel pass - to head up to Cork City two or three times a year!

Early railways in many European countries would have started off as single-track railways and would have suffered significant war damage in WW1 and WW2. They found it was not impossible to repair and upgrade them.

However Ireland was for many decades after independence not in a financially stable enough position to make rational long term financial decisions.

A read through of a dail debate on decision to close the West Cork Railway is given here


CIE was losing 558,000 per year and seemingly the WCR line was losing 78,000 pounds a year, an estimate to improve the roads to take the replacement traffic was 1,500,000 pounds. (You can make those maths work by not improving the roads or by thinking that the money to pay CIE losses was coming from a different place to the money spent on roads.)

Future president Erskine Childers who was the minister at the time had seemingly said that the train service could be replaced by 15 road vehicles. The equivalent of saying why do we've a train service from Dublin to Cork - when we could easily squeeze the passengers of one train into several buses and cars.

There was disappointment at that WCR closure particularly as shortly before the closure CIE had invested in upgrades leading the public to believe it would be spared. This was a route connecting at one time Cork to Kinsale, Clonakilty, Courtmacsherry, Baltimore, Bantry, I'd think it would be popular if it was a route today.

You can close a route - but you can also ensure you still maintain control of the land involved in case you ever change your mind - they didn't even do that or least not in any way that it would ever be feasible to reopen a line.

ashambles said:

I'd think it would be popular if it was a route today.

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More seriously than my last post suggests I'd strongly support it being reopened from Cork to Bandon, or even Clonakilty, but the rest of the West Cork lines (there are a number of branches) would make superb Greenways. (This has already been done for the Timoleague to Courtmacsherry branch.)

In the UK some of the single track lines in touristy areas have been re-opened by private operators, focused on tourists \ day tripper services. They frequently appear on eg Michael Portillo Railway Journeys. But the tracks were still in place there, just overgrown \ lacking in maintenance.

Political will.

This just reflects the general lack of infrastructure in the country. Ireland is a relatively small country and a moderately fast comprehensive rail network would also solve some of the housing and gridlock problems in the country. I am surprised that the greens didn't make this more of an issue when in government. 3.5 hours Sligo to Dublin is farcical.

The Waterford line should also have catering facilities.
Why not put it to private tender?
Majority of people love all that snack food, and seem to wait until they get to the station to eat.. despite having food at home.