Despite the weather's best efforts to derail them, Irish Rail workers are keeping the tracks clear, writes CÍAN NIHILL
WHILE THE cold weather forced much of the country to grind to a halt over the past week, trains kept on moving with very few passenger services cancelled.
It wasn’t free from problems, with commuters having to endure some lengthy sub-zero delays standing on icy platforms. An impressive snowman at Portmarnock Station on Wednesday was a tribute to the time spent by one group awaiting the next train. Iarnród Éireann has so far managed to supply a safe method of transport at a time when even walking has become a hazard.
For the workers on the ground, it means fighting a 24-hour battle against the falling snow that is constantly covering the railway lines throughout the country.
Stewart Ryan from Dún Laoghaire works as a mobile ganger and along with his team, they have waded through the snow all week to keep everything running. The unrelenting snowfall has made it a somewhat repetitive task.
“You can be up and back to the points over and over again. With the snow coming down on top of you all the time it is very hard to try and keep them clear,” he said.
The workload did have one obvious benefit however. “I’m actually kept warm a lot. I cover from Connolly to Fairview which is about a mile and a quarter so I’m walking that all day which keeps you warm.”
Although only a little over a mile, walking those tracks makes it feel an awful lot longer. Each step sinks your foot shin-deep into freezing cold snow which forces your balancing reflexes to be at their best just to stay upright.
“It is very cold, your fingers get cold. You keep warm by sort of motivating yourself. The dampness gets through eventually to your shoes, and yeah it’s cold,” admitted Stewart.
Usually busy with various engineering maintenance works, the only task now for men like Stewart and his team of plate layers is to keep the switching points operating.
“Normally, the driver can switch the track but because of the snow and frost they can’t,” explained Mick Danaher who is in charge of the condition of the tracks in the greater Dublin area. As a result, teams like Stewart’s have first to clear the snow and then manually make the switch to allow the trains to pass.
With 270 points spread across the greater Dublin area alone and a ground staff there of just over 150, decisions had to be made with priority being given to passenger services.
Getting to the problem points is a huge headache as icy conditions make travelling quickly by road to remote switching points almost impossible. At 4am, a test train, empty of passengers, is run with a double purpose of checking the track and depositing workers to those hard-to-reach points.
The experiences of last year’s hard winter taught many lessons and a specific protocol document was drawn up that served well during the crisis this time around. A special review forum is held every evening between the departments to try and co-ordinate resources to deal with the extreme conditions.
Even allowing for all of that and the hard graft being done by the Iarnród Éireann staff, roughly 65 outside contract workers have been called in at short notice just to keep the selected points functional.
The result has been that while other public transport services were forced to shut, trains have continued to run.
In fact, they became victims of their own success mid-week when queues stretched back out of Connolly Station when road conditions forced Dublin Bus to suspend routes. “After having got through Thursday I think we feel like it can bring anything at us now,” said Mick Danaher.
Hopefully he won’t get a chance to prove it and that teams like Stewart’s can start getting back to their usual maintenance work which is now behind schedule, another casualty of the record-breaking weather.