A railway lobby group has called for passenger trains to be withdrawn from five lines in the south -east and for a new Dublin-Clonmel direct service to be introduced instead. Chris Ashmore reports.
Platform 11 is proposing that when the Limerick Junction-Waterford-Rosslare route is reopened later this year, passenger services be withdrawn from Carrick-on-Suir, Co Waterford, and the south Wexford stations of Campile, Ballycullane, Wellington Bridge and Bridgetown.
Iarnród Éireann has plans to run three trains daily in each direction from Limerick to Rosslare when the Cahir viaduct re-opens. It was shut last October after a cement train was derailed and plunged into the river.
However, rather than subsidising trains on the entire "uneconomical and little used Limerick-Waterford-Rosslare service", Platform 11 says in its "rethink the network" strategy that the time has come for radical changes.
It wants resources to be redirected towards upgrading the Limerick Junction to Clonmel section to enable the operation of a Dublin-Clonmel service in just over two and a half hours. It could also serve Tipperary town and Cahir.
Platform 11 communications officer, Mr Thomas Sheridan, said yesterday that every day, dozens of people living and working in Clonmel drive to Kilkenny and Thurles in order to take the train to Dublin, while bus services to Dublin and Cork are still heavily used.
He said Clonmel is one of the largest towns in Ireland without a direct rail link to the capital.
"There is little point in reopening the route for the same old failed passenger service which in recent years has carried as little as 11 passengers a day. This is a line that is on life support and people have to look at a radical solution."
Traditionally the service from Rosslare to Waterford, Limerick Junction and beyond was known as the "boat train", but the arrival of low cost air travel means that the service has become "a left-over from Victorian Ireland", Mr Sheridan said.
From Clonmel to Waterford and Rosslare, the route should remain open for freight traffic and for possible future passenger services, he added.
"A Clonmel-Dublin direct service is the most intelligent way forward, saving the most viable and important section of the Limerick-Waterford-Rosslare line once and for all. This is far more realistic than expecting the Government/taxpayer to fund the entire railway re-construction project from Limerick-Waterford-Rosslare for a little used passenger line between these two cities," Mr Sheridan said.
"Railways, like every other aspect of modern Irish life, live and die by the same economic realities which affect us all."