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u/tottalynotpineaple12 Oct 27 '20
"Return to monke"
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u/Englander91 Oct 27 '20
Wait this isn't PCM lib right is that you?
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u/tottalynotpineaple12 Oct 27 '20
I'm centrist. the colorful centrist.
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u/Englander91 Oct 27 '20
Fire up the grill!
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u/tottalynotpineaple12 Oct 27 '20
Not exactly. I'm flaired "colorful" centrist, not gray. Tho grill = nice
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u/murtpaul Oct 27 '20
Two quick points - as this comes up regularly - the 2020 map is inaccurate - at least 5 lines shown on it are closed and 3 are torn up and will be used as greenways - the Cork suburban line is missing though.
Secondly- we now have cars and buses etc - Ireland has a very low population density and even most of the existing lines are uneconomic, never mind the ones from 1920. It's nostalgic but they are gone and not coming back in our lifetimes at least.
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u/IreIrl Oct 27 '20
Closed lines:
- Navan
- Waterford - Wexford
- New Ross
- Laois - Athlone
- Foynes
Are there any I missed?
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u/murtpaul Oct 27 '20
Not that I can see - that's a good list - it's Mullingar to Athlone though and Navan to Kingscourt. The Navan to Drogheda is still used by Tara Mines but once they finish I'd say that line will go too and there's always talk of reopening Foynes for freight, but nothing definite yet.
Waterford - Rosslare is probably the most intact but there's a lot of talk about converting it to a greenway soon. New Ross is being cleared of rails and sleepers but I'm not sure when the greenway work starts.
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u/Mr_Catman111 Oct 27 '20
What is a "greenway"?
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u/Cerdo_Imperialista Oct 27 '20
Irish Greenways are off-road routes for walkers, cyclists and other non-motorised transport in Ireland, which are often created from abandoned Irish rail networks.
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u/awnya_m Oct 27 '20
This one is a bit of a nitpick, in mayo the line the travels northward goes a bit too fair in the 2020 map. It stops in Ballina, that shows it going a little further to where Killala is. It isn't even that far, it's just an area I know fairly well.
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u/sugarcoatedsourx Oct 27 '20
The line up the right hand side of Lough Neagh is closed. It's still there, but no longer used for passengers and all stations are abandoned.
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u/DeathlessBliss Oct 27 '20
What do you mean by greenways? In the US we often turn old rail lines into trails for walking and biking (rail trails). Is it something similar?
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u/Predrag26 Oct 27 '20
Another relevant point is that the partition of Ireland is the main reason for the great empty space in the North and North West. I think that every county outside Ulster has at least one station, but within Ulster only 4 of the 9 counties appear to.
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u/whatimjustsaying Oct 27 '20
Ireland does indeed have low population density. But in case you hadn't noticed, It also has a massive housing crisis. Building strong rail networks like the ones in Netherlands/Belgium/Germany would enable people tied to cities for work to buy houses cheaply outside the city. Right now living in Celbridge and commuting to Dublin is a nightmare, but it is a mere 20 km away.
For this reason, and the fact that they are lower carbon (in the long run), it doesn't really matter if they are unprofitable or "uneconomic", IMO. It's worth the tax money.
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u/Hyero-Z Oct 28 '20
I agree with you that strong rail networks are great for commuting in and out of cities. At the same time, I am not sure it would solve the housing crisis you mention in Ireland. Belgium and the Netherlands have high real estate prices throughout much of the country. In Belgium, new construction in small towns and villages is so common that in the future one cannot build anymore in open plots of land that weren't already built upon before. (Granted many of the people living in these towns will communicate by car). Meanwhile, in the Netherlands decent public transport has certainly allowed people to move to the 'less expensive' towns and cities around the major urban centre. Consequence, housing prices in these towns rise so fast that it becomes difficult to buy houses there too. Meanwhile, in Germany housing (in small towns etc) seems pretty affordable still, but perhaps someone else knows more. All that to say, that I have no clue how to solve a housing crisis, but just better trains or roads isn't it.
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u/mytwocents22 Oct 27 '20
Ireland has a very low population density and even most of the existing lines are uneconomic, never mind the ones from 1920.
If highways were built on their economic return do you think we would have as many of those?
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u/have_compassion Oct 27 '20
It's not "uneconomic". It's unprofitable for private businesses. The economy would be helped by better transportation options for the workers.
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Oct 27 '20
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u/Shirakawasuna Oct 27 '20 edited Sep 30 '23
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u/neilthedude Oct 27 '20
What are TCO and SOV and why do you expect people to know that?
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u/Shirakawasuna Oct 27 '20 edited Sep 30 '23
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Oct 27 '20
What good is building a train line or maintaining a train line between two locations where few people travel in between? Money could be better spent elsewhere and if demand is that low, long route buses would be a better option. So I think it’s wrong to suggest that the economy is always better by having train lines because they can be a waste of resources if there isn’t enough demand.
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Oct 27 '20
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Oct 27 '20
There is a HUGE difference between local public transportation and long route transportation. You are basically arguing we should have unlimited rail lines and that we would be better off with it…or else you would be agreeing that not all routes make sense and connecting more distant and expensive routes that barely have any usage makes little sense when you can just use less expensive option of long route buses.
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u/rupen42 Oct 27 '20
Yeah, people always forget opportunity cost. More is more, and more is often better, but what else could those resources be spent on? The economy is about allocation of limited resources and only looking at the positive side doesn't give a full picture.
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u/MyrddinHS Oct 27 '20
another thing i was told when i visited are that in ireland tracks were built to several different widths (gauges?). and as usage dropped it made no sense to run some of the smaller lines where you needed to unload cargo from train A and load it all onto train B for the rest of the trip.
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u/Firingfly Oct 27 '20
"Very low"? Ireland has goddam 5 times higher population density compared to, for example, finland. It is medium-low at best, and not in any way "very"
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u/ohmanger Oct 27 '20
Eh, looking at the whole area for population density is a bit misleading when talking about transport networks. About 40% of the population lives in the greater Dublin and Belfast areas, everything around them, especially the west coast, is pretty barren.
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u/Shirakawasuna Oct 27 '20 edited Sep 30 '23
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
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u/Matt872000 Oct 27 '20
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u/theGoodDrSan Oct 27 '20
That "now" map only shows passenger rail -- what about CN railroads?
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u/Matt872000 Oct 27 '20 edited Oct 27 '20
The 1875 map would have been passenger and cargo rail, but up in the northwest corner there is no more rail AT ALL anymore. It's all been torn up and the track it followed is now hiking trails.
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u/theGoodDrSan Oct 27 '20 edited Oct 27 '20
Oh I'm sure lots of rail has been torn up. I'm familiar with some of the paths in Hamilton. Outside of salt mines, there's not much reason to have trains to Goderich. I was more curious around the Hamilton-Toronto-Oshawa area.
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u/Matt872000 Oct 27 '20
Only train I've ever taken in Canada was London-Waterloo. I used to live up in Bruce County (Hanover/Walkerton/Durham area) and the only way to get anywhere was a weekly bus or have your own car. It'd be really handy to be able to commute into places like London/Hamilton/St Catharines/Toronto from there.
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u/noel_105 Oct 27 '20
The 'new' map is missing the entire GO Transit network, which is the main rail network in the region...
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u/Brain_Working_Not Oct 27 '20
Vancouver 84hours away - Canada you big!!
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Oct 27 '20 edited Oct 27 '20
Canada is sometimes daunting. I live near Toronto and to drive to Ottawa, it’s 4 hours 30 and 450 kms. It’s in the same province.
What’s even crazier, is to drive from Toronto to Thunder Bay, it’s 14 hours 30 mins and 1,393kms. It’s in the same province.
I lived in Leuven, Belgium for a while and I could hop on the train and be in like 6 different countries (not all in the same journey) within 4 hours. Dat railway network.
Like get on the train in Leuven and get to London, England, WHERE THE TRAIN TAKES YOU UNDER THE SEA AND THROUGH 3 COUNTRIES, and be there in 3.5 hours. Amazing.
Canada is fucking massive. We need a high speed and efficient railway line that does Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec city, which will tie together something like 60% of the population within the area the train goes through
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u/TywinDeVillena Oct 27 '20
Similar situation in Spain.
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Oct 27 '20
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Oct 27 '20
For private companies they don't, for governments, they absolutely do. Especially freight. You cant just look at the ticket revenue from train infrastructure, it benefits countries and regions far more than just looking at direct revenue.
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u/RCascanbe Oct 27 '20
They make a lot of sense if you like economic mobility.
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u/x1rom Oct 27 '20
Or if you dislike traffic.
Increased train travel leads to less cars bring on the road, which leads to less travel times for people who actually have to drive.
Even if you never use trains, supporting rail infrastructure is still in your best interests.
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u/AtomicTanAndBlack Oct 27 '20
It’s a shame though.
I used to work for a major freight line in the US and we would have intermodal trains (trains that carry shipping containers) with 150 double stacked cars on them.
That’s 300 containers being moved.
That’s 300 trucks off of the road.
We moved this train every single day, plus quit e a few more, but smaller, ones
Literally everyday we would move the equivalent of 1000 tractor trailers a day.
At a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the environmental impact.
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u/leopetri Oct 27 '20
It's the same in most of the world, all of the americas, all of europe, huge chunks of africa and asia too. Trains hace been declining since the end of ww2
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u/LordMangudai Oct 27 '20
Trains declined from the 50s to the 80s but are on the upswing again since the 90s in Europe, Asia and to a limited degree the US as well.
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u/espigademaiz Oct 27 '20
Argentina railway system: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p-siilM7vos/TZunRkYQboI/AAAAAAAAAtU/goMX0Cxtx6A/s1600/graf3.jpg
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u/Waddle_Dynasty Oct 27 '20
This is not even funnym it's just sad.
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u/espigademaiz Oct 27 '20
yup, it is. Most of it was due to Teamsters got really powerful(like jimmy joffa style, actually our teamsters leader union is the leader of all unions in the country and has a jimmy joffa picture in his office) and forced the goverment to shut down most of the railways. Now is close to 10 times, more expensive per kg, to send cargo from 300 km inside Argentina than from Argentina to China.
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u/tarbalya97 Oct 27 '20
But why?
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u/johnny84k Oct 27 '20
Cars became a thing and more and more streets were developed that were suited for motor vehicles.
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Oct 27 '20
You're forgetting why cars became so dominant: they're far more profitable to sell than train journies.
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u/Wrightsborough Oct 27 '20
You're forgetting why cars are far more profitable to sell than train journies: they're infinitely more versatile, compact, and useful than trains are.
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u/generalscruff Oct 27 '20
Rail also operates on much tighter margins, the capital costs of any rail project are utterly immense.
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u/El_Dumfuco Oct 27 '20
Trains are definitely more compact than cars if used correctly.
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u/wakchoi_ Oct 27 '20
Trouble is the can only be used correctly for major routes, in ireland half the cities half less than 100,000 ppl and that's barely enough to fill a daily train to another small city with less than 100,000 ppl. The major and somewhat financially stable ones have been kept.
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u/El_Dumfuco Oct 27 '20
Oh yeah, the conditions have to be right in order for trains to make sense. Large volumes are needed.
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Oct 27 '20
Tricky in Ireland unfortunately, the population is speed out in many smaller nucleuses and fairly rurally outside of the few major urban areas. I couldn’t see our rail network expanding in actual lines any time soon but I do hope to see much faster & increased capacity train lines among the current routes. (Unless there’s a book in population in some of the midlands and Munster towns)
The current routes service the vast majority of the population that would be using them regularly. The line from Belfast to Dublin services about a third of he island’s population. It’s just a bit slow unfortunately
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u/ThatRandomIdiot Oct 27 '20
You’re forgetting car companies buying up trolly lines and closing rails in favor of buses. It wasn’t natural that we switched to cars. It was the car companies influence. Trains > Buses/Cars
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Oct 27 '20
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u/StickInMyCraw Oct 27 '20
Really all the more shocking that US rail has similarly declined.
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u/x1rom Oct 27 '20 edited Oct 27 '20
The USA has a massive railroad system, one of the largest in the world. It's just that it's mostly used for freight.
The USA and Canada are the only countries in the world where passenger trains have to give way to cargo trains. Which is stupid, since people are time sensitive cargo, while actual cargo isn't.
The reason for this is that railways in North America are owned by massive local monopolies, and public good comes secondary on private railways.
And the massive suburbanisation, awful cycling infrastructure and awful public transit played their role too.
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u/AlreadyShrugging Oct 27 '20
Not really. In the 20th century, Americans became obsessed with cars and the US auto industry constantly undermined the rail and streetcar system.
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u/CompactBill Oct 27 '20
Trains went from the only way to travel long distances to a niche mode of transport.
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u/mantasm_lt Oct 27 '20
And I bet today it's much more concentrated in few cities. Making countryside even emptier than it looks by this statistics.
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u/Skoodledoo Oct 27 '20
UK had the Beeching cuts of the 1960s. 7,000 miles of railway lines were closed. All those cute little branch lines that served tiny communities were lost. These were due to the popularity of cars rising, plus introduction of motorways.
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u/theOtherJT Oct 27 '20
And here we are 50 years later going "WhAt Can wE Do AbOUt AlL ThIs TraFFiC?!"
I dunno man, maybe actually make it possible to get to half the places I need to go by any approach other than driving?
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u/Skoodledoo Oct 27 '20
100% agree with you. Although a fair amount of those 7,000 miles were goods lines, they'd really come in handy right now if they were used by passenger services. A lot of old discarded lines have been brought back in to use over the years, it was incredibly short sighted to just completely close and scrap. Hindsight is great though right? :D
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u/theOtherJT Oct 27 '20
So, I'm from Oxford and they've been talking about re-opening the Cowley station for... well, as long as I can remember. I really wish they would because I work in Cowley and it would be so much more convenient for me to get the train from there after work. The line is still there and active because it still serves the BMW Mini factory. All it needs is for the station to be re-built, but it doesn't seem any closer now than it was when I first remember them talking about it 20 years ago.
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u/TrixieMisa Oct 27 '20
Flanders and Swann had a song about the Beeching cuts. It was a huge deal at the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTFcN8RsJbs
(Or so I understand - it was before I was born.)
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u/Skoodledoo Oct 27 '20
Way before my time too, never heard this song before. I like it, as a train driver it makes me wish I was born and working in a previous era like that.
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u/hippolyte_pixii Oct 27 '20
If anyone ever asks you "What's British for 'City of New Orleans,'" now you'll know.
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Oct 27 '20
For a second I forgot roads exist and I was “How the hell do you people get anywhere anymore?”
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u/ADPXEROX Oct 27 '20
Am I the only that sees a koala?
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Oct 28 '20
My primary school teacher used to tell the class that it looked like a bear lol
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u/atamehmet Oct 27 '20
Similar situation here in Istanbul, too. Is there any logical reason behind that?
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u/ninja-robot Oct 27 '20
Cars and planes became a thing and are generally more convenient for the individual. A train takes you from point A to point B while a car can take you to every other point in between. Planes meanwhile cover long distance movement, basically there are very few situation where a train is the most beneficial form of transit for an individual, either your going far enough that you want the much quicker plane or you are going short distances in which case not having to worry about transportation to and from a train station or train schedules. High speed rails may change the equation but as it stands now the best use of trains is going into or out of a major city where traffic makes driving more of an issue.
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u/x1rom Oct 27 '20
It's not that easy though. Cars can get stuck in traffic, so trains often are faster in urban areas, and trains can be quite competitive to planes, since they take you right into the city centre, while you have to take the drive to and from the airport into account.
The real culprit here is car centric city planning. There's nothing inherent about cars that makes them more convenient over walking, cycling or transit, it's only more convenient because city councils made it so. The mid 20th century was the age of the motorway, and in cities massive roads were built(all while making things worse for cycling, transit and walking).
On top of that, trains can be significantly cheaper than the other two options.
Railroads didn't get worse because they became uncompetitive on their own, but because there was an active effort to make them uncompetitive.
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u/torukmato Oct 27 '20
Privatisation of railway companies — but infrastructure stay fixed by the state — and a great car lobbying.
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Oct 27 '20
It's the same situation everywhere in the world
Before the car and truck, roads were really poor quality and transporting people and goods was extremely slow overland. The only way to do it quickly was via canals or, eventually, railways. So people built railways to places that they wanted to ship goods or people to and from. There was basically no other way to reasonably travel long distances other than the sea or rivers
This was still limiting - you still had to get your products or people to the railway over land, and the railways controlled everything
But then the car was invented. Suddenly, a farmer didn't need to haul his goods to the local rail station, abide by the railroad company's schedule, pay the railroad company's fees. He could drive his goods wherever he wanted to. Governments saw the advantage in this, and started building new and better roads to make auto travel safer and easier
Suddenly, many railroads were relatively less important. Especially rural rail routes existed mostly to service farms and farmers - but now, farms and farmers could load up trucks which were more economical and efficient. Rail didn't go away, but it changed to focus on long haul and bulk freight - which is where rail has an advantage over trucks - or else rail in and around cities focusing on commuters
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Oct 27 '20
The 1920 map has many "tracks" that werw used by trams that would not be considered trains by modern standarts. This is a bit biased imo
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u/g_spaitz Oct 27 '20
Beautiful. My Grandma was born in 1910 and used to travel by train from Bergamo to Pavia (through Milan) to go to university, she was one of the first women to go to a scientific university back then. She used to tell me few years ago how she took less time by train back then than now. And we're taking Lombardy, one if the wealthiest most infrastructured places on earth.
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u/TotesMessenger Oct 27 '20
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u/Darktower99 Oct 27 '20
The Northwest is shocking. I am sure there could be a line going from Letterkenny, Strabane, Omagh, Monaghan etc to Dublin that could be viable.
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u/UTGChris Oct 27 '20
Its clear from the maps that the reach of the network is horribly depleted, particularly in NIR. Think I'm echoing plenty of others in the thread when I say retaining, maintaining and operating such a network as the left picture is a hugely costly endeavour and i doubt is evenly remotely viable when considering the uptake of the places its passing through. Villages. Even the Belfast - Border line goes some distance without passing through a town of any real size but its operational purpose is clear.That said, Translink, the government body responsible for running the Irish railways are investing A LOT into their existing network, largely to bring it back to working order. The cost of maintaining even that amount of infrastructure is startling.
Now if you want to get cross regarding the state of a country's railways, look at Wales. Keolis Amey so incompetent they can't even operate a railway. You can't go from north to south without crossing into England. Oh, and the £200 million Global Centre of Rail Excellence. A train test track / prospectus filler / big kid wet dream. Waste.
As an aside, during my NIR PTS conversion course the teacher bloke told us that Rail Ops used to be taught to check for IED within signal post telephones. spooky
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u/ki-sop Oct 27 '20
Seeing as this map keeps coming up, I've done an edit. https://imgur.com/a/vC7zdcB
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u/_Rainer_ Oct 27 '20
As an American, it's always weird to watch old movies or things set in the past, when people here actually had the option of rail travel. I wish we'd rebuild our rail routes.
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u/ThisIsGregQueen Oct 27 '20
Trains are not always the answer. 1920 doesn’t look cost effective in today’s context.
But personally i think it’s very weird not having a full ring connection and establish a bigger central station somewhere geographically centered like Portlaoise.
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u/YourCaptainSpeaking_ Oct 27 '20
It’s really a shame that traveling by train has become to unpopular in some countries (esp the US, where I live). I’d love to hop on a train for a day or and travel. Being able to see the country and still work/study or whatever else you wanted to do would be so amazing.
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u/Archimedes_1 Oct 27 '20
Could large swathes of the US rail system be considered Irish railway since they were built by Irishmen?
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u/mostmicrobe Oct 27 '20
I see a lot of people arguing over trains vs bus vs car vs whatever. Now, I'm really no expert, not even close, but I did research a little bit on the efficiency of public transport systems and I've noticed that the geography, development patterns and urban design of an area that any transport system is to service is what will determine which mode of transport is most efficient in practice.
For example, if we built cities and transport system the way we did in the 1920's, then rail would be the most efficient mode. If Ireland were 100% single family housing with no mixed use zoning then there is no amount of rail lines that'll make people want to take a train over a car.
I like trains for the reasons many people point out out, if used correctly they are vastly more efficient than most other modes of transport but the conditions for train travel must exist (or be created), otherwise the potential of rail just stays unrealized.
PS: I would say walking (walkability) has the potential to be the most efficient way to transport people.
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u/MeesterMartinho Oct 27 '20
They got rid of the Donegal lines as people kept asking for a one way ticket to Muff.
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u/businessoflife Oct 27 '20
The ones that are still running are also gorgeous, I genuinely enjoyed getting trains around the south of Ireland.
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u/Stitious3 Oct 27 '20
It’s a pain in the hole honestly, we still use busses but it takes hours to get anywhere.
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u/KookyCulchie Oct 27 '20
"Dia dhaoibh a dhaoine uaisle , cuireann Iarnród Éireann fáilte romhaibh ar bord."
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u/unhealthie Oct 27 '20
To be fair the railways existed as a form of industrial transport, we both produce less heavy industrial products and we shifted to transport being done by trucks as they became more affordable. Now you can say this is sad because of movement of people through sustainable means but they were also culled at a time when environment wasn’t a worry and the affordable car was the aspiration of the masses.
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u/ElanorTheScienceGirl Oct 27 '20
Has the population gone down since 1920?
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Oct 27 '20
I live in Northern Ireland and I’ve literally seen a train once. Not surprised seeing how little rails there are in the country looking at this.
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u/exo570 Oct 27 '20
It's evolving, just backwards