Ireland
December 2005
With Irish loco-hauled services diminishing rapidly, we decided to cross the water for another bash, but were frustrated by an Irish Ferries strike coinciding with technical difficulties keeping the Stena HSS in port. The first sailing of the week was 08:55 on Friday December 2nd, and we were on it. Half an hour later and we were still in Holyhead, and beginning to worry. Eventually there was an announcement that we'd been delayed by "technical difficulties" but would soon be away. There were strong winds in the North Sea and English Channel but the Irish Sea was calm for us.
By the time we docked in Ireland our 13:00 connection at Heuston was looking doubtful, and we were dismayed to find there was a 12 minute wait for the next DART into Dublin. The ticket office at Dun Laoghaire couldn't sell us Irish Explorer tickets so we still had that to do at a mainline station.
There wasn't much of a queue at Connolly so we bought them there with no time to even glance at the 071 hauled Sligo service, and we were lucky with the LUAS tram as it left a few seconds after we'd bought our tickets from the machine and boarded. The tram frequency was every 9 minutes, and that was exactly the time we had to spare at Heuston as we boarded the very busy 13:00 to Cork. There were very few spare seats but we managed to find two together. Many people joining further down the line had to stand.
234 was at the buffers, with 210 in charge of our train. It was very wet in Dublin but that was the only rain of the visit. We passed 170/1 on standby at Portarlington, 112 was on a cement train at Portlaoise while 152 was in the sidings. 141/2 were in a siding at Ballybrophy.
We alighted at Limerick Junction, seeing 202
call with a Cork to Dublin service at 15:25, and five minutes later, 214 whizzed
through with five Cravens in tow. After this burst of passenger train activity,
072 was allowed to cross onto the Limerick line with its
heavy load of sugar beet.
A Mk 4 set on test was stationary.
072 stopped and propelled its load into the station
One of the ancient four-wheel beet wagons