It was Government Policy to Kill off the Rail System Mid-Late 1980s?

[Auto-Train Original]

This is not a political post, and I hope I am posting this in the correct forum. Over the Christmas I met a gentleman who was in government (as a senior civil servant) in the 1980s and is now retired. Turned out he is a railfan and we had a great chat. Anyway, during the course of the discussion he told me how close the country came to having no railways left after 1990. It was literally unofficial policy to dismantle the network.

Worst of all CIE management were actually enthusiastic to the point of literally lobbying for this to happen. The initial stage was to terminate all lines west of the Shannon. The station in Athlone was moved to the Leinster side to deliberately sabotage the Mullingar to Athlone route. After a while, all Intercity services were to be terminated. Including Cork and Belfast. CIE management tried to bamboozle ministers with replacing these with a 'state of the art inter-city bus guideway'.

All that was to be left was the DART between Howth and Bray. That was it. He described the CIE managers as 'headcases'. If it were not for the community groups in Sligo who started to fight back against the closure all this may well have happened. At one point a government press release in 1987 categorically stated that no further investment of any significance was to be made. Ostensibly allowing it to die naturally.

It is almost terrifying to think that we would have lost just about everything. Now I am not saying he was spoofing me, but I was actually in shock by what he told me. Can anyone here confirm this. Was the anti-rail faction literally that out of control?

Edited December 28, 2022 by Auto-Train Original

[Mayner]

The majority of reports on the future of Ireland's railways between the 70s and 90s considered the options of retaining, immediate or a phased closure of the railways. The 2003 Strategic Rail Review was the first report to consider the future of the railways in the long term 20+ years.

The Irish economy was in a weak state during the 1980s with the economy in a prolonged recession as a result of a credit squeeze and the Government attempted to control inflation and reign in Government expenditure, basically the government was spending more running the country than it was taking in in taxation and subsidising CIEs losses was low hanging fruit easy cut compared to social services, health and education.

Although it was not spelled out as such the Irish Government's "Building on Reality" economic envisaged a gradual run down and closure of the railways over 20 years with no future capital investment in the railways after the completion of the MK3 Intercity Coach programme and the completion of the Cork Line CTC system.

In return for an operating subsidy paid above the line for loss making passenger services, CIE was divided into three operating companies Bus Eireann, Dublin Bus and Irish Rail which were expected to compete with each other, operate profitably and fund their own capital investment from retained profits or commercial borrowing.

To their credit the three companies demonstrated a lot more initiative than under CIE management.

Irish Rail made a determined effort to improve service and increase passenger and freight traffic, demonstrating iniative such as hiring NIR 80 Class railcars, reinstating the Bray Greystones Shuttle and pursuing new sources of freight traffic such as grain, mollasses and pulpwood.

In the end like other rail operators of the 90s Irish Rail generated insufficient income despite a large public subsidy to cover the cost of infrastructure and rolling stock renewals as deferred maintenance caught up and the system basically started to fall apart during the early 90s. 

The railways were largely rescued by a large EU Infrastructure grant with Ireland signing the Single European Act during the 1990s paying for the re-laying and modernisation of the lines in the West. 

CIE (both management and unions) continued to be a thorn in the side of the Irish Government until a long term decision of the future of the railways was made after the ending of the ILDA dispute in the early 2000s.

The Dublin-Border line upgrade and Heuston-Kildare suburban were originally presented as either-or projects with the Kildare line service having precedence over the Enterprise upgrade until EU/Ireland Fund funding was made available.

The Maynooth Line upgrade was funding by EU funding diverted from the LUAS when the project was put on hold during the late 80s.

There is an old saying that Merrion Street could be an efficient executioner of railways as Stormont, though the Ulster politicians were more open about their intentions.

The Department of Finance adapted a policy of drip feeding investment for CIE over many years while the CIE Chairman warning the Government that it could no longer safely operate services with 1950s timber framed and laminate stock, effectively protecting the Board and Management of CIE in the case of a Corporate Manslaughter charge in connection with the Buttervant and Cherryville disasters.

CIEs plans to build new trains in Inchacore under license from Linke Holfmann Busch during the late 70s were rejected by the Government and replaced with a programme to build BREL MK3 coaches during the early 80s when it became essential to replace older coaching stock with poor crash resistance following the Buttervant derailment and Cherryville collision.

Similarly IEs proposal to build new diesel railcars for suburban and branchline services were rejected by the Government during the late 80s though approval was given to build the last 24 coaches of the Intercity order as Push-Pull suburban stock

Its not just an Irish thing in recent years the New Zealand Treasury was highly critical of the Governments investment in rail despite Kiwi rail operating profitably carrying 18m tonnes of freight or 13% of the freight task.

 

[jhb171achill]

7 hours ago, Auto-Train Original said:

This is not a political post, and I hope I am posting this in the correct forum. Over the Christmas I met a gentleman who was in government (as a senior civil servant) in the 1980s and is now retired. Turned out he is a railfan and we had a great chat. Anyway, during the course of the discussion he told me how close the country came to having no railways left after 1990. It was literally unofficial policy to dismantle the network.

Worst of all CIE management were actually enthusiastic to the point of literally lobbying for this to happen. The initial stage was to terminate all lines west of the Shannon. The station in Athlone was moved to the Leinster side to deliberately sabotage the Mullingar to Athlone route. After a while, all Intercity services were to be terminated. Including Cork and Belfast. CIE management tried to bamboozle ministers with replacing these with a 'state of the art inter-city bus guideway'.

All that was to be left was the DART between Howth and Bray. That was it. He described the CIE managers as 'headcases'. If it were not for the community groups in Sligo who started to fight back against the closure all this may well have happened. At one point a government press release in 1987 categorically stated that no further investment of any significance was to be made. Ostensibly allowing it to die naturally.

It is almost terrifying to think that we would have lost just about everything. Now I am not saying he was spoofing me, but I was actually in shock by what he told me. Can anyone here confirm this. Was the anti-rail faction literally that out of control?

His analysis is not without some degree of foundation, but that particular description of what he suggests was actual policy - official or unofficial - is simplistic and exaggerated to a pretty inaccurate degree.

See Mayner’s detailed analysis in his answer…..

If ever there was an anti-rail mode in government, despite the greens being in government it’s more recently, with some quite vehement anti-rail lobbies within the NTA.

[William Kiernan]

It is my opinion that the railways suffered closure due to members of various governments having large investments in road transport

[jhb171achill]

5 hours ago, William Kiernan said:

It is my opinion that the railways suffered closure due to members of various governments having large investments in road transport

Could well be; certainly, vested interests have been involved at times but to be fair not necessarily always.

[RANGERMOUSE]

If I can give an example of the lack of joined up thinking regarding our transport network.

My friend is flying back to Bristol at 1630 from Knock tomorrow. He is just outside Carrick on Shannon, a distance of 39 miles (67km) or 55 mins according to Google Earth.
To make it he has to get a train from Carrick to Sligo which is more or less an hour and then get a bus from Sligo to the airport which is also almost an hour. The bus leaves Sligo at 1400 but the train doesn't get in until 1417, meaning he would have to get the earlier train which gets in at 1217. Not only has this made him go an hour in the wrong direction, it also leaves him an hour and 45 waiting.

He is getting a lift. If the Govt are serious about getting people out of their cars they need to look at simple things like this.
Why is a bus leaving 17 mins before a train arrives? Surely anyone with an ounce of sense might think people would want to make a connection and ammend the schedule to account for this. Another example of the NTA not being fit for purpose.

There are many other examples I could give but this is one is current