Tara Mines workings

[jhb171achill]

Prompted by the Wanderer's latest photos over on the photographic page, can someone enlighten me about why the Tara times in the WTT bear no relation at all to when it actually runs?

I am within sight of the railway just outside Malahide. I can see those green railcars, DARTs, NIR railcars on the Enterprise, and Taras in the distance from where I'm sitting now. When I hear the unmistakable roar of an 071, I look outside. What I SHOULD see is this, according to the WTT:

Times PASSING MALAHIDE

Southbound: 10:56,  13:56,  20:28

Northbound:  14:36,  19:45,  00:18

What I HAVE seen in the last few week, at random, are these:

Date    Time    No. Wagons     North / South  

              13:11             11                     S        40-odd mins early; close to official path

            16:33            6                      N

            13:52            11                     N        44 mins early

9 Feb   13:51           11/12                 N        43 mins early

10.2      13:33              12                          S        20 mins early

10.2      14:10            12                     N

10.2      17:28            12                     N

11.2       13:36            11                     N

11.2       14:07              12                          S         11 mins late

16.2       22:34            ?                      N

17.2       11:00            11                      N

17.2       13:36            11                     N

19.2       13:51            12                     N

19.2       17:24            12                     N

22.2       13:56               10                        S          SPOT ON! First time for everything.......

23.2       17:09              8                    N

Also, there appears to be a northbound empties regularly between 22:10 and 23:10 most nights, rather than 00:18........

Above, the few highlighted in bold are the only ones which appear to follow stated paths.

Maybe this is something to do with a temporary covid-related timetable, or covid-related changes in work practices at the mines?

 

As an aside, here's a bet; within hours of any future announcement of the mine closing, IE will have ripped up the track, demolished the viaduct at Navan, and Eamon Ryan will be on TV crowing about how the new Drogheda - Navan greenway will enrich everyone from Malin Head to Wisht Caark. meanwhile, all 18 of the 071s, plus all the Tara wagons, will be scrapped as hastily as possible, where they stand.

 

 

                

[Mayner]

In my experience freight trains usually depart once the train is loaded/unloaded, a driver and a path is a available rather than waiting until the scheduled departure time in the WTT.

I don't know if IE has reduced passenger passenger train frequency because of Covid travel restrictions.

I would imagine Boliden will scrap the privately owned Tara Mines wagons once Tara mine closes, Canadian (Group Eleven) & Australian (Glencore) mining interests have stakes in Pallas Green https://arkleresources.com/our-projects/zinc/. 

Its anyone's guess whether the Irish ore fields will be developed or the mining is worth the hassle when the tax payer has to pick up the tab for the ecological damage and clean up when mining finishes.

 

 

 

[DJ Dangerous]

I often wonder about the viability of the railways in Ireland.

In theory, rail should be more efficient and more environmentally friendly than road transport.

However, after many years working in Ireland, and I can only assume that IE suffers the same, the massive thorn in the side of efficiency and progress everywhere I worked was the unions.

I used to think that their role was to protect employees, their rights, their conditions, their wages, their treatment.

But, what I saw over the years was that things went too far. When technological advances or a changing economy made a post extinct, employees would still be entitled to work the same hours for the same money without taking on a different role.

If IE suffers like this, and there are never pay cuts and never changes in job descriptions, the rails will slowly strangle themselves into obsolesence.

I never understood this clip as a kid, but it is painfully accurate as an adult:

 

 

[skinner75]

Wasn't it Brendan Ogle & the ILDA that screwed up rail freight? 

[DJ Dangerous]

17 minutes ago, skinner75 said:

Wasn't it Brendan Ogle & the ILDA that screwed up rail freight? 

Probably no single area to point the finger. In those Modern Marvels "Engineering Disasters" videos, almost every time, the disaster results from multiple failures rather than just one. Hello IE!

[Mayner]

It could be argued that the ILDA loco drivers walked into a trap set by senior management and the established unions and played into the hands of a Government that had grown frustrated with infighting between CIE management and the Unions.

The future of the railways was in doubt before the publication of the Strategic Rail Review in 2001?, Mary O'Rourke as Minister of Transport instructed CIE to sell/develop surplus land in order to fund investment in passenger services and the Government was not prepared to subsidise loss making freight services as it claimed that it could not subsidise businesses to transport freight. 

Discontent built up among drivers about the poor standard of representation by the the established transport unions, the feeling seems  to have been that SIPTU and the National Bus & Railworkers Union did not adequately represent the drivers interests and formed ILDA in response to concerns with safety concerns to a new rostering agreement. SIPTU and the NBRU was likely to strike if IE negotiated with ILDA, the situation was resolved when ILDA members transferred to a British transport union that were able to secure negotiating powers.

I my experience the biggest problem with unions like most large organisations is that they become process bound and often fail to represent or support their members at times of crisis.

[murphaph]

Railfreight could rise from the ashes with the concentration of freight movements now happening in the southeast of the island. It won't happen as long as IE is being relied upon to deliver it however.

Without open access to the infrastructure (which should stay in state hands like the road network) to private railfreight companies, there will be no renaissance in railfreight.

 

[skinner75]

1 hour ago, Mayner said:

the situation was resolved when ILDA members transferred to a British transport union that were able to secure negotiating powers.

I wonder how that's going to work now post-Brexit?

[Sean Hogan]

Irish rail are not interested in freight movement anymore they would rather see it on the back of a tractor unit 

[WRENNEIRE]

Just noticed a new(ish) logo on the side of the Taras, going through Howth Junction
Couldn't get the phone out in time
Anyone have any pics of it?
Askin for a friend.......

[Railer]

13 minutes ago, WRENNEIRE said:

Just noticed a new(ish) logo on the side of the Taras, going through Howth Junction
Couldn't get the phone out in time
Anyone have any pics of it?
Askin for a friend.......

Is it the new EVN tags on the mid bottom of each wagon?.

The new EVNs are not in the old 31xxx series anymore.

Edited February 25, 2021 by Railer

[KMCE]

It's very hard to see how rail freight could ever make a comeback in Ireland.  The country is just too small & most goods are palletilsed and loaded / unloaded into containters or trailers at the manufacturers.   It makes no sense then to drive that trailer / container to the nearest train station, wait to have it offloaded (including paperwork), load onto the train, wait for the scheduled departure & then reverse the process at the other end.  It would take days, and when quite a lot of freight is moved on a "just in time" basis, waiting around for you local train just won't make the grade.    Load at one point, deliver to the other without middlemen is both quicker & cheaper.

As our gauge does not match European gauge, our rolling stock must stay in Ireland, so if traffic was put onto rail, for transport to Europe, it would have to be unloaded at Rosslare or Dublin for moving onto the ferry.   Once again multiple handling.

What could possibly have some chance would be a drive on scenario similar to the Channel tunnel, if loading gauge can be worked out, and there was sufficient frequency to make sense.  Then our truck driver stays with his consignment, but cuts out considerable driving time.  Alas, it's hard to see our freinds in IE agreeing to something like that.

As long as we all want to pay the absolute minimum for everything we consume, the cheapest solution at present is our trusty HGV.

All is not lost however, for those pointing to the carbon emissions, as there is a growing development of Bio Natural Gas suitable for compression and use in road vehicles.  The market is specifically targeting both the main grid and the road freight operators; there are already quite a few CNG power HGVs on the road already.

[MOGUL]

Maybe, or you could just stick said pallets in a container and put them onto a train to a port..

hmm why does that sound familiar.... 

Also, lose the JIT, it is constantly blown out of proportion in debates on rail freight in this country for some reason.. A lot of freight is a trade of between speed, price, reliability, and increasingly sustainability.. And all the trends are going against JIT as it is expensive, not very sustainable and you are very prone to impact by outside events such as bad weather, COVID, supply chain congestion, strikes etc

Edited February 26, 2021 by MOGUL

[murphaph]

I'm a realist and don't really expect we'll see any increase in railfreight but one has to also note that even given the "hostile environment" of IE (sadly including the management, unions and staff in the past at least), the DoT and successive governments, there are still liner trains operating in Ireland. If that doesn't prove that there's potential there I don't know what does!

Imagine if you weren't relying on IE but a private operator to get your load to the port on time and reliably.

As brexit continues to force a realignment of supply chains, the island is becoming a single unit economically with shipping bypassing GB and increasing massively through the south east, you'd imagine railfreight from Waterford and Rosslare to railheads across the country would be about as viable as it's been in many years. Instead of 20 drivers taking 20 lorries from Derry or Galway to Rosslare or Waterford, one or two drivers can bring those loads to a railhead to be taken in bulk to Rosslare or Waterford.

The island isn't that small really, especially if a large proportion of your freight is now being funnelled through one corner of it and when the proportion of unaccompanied trailers crossing the sea is increasing.

 

[KMCE]

22 hours ago, MOGUL said:

Also, lose the JIT,

I stand corrected....... I appear not to know what I'm talking about.

 

I'll get my coat.

Edited February 26, 2021 by KMCE

[jhb171achill]

They need J15s and four-wheeled wooden vans. There was none of this oul carry-on when they had steam engines and loose-coupled trucks.

[Noel]

15 hours ago, murphaph said:

I'm a realist and don't really expect we'll see any increase in railfreight but one has to also note that even given the "hostile environment" of IE (sadly including the management, unions and staff in the past at least), the DoT and successive governments, there are still liner trains operating in Ireland. If that doesn't prove that there's potential there I don't know what does!

Imagine if you weren't relying on IE but a private operator to get your load to the port on time and reliably.

As brexit continues to force a realignment of supply chains, the island is becoming a single unit economically with shipping bypassing GB and increasing massively through the south east, you'd imagine railfreight from Waterford and Rosslare to railheads across the country would be about as viable as it's been in many years. Instead of 20 drivers taking 20 lorries from Derry or Galway to Rosslare or Waterford, one or two drivers can bring those loads to a railhead to be taken in bulk to Rosslare or Waterford.

The island isn't that small really, especially if a large proportion of your freight is now being funnelled through one corner of it and when the proportion of unaccompanied trailers crossing the sea is increasing.

 

Urgent climate action could force some tonnage back onto rail as carbon taxes continue to increase exponentially. For now road is faster, cheaper, more efficient, more flexible. The main thing is geographically we live on a small island with a pile of new motorways, so the short distances don't make it economic to use rail. Wasn't it the strikes that killed the massive cement traffic, which caused the move to road which was discovered to be cheaper so never came back to rail? Cars may well transition from fossil engines to electric over the next five years, but not sure what the transition path for HGVs will be (eg HFC or Gas, or electric, etc) which may swing the balance once again towards rail which will also face increasing pressure to dump diesel traction.

[jhb171achill]

Should it be possible to get electric HGVs operating as efficiently as diesel ones, I'd say railfreight is banjaxed, though!

At least I'll have electric models of coal-belching J15s..................

[Noel]

15 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

Should it be possible to get electric HGVs operating as efficiently as diesel ones, I'd say railfreight is banjaxed, though!

At least I'll have electric models of coal-belching J15s..................

Yea problem for HGVs is physics, too much of the payload weight is the actual batteries, yet the Tesla Semi is claiming remarkable performance and efficiency. Again due to the small size of our wonderful little island and shorter distances BEHGV may work here, certainly for city deliveries and most buses will be BEHGV within the next 7-9 years anyway. Coal could be a tricky material for RPSI to source at an economic price in the future.

[Mayner]

24 minutes ago, Noel said:

 Wasn't it the strikes that killed the massive cement traffic, which caused the move to road which was discovered to be cheaper so never came back to rail? 

The loss of cement Cement traffic was lost mainly due to Irish Cement loosing its monopoly position and the opening of the N50 Liffey Toll Bridge rather than strikes.

Irish Cement lost market share in the North West, Midlands and East from the late 1980s with the opening of the Quinn Cement Plant in Derrylin and the Lagan Cement Kinegad. Competition from Quinn Cement lead to IEs loss of bulk cement traffic to Sligo.

CIE closed the Cabra Bank Cement depot following the opening of the first phase of the M50 in the late 90s as it was simpler to supply bulk cement to the concrete plants in the Dublin area direct by road from Platin than by rail and road via Cabra Bank. 

The remaining bulk cement flows to  Athenry, Cork, Tullamore and Waterford continued for several years after the ILDA strike and seem to have been lost when IE tried to increase their freight rates. 

I think that CIE/IE managed to hold on to railfreight for a long time because of CIE monopoly position, the poor state of the roads and streamlining freight operation and new rolling stock during the 1970s, conditions which had ceased to exist by 2000, with de-regulation of road haulage, good roads, a shift from commodity to a knowledge based economy and a worn out obsolete wagon fleet.

Interestingly IE placed an order with a European manufacturer for new freight rolling stock including (bogie) bulk cement wagons in the early 2000s, but was forced to cancel because the IE railfreight division was unable to prepare a convincing business case.

The big question with climate change and a post Covid environment is whether the current Globalised economic model with an economy based on exporting and importing goods and services to an from the opposite side of the World is sustainable.

[K801]

I wonder will we ever see an 071 with a Bio Natural Gas tank behind it like in the USofA

[MOGUL]

14 hours ago, KMCE said:

I stand corrected....... I appear not to know what I'm talking about.

 

I'll get my coat.

Sorry, I didn't want to dismiss you in anyway.. It's just the old JIT seems to have crept out of somewhere to become a reason why rail freight can't be done..

When in fact, true JIT is used by very few companies, and in Ireland would mostly rely on air freight and involve very small quantities of freight(less than 1% of total tonnage)

To give an anecdote on why it's irrelevant, in a past job on of my accounts was to handle the sea freight imports for a large US owned pharma company in the west of Ireland.. One of the products we imported was vacuum salt from the US mid west to the west of Ireland plant which was worth about $12K a load. Some exec had decided that if this was made part of their lean supply chain employing JIT they would save x amount of money by reducing their stock holdings/warehouse space etc.. So for 40 weeks of the year, we had 1 container per week from the US to Ireland that was bang on time, and the production team had their salt as needed.. But for the other 12 weeks of the year during winter, there was constant delays due to storms, ice on the St.Lawrence river etc etc.. At one point it got so bad, that if they didn't get some salt in to Ireland ASAP they would have to stop production at a cost of hundreds of thousands of euros.. To solve this issue, they had to airfreight 20 tonnes of salt from Chicago to Ireland at a cost of about €100k, thus wiping out any potential savings from their lean/JIT supply chain initiative.. Needless to say, after than they dropped JIT and increased their stock holding of salt to avoid any repeats..

 

 

 

[jhb171achill]

Excuse my ignorance..... what does JIT mean?

[DJ Dangerous]

12 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

Excuse my ignorance..... what does JIT mean?

Probably stands for "Just In Time".

Means never having anything in stock and never planning for a rainy day.

Edited February 27, 2021 by DJ Dangerous

[MOGUL]

14 minutes ago, DJ Dangerous said:

Probably stands for "Just In Time".

Means never having anything in stock and never planning for a rainy day.

Pretty good summary of it..

Started in the automotive industry, and has moved to some similar industries(Aerospace etc) but is still fairly niche.. 

[jhb171achill]

20 minutes ago, DJ Dangerous said:

Probably stands for "Just In Time".

Means never having anything in stock and never planning for a rainy day.

Ah, yes, I've heard that term before! Makes perfect sense.

[NIR]

JIT is all about small shipments made regularly, something that road haulage deals with better than rail freight.

[Broithe]

38 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

Excuse my ignorance..... what does JIT mean?

One of the buzzwords of the 1980s, from the Japanese Kanban organisational system.

It's something that you really need to be "Japanese" to do properly, it was trendy in the UK to pretend to be doing it, but it mostly led to even more chaos.

We normally referred to it as JTL, rather than JIT - Just Too Late, not Just In Time.

This was a win-win situation, as the boss's initials were JTL, so it also annoyed him slightly more.

 

It's one of those things that can be done, but only if you actually do it.

[DJ Dangerous]

6 minutes ago, NIR said:

JIT is all about small shipments made regularly, something that road haulage deals with better than rail freight.

True, it's only effective when applied to an industry that is either some way immune to external variables, or has flexibility built in which allows redistribution of resources so that delays do not have an adverse effect.

[Mayner]

12 hours ago, NIR said:

JIT is all about small shipments made regularly, something that road haulage deals with better than rail freight.

JIT evolved in Japan where different stages of the manufacturing process was carried out in a series of often independently owned workshops than in a single factory under one roof, using small vans and possibly handcarts to move components from the workshop to a factory for final assembly, This evolved into the Toyota Manufacturing Process and was later adapted by manufacturers in the West.

Rail only appears to become a viable option for JIT manufacture for moving "train loads" (80-100TEU) to and from manufacturing plants, ports and distribution points, Irish freight trains have low capacity and  transport light payloads by international standards.

Although a lot of the JIT smaller shipments are moved by road, rail often forms an important part of the JIT manufacturing chain e.g. the IWT Liner is used as part of the chain to transport Coca-Cola concentrates from Ballina to manufacturing plants in Europe, the Coillte Log trains used to transport pulpwood to the Waterford OSB mill.

In the UK rail has been used for many years to move steel, engines and other components to car assembly plants as part of a JIT manufacturing chain. Following the opening of the Chunnel the motor manufacturers integrated their UK and European supply chains using rail to transport vehicles and components between UK and European plants.

In New Zealand rail is used as part of the distribution chain of the dairy industry both transporting raw milk (train load) from collection points to processing plants and in the transportation of dairy products to the ports for export.

 

[murphaph]

Do logs also go by rail to the other Coillte plant in Clonmel at all?

I had no idea they were being processed in Waterford. I always assumed that the logs were for export. Interesting.

[Mayner]

 

Traffic to Clonmel ceased in the early 2000s when IE lost the Coillte contract, traffic to Waterford resumed about two years later under a revised contract when Coillte took responsibility for loading/unloading including ensuring the load was secure before departure.

Originally both the Clonmel and Waterford (Bellview) plants were planned to be rail connected, but ran into a barrier with IE apparently unable to obtain to obtain funding to construct private siding for freight customers.

IE had been in negotiation during the mid 1990s to transport zinc from mines being developed in the Lisduff area but the traffic was lost to road after IEs funding application to the Department of Transport was rejected. 

The loss of the ore traffic from the Lisduff area marked a turning point in the fortunes of Irish Railfreight as IE seemed to be more pro-active that CIE and had been making headway in developing new traffic flows with minimal investment in new infrastructure or rolling stock such as grain, mollasses, domestic coal and pulpwood, the prospects of deepsea container traffic appeared promising with the opening of the new Bell Lines Belview Terminal and the long awaited EU funded connection to Dublin Port.

 

 

[murphaph]

Great stuff. When did IE first start hauling logs actually?

[Mayner]

1 hour ago, murphaph said:

Great stuff. When did IE first start hauling logs actually?

1995/96 using 62'9" flat wagons (3-12 wagon trains) redundant following the end of mail traffic in 2003/4

The traffic built up fairly quickly and 2-3 additional trains using 2 axle 22'6" flats were converted to carry log traffic.

Alterations to the wagons to carry log traffic was minimal IE fabricating de-mountable log cradles and bulkheads that could be removed from the wagon.

 

[Noel]

5 hours ago, Mayner said:

1995/96 using 62'9" flat wagons (3-12 wagon trains) redundant following the end of mail traffic in 2003/4

The traffic built up fairly quickly and 2-3 additional trains using 2 axle 22'6" flats were converted to carry log traffic.

Alterations to the wagons to carry log traffic was minimal IE fabricating de-mountable log cradles and bulkheads that could be removed from the wagon.

 

For fun I kitbashed one of these a year ago. Never got around to making more. Decided against making the 62ft versions because of their extreme length and perceived running problems on typical curve radaii, and excessive train length. JHB and Barry Carse had a nice photo of a rake of these in Galway Yard in one of their books.

Edited March 1, 2021 by Noel