Future of Limerick to Ballybrophy rail line is looking bright
AFTER YEARS OF WORRY about its future, the prognosis for the Limerick to Ballybrophy rail line is looking bright. Virginia O' Dowd and Edward Kelly, members of the North Tipperary Rail Partnership, updated councillors and officials during a recent meeting on the progress made to improve the Limerick to Ballybrophy line and their campaign to secure funding to modernise the network.
Ms O'Dowd, a member of the partnership for the past 17 years, said their campaign has shifted from one where they were calling for the line not to be closed down to one where they are now calling for further works to improve the line.
She said the line is still not being utilised to its optimum level, but greater use by commuters and further investment by the government would result in paybacks such as increased economic activity in the North Tipperary region, as well as contributing to efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
She urged councillors to foster greater links with their council counterparts in Limerick to press for further government investment in the line and for the introduction of a middle-of-the-day service, which she felt was vital to attract more commuters.
She said great pressure was already being put on the government to plough even more resources into the network. The Transport Minister was “blue in the face” from answering Oireachtas questions on the issue that were being fielded by the three TDs from North Tipperary, Alan Kelly, Jackie Cahill and Michael Lowry, while Deputy Martin Browne in the south of the county had been an advocate for the line in the Dáil also.
Edward Kelly said the current works programme to upgrade the line was due for completion in November. This would mean that speed limits could increase from 30mph to 50mph, and it was aimed to introduce a more passenger friendly timetable.
Irish Rail was looking at re-surfacing the car park at the railway station in Cloughjordan.
Mr Kelly said a crucial development in attracting more commuters was to eliminate the 12 manual level crossings on the line, ten of which are located between Nenagh and Limerick, and have them upgraded to automatic. Such a move would result in faster journey times and a reduction to a 45-minute commute between the two centres, opening the potential to attract a lot more commuters.
Cllr Hughie McGrath said creating a link between the line to the University of Limerick would be crucial.
Cllr Seamus Morris said that without the persistence of the rail partnership over almost the past two decades the rail line would now be closed.
Cllr Ger Darcy said promoting the line for the transport of goods and freight as well as commuters was important and there was significant potential in regard to this aspect.
The Limerick–Ballybrophy line is 91.5 kilometres in length connecting the city of Limerick with Ballybrophy in County Laois. The line diverges from the Limerick to Limerick Junction railway line at Killonan Junction and continues in a north east direction with five intermediate stops at Castleconnell, Birdhill, Nenagh, Cloughjordan and Roscrea. The line ends at Ballybrophy where it joins the Dublin-Cork Main Line.
Services are infrequent, with two trains per weekday in each direction from Ballybrophy to Limerick. In addition, there is a commuter service, forming part of the Limerick Suburban Rail network, which has one train from Nenagh to Limerick. The commuter train service runs Mondays to Fridays. On Sundays there is one train in each direction, Limerick-Ballybrophy. Services on the line are formed of IE 2800 Class (diesel) railcars.
In November 2016 it was announced the line was very likely to close in 2018 as the demand for the service was low and CIE/IE wished to close it to save money. This was subsequently ruled out by Iarnród Éireann.