Gabriel-Conway
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September 29th is the new provisional date for Red Line, though it would be nice to have it a week earlier for Car-Free day . . .
Gabriel
Some fresh pics up on my site http://www.allaboutbuses.com/luas showing last minute preperations at Dundrum.
By the way, I have to say the public walkway along the suspension bridge at Taney Cross is lovely – you can now get from Churchtown Road to Dundrum Station in an easy, level walk, and it also allows walkers from the same direction to get to Dundrum village without having to negociate the huge, hostile, multi-road junction.
And the views are nice too!
Gabriel
We’re quiet because we don’t have any info on what Dublin Bus are going to do.
If they follow true to normal form, the re-routing will be announced at about 7pm on the day before the changes, there will be no info on the bus stops, and it will be only afterwards that they will actually work out where the buses will stop on the new routings.
Sounds cynical I know, but said from bitter experience . . .
Gabriel
I know, for a long time I thought “that’s the supporting structure, bet it will look nice when they build the actual bridge . . .”
Gabriel
I’ve put a quick update on the site, with pictures of a completed station (Windy Arbour) including shelter and ticket machines.
http://www.allaboutbuses.com/luas/40602-warb.html
By the way, the new Drummartin Link Road finally opened yesterday afternoon, so you can drive past Kilmacud Station now.
They have also, very usefully, opened the extended slip between the M50 junctions at Ballinteer and Sandyford (not the motorway itself, but a segregated access road alongside it) thereby allowing direct access from the M50 into Sandyford without clogging up Ballinteer, Wyckham etc.
Gabriel
I try – I even went so far as to get a whole series of shots showing some activity at the Nine Arches bridge, but the time to sit down, go through them, and put a feature together has eluded me.
The last few months have been busy – in addition to my normal fulltime job on-Fri in the computer industry, I’m Head of News at Phantom FM, and while we are going through our current three-month temporary licence I’m in the station all day Saturday and Sunday, thus taking up most of my free-time.
I’ll have my spare time back again at the end of the month, when our current run comes to an end, and we’ll be off the air as we go through the application process for a full Dublin licence (shed-loads of competition from the great and the good in the industry, so it will be a tough fight).
In the meantime, if there is any way I can make some extra time available this weekend, I’ll try to put up an extra update or so . . .
I know that’s not brilliant service from my website, but it is a labour of love, and it’s more than you get from the RPA 🙂
Gabriel
Sue,
There are huge housing estates on both side of the line between Balally and Kilmacud, it’s just that you can’t see them as you are down in the cutting (and from the perspective on board it looks like you are travelling through the mountains!).
These estates will board mainly at the Kilmacud stop, as a network of pathways have been made to get them to the station.
Gabriel
As far as I am aware*, as a tram, the LUAS is regarded as a “road vehicle” under the Road Traffic Act, and so is treated just like a car or a bus.
Old legislation . . .
* and I may well be wrong
Ah now there’s a can of worms . . .
The thing that the article doesn’t mention about the General Motors buses is how much *more* fuel they guzzle when running on diesel than the engines we use on this side of the pond – more than enough of a difference to outweigh the savings IMHO.
CIE went for GM engines bigtime in the 80s – the standard Detroit Diesel engine which is still the staple of US citybuses powered the fleet of 366 Bombardier double-deckers which entered service between 1981 and 1983.
These buses gave the accountants a nasty shock – fuel comsumption was only 3mpg, as opposed to the buses they were replacing, which did either 12mpg (the last of the old “halfcab open-platform” Leylands) or 9mpg (the later, doored Leyland Atlanteans).
The big advantage of these buses was that unlike the leyland Atlanteans they rarely broke down on the road, however they were hugely expensive to maintain, and went through engines at a rate of knots. And as for the body problems . . . suffice to say that “Bombardier” while having an excellent reputation in the rail and aerospace industry, is a very dirty word in Dublin Bus circles.
The company had considered putting GM engines in everything, but after these buses opted for the much more fuel-efficient Cummins engine instead. (about 7 or 8mpg).
These days Dublin Bus get similar fuel consumption for their new Volvo buses, but unlike the vehicles in the US, these comply with very exacting “Euro III” emissions standards.
Diesel-electric hybrids will surely come to Europe, but you won’t get any operator in Ireland or the UK going for GM engines in a hurry!
Another option making progress is the “fuel-cell bus” – which has an onboard electric powerplant with zero emissions – the only thing that comes out of it is steam. And they say you could drink the water from the steam when it condenses!
See http://www.londonbuspage.com/040119.htm for examples in London.
Gabriel
Those pics are up now.
Incidently, over on the “Red Line” as it’s now called (Line A) the first trial run to Abbey Street is pencilled in for early Sunday morning. This will go normal speed to Heuston (track already checked), and then walking pace from there to Abbey Street.
Gabriel
Yesterday (Sun 18/Apr/04 ) saw the first intensive testing in the city centre – for a couple of hours in the morning they were running a replica of a full service from Sandyford right through to Stephens Green, with trams departing every 5 to 7 minutes in both directions.
I’ll have some fresh pictures on my site tomorrow.
This followed on from the resurfacing of Harcourt Street finally being completed, meaning that cars and trams could be seperated, thus testing could take place without traffic having to be halted.
There was one blip during the testing, when a 48A bus stalled and couldn’t be restarted at the bottom of Harcourt street, it blocked all the traffic, and they were forced to let the cars through onto the tracks. Luckily the bus got going again after 12 minutes, but it’s pointed out a potential problem for the future.
Gabriel
Here’s something I hadn’t noticed until today, when reviewing the larger collection of photos from which I selected the ones to put online.
I have several taken of the interior of the trams, and something caught my eye on the seating.
Looking more closely, it seems that the seating moquette design features Dublin architecture . . . different seats have different Dublin buildings on them, such as The Custom House, The Four Courts, Ha’penny Bridge etc.
I’ll go back to the photos and put one online in the next day or two to illustrate this.
Gabriel
Thanks to a colleague I now have photos available of the Hueston test run at http://www.allaboutbuses.com/luas
All is still on for Stephens green at 3pm Thursday.
Gabriel
They did the “guage testing” as far as Beechwood on Feb 12th, so it will be normal speed to there, and walking pace from then on.
Now I’m not technical, or a railway expert, but my (probably flawed) understanding is that these tests involve very slow speed testing to check that the rails are laid correctly, and that all clearences at every point are correct to the original design and computer simulations.
To givean example, the tests from Red Cow to Hueston yesterday took 4 hours for the trip – but they ran back in 50 minutes (still slower than schedule as they stopped for Gardai at every junction, as lights not tied into system yet.
I don’t think there have been many tests beyond Dundrum yet, but these will soon commence.
I think regular test running down Harcourt Street will wait until the roadway has been fully reconstructed, as currently traffic is running down the track while the other side of the street is being relaid.
Gabriel
Just to alert you – the first full run end to end on Line B is this Thursday 11th March – it’s a walking pace “guage trial” – arrival at Stephens Green 3pm to be greeted by Bertie.
Harcourt Street will be closed for the duration.
On Line A a run was made as far as Hueston yesterday – I was away, so no pictures, but I’l be in situ on Thursday.
Gabriel
. . . and just to point out that I said it was the *bell* that sounds (to me) melodious, not the horn.
It is also fairly quiet, and unlikely to penetrate through the walls of a house (the bell, not the horn).
Thje horn is of course noisy, as it should be for danger/conflict situations.
Gabriel
The LUAS trams have two aural warning systems.
A shrill car-type “horn” for danger situations, and a lovely, electronic, but very melodious sounding “bell” which chimes softly to let pedestrians know that the tram is coming.
They used the latter when inching through Windy Arbour last week – a lovely sound, don’t know how they managed to make an electronic bell sound so nice!
Gabriel
. . and there I was just about to rush on here all breathless and announce I had these new photos up (within an hour of the event) and you beat em to it!
Wonderful atmosphere at Windy Arbour today, lots of cheering and chanting, everybody enjoyed themselves.
I picked this location as with the Minister being at Dundum station, a normal pleb like me wouldn’t get within shouting distance to take photos . . .
The full article is at http://www.allaboutbuses.com/luas/40211-btrial.html
Gabriel
Niall,
I’m on nights this week, I’ll try hard to get another update online by the weekend.
As regards the livery change for Dublin Bus, this is due to take 3 years, as the resprays are only being done as part of the existing 3-year rolling refurb programme (i.e. each bus will get refurbished and repainted when 3, 6, 9 and 12 years old – there are a few odd exceptions).
See http://www.allaboutbuses.com/40130-dbrook.html for a photo-feature showing what is involved in this. ( to the uninitiated this kind of work on a 3-year cycle may seem like a waste of money, however bear in mind that during this period the bus may have clocked up a quarter of a million miles)
Repaints proper started at the end of December, there are now 28 vehicles in the new livery, the aim being 330 out of the total fleet of 1060 by the end of the year, plus the 36 new double-deckers on order so far for 2004.
Gabriel
