Irish Trains
With this being the first time I have been to Ireland, I thought it would be interesting to compare the experience of Irish rail travel with that of the UK and other countries in Europe I have visited. My first train would be the 19.15 train from Dublin (Heuston) calling at Kildare and arriving in Galway two and a half hours later.
The first impression I got of the rail service and Irish trains is that they seem to be more organised than those in the UK. The first clue to this is to look at the arrivals screen in the station and see how many trains are currently running late and delayed. The answer was none. This is always a dead give away to the reliable network – how many times do you see the word “delayed” in a UK railway station?
The second observation of Heuston station in Dublin was how clean everything seemed, no litter on the floor and no dirt or graffiti on the walls. There was also a good selection of shops and food outlets including SuperMacs (another first for an Irish virgin) in the waiting area as well as plenty of cash machines, telephones and internet access terminals.
The train itself we boarded seemed very modern and the interior was bright white and well-lit meaning the carriages seemed bigger than they actually were. Every seat had its own 240v socket which is an essential for a laptop addict like me and even though we were not sitting at the table seat, there was far more space and leg room in the normal seats than compared to either the UK National Express or Virgin trains and more room to type on my laptop.
As expected, the train departed on time and we arrived in Galway on schedule.
This entry was posted on Tuesday August 25th, 2009 at 8:00 PM and is filed under Things to do. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.
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