Irish Rail Arrow

[MOH]

Hi,

 

Just thought I would share my involvement in what at the time was a new venture for Irish Rail and ts commuter/suburban rail services following the success of the Dart service.

 

It was planned to launch a commuter service linking initially Dublin with Kildare and later onwards to Portlaoise which would alleviate the pressure on the existing mainline routes south from Dublin and making use of dedicated new double tracking along the existing track way.

 

I  worked as a coachbuilder in Irish Rail and its original parent company of CIE from 1967 firstly as an apprentice and ended up in Inchicore Works after many postings around Dublin in both train and bus maintenance depots which included the 1980's when the kit built rail coaches were produced in Inchicore from BREL design as a response to a number of horrific accidents in which old style rolling stock had played a major part in the number of injuries and fatalities.

 

In the early 1990's I was asked to take on a new project which was meant to allow train drivers an insight and input to the proposed new Arrow trains so, hopefully, ironing out as many hitches as possible in advance of their production in Japan.

 

The idea was to build a full size prototype of a driving car which would include the cab and a section taking in the first doorways back from there and a couple of passenger windows etc.

 

All that was provided were a set of detailed drawings and some space in which to work along with the assistance on an apprentice, there was the freedom to have materials machined and processed as it was felt needed, the initial materials were lots of 8x4 sheets of 3/4 plywood and plenty of 2 inch angle iron, there was no proper bogie so the sub frame was made from the angle iron and of course was static and had to be positioned from time to time by forklifts.

 

The structural pillars and roof cross members were struck out, based on the drawings, on multiple sheets of plywood as a single unit and machined and separated so to be able to assemble pillars and cross members on the sub frame which represented the height and width of the coach body.

 

It proved to be a very satisfying effort and a great sense of achievement but obviously there was a lot of head scratching which was eased by great back up from the drawing office staff, the drivers cab had the basic components fitted out so as to allow teams of drivers to come and inspect how the cabs would be laid out and suggest where improvements could be made before the orders to build were finalised.

 

In all the task took approximately six months and the completed prototype was entered and took part in the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin, as a promotional exercise, before being broken up and scrapped when the "real" stock was delivered and up and running which was 1994 I believe.