{"id":121755,"date":"2025-10-14T16:30:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T16:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/121755\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T16:30:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T16:30:17","slug":"my-24-hours-per-week-on-trains-between-thurles-and-dublin-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/121755\/","title":{"rendered":"my 24 hours per week on trains between Thurles and Dublin \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first became a regular user of Irish trains in the 1990s, when college took me to Dublin<\/a> from my home in Co Tipperary<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Sunday evenings, the train stations in Templemore and Thurles would be jammed with young students waiting to, somehow, cram themselves and their backpacks on to a diesel locomotive. As the train had originated in Cork or Tralee or Limerick, a seat was rarely still vacant by the time it crossed the border into Tipperary.<\/p>\n

Back then, Heuston station felt like a suburb of Dublin \u2013 certainly not part of the centre of a city. The onward journey from there to whatever flatland area the student was renting was another, often long, adventure.<\/p>\n

The return leg on a Friday evening was equally chaotic.<\/p>\n

Carriages were full and noisy \u2013 both from the occupants inside and the tracks outside \u2013 and station platforms were often much shorter than the train.<\/p>\n

So, many times, unable to make my way through the carriages, I would put my hand out the window to unlock the train door (in the \u201890s it opened from the outside), and, along with many others, jump down on the side of the rail track.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s slightly different now … health and safety, you know. <\/p>\n

Thurles is situated on the Dublin-Cork, Dublin-Limerick and Dublin-Tralee lines, so it has been relatively well serviced by Irish Rail for a long time. At least in comparison to other towns.<\/p>\n

Train services between Dublin and Cork <\/a>will double at peak times within the next three to five years, Irish Rail<\/a> has said, significantly increasing the number and frequency of trains stopping at stations such as Thurles. <\/p>\n

\"SomeSome of the regular commuters were travelling quite a distance before they even started their rail journey. Photograph: iStock <\/p>\n

Michael Power, the Irish Rail head of business transformation, said that<\/a> \u201cif you can go half-hourly on Dublin-Cork, it makes towns like Thurles very liveable and it\u2019s really attractive for people who have the option of hybrid working\u201d.<\/p>\n

This is true. Though, Thurles has been a commuter town for Dublin for many years now. <\/p>\n

On any weekday morning, hundreds of commuters gather on Platform 1 for the early trains towards Dublin \u2013 currently the first trains leave Thurles each weekday at 6.14am, 7am, 7.23am, and 8.18am. The last one is the fastest, docking at Heuston around 9.30am \u2013 about one hour and 10 minutes after leaving Thurles. The slowest takes about an hour and a half, due mainly to pausing at half a dozen stations on the way northeast. <\/p>\n

Pre-Covid, I got the first train out of Thurles each weekday morning. Over the years, you get to know some of the regulars on the platform \u2013 though no one is particularly chatty at 6am on a chilly train platform (it doesn\u2019t matter the season, train stations are always cold). I did learn, though, that some of the regular commuters were travelling quite a distance before they even started their rail journey \u2013 many travelling around 40 minutes by car to the station. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Plan to improve intercity trains will make Thurles as accessible to Dublin as Greystones, says Irish RailOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

I only crunched the numbers on my commute once. You\u2019ll know why in a minute. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s about 20 minutes from the front door of the house to the train station. The early train usually took about one hour and 40 minutes. From Heuston, it was another 20 minutes or so to my desk. <\/p>\n

Just over two hours, 20 minutes \u2013 door to door.<\/p>\n

And, of course, the same home. <\/p>\n

No delays, everything going smoothly \u2013 which, well, happened an odd time \u2013 approximately 4 hours, 45 minutes commuting on a Monday.<\/p>\n

One down, four to go. <\/p>\n

The weekly commute, for many years, was 24 hours. One full day, each week, simply travelling to or from work. <\/p>\n

Thankfully, that commute has eased, though that\u2019s not everyone\u2019s story \u2013 many are still making 10 long train journeys each week. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Irish Rail to remove gender titles from online train booking systemOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Some are doing it to avoid the higher mortgage or rent payments that come with living in a city, for others it\u2019s to do with better career prospects. I also know of several who chose a long commute simply because they didn\u2019t want to uproot their family.<\/p>\n

For them, in particular, the new Irish Rail plans will make a significant impact on their day. As much as the improvement in the reliability and comfort of Irish trains have done in recent decades. <\/p>\n

Though not everything is fixed.<\/p>\n

I sat on the floor between two carriages last week on the way home from Heuston. Nowadays, at least the train intercom works, sometimes (though a train \u201chost\u201d \u2013 that\u2019s what they are called now \u2013 once announced to everyone on the delayed train that he had \u201cabsolutely no idea what was going on\u201d).<\/p>\n

The seat allocation system works, sometimes.<\/p>\n

The station lifts are in working order, sometimes. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s still a long way to go, for everybody. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I first became a regular user of Irish trains in the 1990s, when college took me to Dublin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,52,18,19,17,13419,2121],"class_list":{"0":"post-121755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-dublin","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-irish-rail","14":"tag-tipperary"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}