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All joking aside one of the biggest boosts to the marketing of rail services on lines like Limerick - Waterford would come from higher speeds and shorter journey times. An increasingly frequent justification by the RSA for speed restrictions is the number of level crossings including of course farmers crossings on a particular section. The Limerick Junction to Waterford Section has its fair share.

According to recent report there are 1073 live level crossings on the system while almost a thousand have been extinguished by IE within the last ten years, and that's a fair achievement.
TTC0169 on another thread has reported that "there are 268 level crossings between Athlone and Westport-(their are 27 alone in the first mile or so out of Athlone......!!!!) and 70 on the 20 mile Ballina branch"

Credit is due to the PR Department in IE for the raising of awareness of level crossings safety and the related issue of bridge strikes. They are on the air and media constantly in this regard. Lives have been saved without a doubt. The concept of a National Awareness Day is to be welcomed and the naming and shaming through court prosecutions of mis-users, as with illegal dumping will have to continue.

In these times of lowering expectations of compensation levels and land/construction prices, perhaps an opportunity exists under the new multi billion Rural Development Programme to provide resources for the abolition of as many as possible of these crossings over the next five years. I understand that IE are themselves resourcing the current programme of such work but I would question why the costs should all be carried by IE. After all there is a benefit to the farmer also in providing a less stressful, safer and more accessible method of going from one field to another.

Of course there may be a residue of crossings that cannot be addressed by barriers, underpasses or over bridges and these will have to be covered by CCTV to police abuse and perhaps they will also need to be interlocked once the section within which they are located is occupied by a train. Expensive technology no doubt but the expenditure would give a far greater return in my view than experimentation with hybrid rolling stock.

Such initiatives by IE should be rewarded by the Rail Safety Authority through their relaxing their attitude to line speeds. One test of their resolve would be to take a particular section where CWR has recently been laid with state of the art signalling, and there no shortage of options, remove all crossings and see what maximum speed could be negotiated.

Incidentally, I understand that in the 17 miles from Athenry to Tuam there is one road and 4 farmers crossings -compared with 70 on the Ballina Branch.
This is another example of the foresight of Dargans design and construction methods.