DART and commuter services are running normally in Dublin this morning following significant disruption yesterday due to signalling problems.
Iarnród Éireann spokesperson Barry Kenny said all services were “operating fully” following what he described as a “major signal fault”.
All DARTs were suspended for a period yesterday evening, as well as commuter trains between Dublin and Dundalk and the Dublin-Belfast Enterprise service.
There were also delays on other lines, including to Maynooth and on the Grand Canal Dock/Connolly to Hazelhatch/Newbridge commuter services.
Mr Kenny said the system had not experienced a failure of this magnitude before, adding that it is an ageing system in the process of being replaced.
“It is a system that we invested in a few years ago to extend its life, it is one that we are in the process of replacing with our new national train control centre,” he said.
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“But it isn’t a system that has given us that type of issue and we don’t believe that there is a trend or a reliability issue arising from it,” he added.
Mr Kenny said the issue impacted the area between Dundalk and Greystones which then had a knock-on effect on other city centre routes.
“This was at signal control level, the communication with the other controls was lost with the fault,” he said.
Mr Kenny said Irish Rail “were working to rectify” this at 6:45pm, and the service “started coming back” at about 7:50pm to 7:55pm.
However, he added the fault reoccurred at about 9:15.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, he apologised to commuters for the inconvenience and disruption caused due to the incident.
“Thankfully all services are operating this morning, and all those systems are operating fully this morning,” he said.
But he added there was a technical fault on one train service this morning, which impacted a northbound service with a “couple of services following it as well,” but it was not related to a signaling fault.
