Irish rail fleets expand as Translink and Irish Rail both post record ridership

Irish Rail carried 55 million passengers in 2025, a 9% year-on-year increase and 10% above its best pre-Covid figure, while Translink recorded 15.8 million rail journeys in 2025/26, up 19% on the previous year. Both operators exceeded pre-pandemic peaks, according to a detailed technical report from an IMechE tour covering Adelaide depot in Belfast and the Inchicore works in Dublin.

What is driving the performance gains?

Translink runs Northern Ireland Railways, Belfast Metro buses and Ulsterbus with 4,500 staff, around 1,400 buses and 164 rail vehicles on a 333 route-km network with 54 stations and 1,600 structures. It receives £250 million a year in capital funding and spends £8 million a year on infrastructure maintenance.

At the time of the tour, punctuality ran consistently 2% above the Public Service Agreement target of 87.2%, with cancellations at 0.3%. Translink attributes much of this to a hub-and-spoke timetable introduced with the opening of Belfast Grand Central, which isolates disruption.

Its Adelaide depot, opened in 2012 on the site of sidings that once received Guinness trains from Dublin, has a 5,100 m² maintenance building with two 200-metre pitted roads, jacks that lift an entire three-car train, two engine removal tables, and bogie and engine repair facilities. The site also hosts a driver training simulator and a signalling simulator.

How is fleet maintenance changing?

Translink's fleet, excluding Enterprise cross-border stock, comprises 23 three-car Class 3000 DMUs and 19 three-car plus 7 four-car Class 4000 DMUs, all built by CAF. The Class 3000s entered service in 2004–05 with 300 kW MAN engines; six carry CAWS for cross-border operation. The 2012-vintage Class 4000s have 395 kW engines and weigh five tonnes less.

CAF maintains the fleets and introduced its LeadMind digital platform in 2023. Each Class 4000 transmits 3,000 signals — engine status, fuel levels, brake pressures, saloon temperatures, passenger load via suspension pressure — enabling pre-emptive fault detection before units reach the depot. Since LeadMind arrived, service-affecting incidents have fallen 45%. Wheel-slip data identified the five worst adhesion sites, letting Translink's Severe Weather Action Team target its seasonal response.

What does Inchicore deliver?

Irish Rail operates 522 passenger vehicles, 41 locomotives and 154 EMU vehicles across 147 stations and 2,200 route-km — only 52 km electrified, on the DART. More than 800 of its 5,600 staff work in the Chief Mechanical Engineer's department, which holds a €100 million annual budget and handles whole-life train care at Inchicore and seven satellite depots.

Inchicore, founded in 1846 and still 72 acres, employs around 800 people. Its workshops overhaul roughly 1,000 wheelsets and 350 bogies a year. Chief Mechanical Engineer Peter Smyth said the electronics repair facility saves €4 million annually and failed to fix only one item last year. It also manages hardware obsolescence, though Smyth considers software obsolescence a bigger risk, citing the forthcoming EU Cybersecurity Act and support agreements limited to five years.

The works train around 25 apprentices a year and has built a new commissioning facility for the DART+ fleet, the only place the trains can be completed because Ireland's 1,600 mm gauge is unique in Europe.

When do the new trains enter service?

IR ordered 26 five-car EMUs and 31 five-car battery-electric multiple units from Alstom in 2021. The first arrived in November 2024; units 4 and 5 were undergoing static testing at Inchicore during the tour. The X'Trapolis units offer 204 seats, ETCS Level 1, 145 km/h maximum speed, 960 mm floor height for level boarding and extending gap fillers. Bodyshells from Changchun, China are fitted out in Katowice, Poland; bogies come from Le Creusot, cab fronts from Bahrain, and four 105 kWh lithium-NMC battery packs per train from OP Mobility in Toulouse, giving 80 km off-wire range.

Separate safety cases for the BEMUs and EMUs require European Union Agency for Railways approval, with all dynamic testing done on night DART possessions because no 1,600 mm test track exists. Forty associated projects must finish — including fast charging and ETCS installation — before entry into service, anticipated by mid-2027.

Enterprise replacement and the wider plan

Stadler was selected preferred bidder in September 2025 for eight 10-car, 200-metre Enterprise trains, jointly managed by Irish Rail and Translink and funded by the Irish Republic, Northern Ireland's Department for Infrastructure and the EU. The bi-mode units, with 1.5 kV DC pantographs, traction batteries and diesel genset power cars convertible to 25 kV AC, will cut the Dublin–Belfast journey to 1 hour 55 minutes — 15 minutes faster than today. Deliveries run from 2028, with service entry in 2030, supported by a 15-year maintenance agreement extendable to 30 years.

The All-Ireland Strategic Rail Plan targets a doubling of rail's passenger market share: 36 km of BEMU extension to Drogheda, 40 km of western electrification with a Maynooth depot, 20 km to the south-west, and Cork commuter electrification with 21 five-car EMUs and eight new stations. Irish Rail has also ordered 400 low-floor container wagons from W H Davis, with Foynes port freight services expected to restart by year-end.