Cork jazz fans face blues over rail line closure

JAZZ fans are facing the blues as Irish Rail finalises plans to shut down part of its mainline service to Cork during the October bank holiday weekend.

Iarnród Éireann has confirmed it is to close a large section of the Dublin-Cork line to facilitate the erection of a €1 million rail bridge over a river near Buttevant.

And it has emerged that all online ticket allocations have been sold out for that weekend.

Two of the largest cranes in the country will be used to complete the planned works over the River Awbeg in north Cork.

A Monaghan-based company is supplying both cranes, one of which has a 750-tonne capacity and the other 550 tonnes.

A spokeswoman for Iarnród Éireann said the work was necessary as part of replacement and upgrading works.

“The replacement (bridge) consists of two precast box culverts which will be placed side-by-side,” said the spokeswoman.

She defended the company’s decision to close the line between Thurles and Cork on a weekend when thousands of people make the commute by rail to Cork for the Jazz Festival.

She said the works were essential and the company would provide buses to ferry people from Thurles to Cork and vice versa.

She said disruption would be minimised as the peak-time trains for people travelling to and from the festival would be maintained.

She said that more work can be carried out on a bank holiday as the company didn’t operate early morning services.

“The closure will commence after the 8pm Heuston-Cork train has departed on Friday, October 28, and the line will reopen on bank holiday Monday at 9.30am.”

Kerry-Dublin services will operate to Mallow with a connecting bus transfer to Thurles, where commuters will board trains to Dublin.

All local Cork-Mallow services will operate as normal throughout that weekend.

Iarnród Éireann divisional engineers, based at Limerick Junction have completed the preparatory work for the project, including the partial diversion of the river.

This has been done in consultation with National Parks and Wildlife Service and the main contractor, Coffey Construction.

A spokeswoman for the company said the bridge replacement “represented a very big undertaking”.

“The cranes are so big we had to build new access roads to facilitate them,” she said.

*Full details of the closure will be published shortly on irishrail.ie.