Belmond Grand Hibernian

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Belmond Grand Hibernian is the name of a proposed luxury train service in Ireland, expected to be launched in 2016.[1][needs update] The service will be operated by Belmond, the operator of several other luxury trains including the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express.[2]

The rolling stock for the service will be heavily renovated Mark 3 carriages, originally built by British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL) for Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ, now Iarnród Éireann) from 1980 to 1989 and withdrawn in 2009. As of 2015, the carriages were being refurbished in Kilmarnock, Scotland at a cost of £6.5 million.[3] Internal fitting is currently being performed on some of the coaches which have returned from Scotland by Mivan in Antrim, N. Ireland.

Route

The planned routes take in some of the history of rail transport in Ireland and are centred on Dublin. The service is timetabled to operate on a weekly schedule: a four-night tour of the south-west of Ireland during the week, then a two-night weekend tour to Northern Ireland. One night per week is planned to be available for maintenance and other activities. For the 2016 season, full six-night "Grand Tour of Ireland" journeys are scheduled to run Tuesday-to-Monday, as these would consist of both the south-westerly "Legends and Loughs" and northerly "Realm of Giants" segments with a change-over for some passengers in Dublin on the Saturday of each week.

Carriages

From the eleven Mark 3 carriages purchased,[3] the proposed train will include modifications to make five sleeping cars, two restaurant cars for dining, and an observation car. Carriage names are based on the counties of Ireland, two taken from each of the provinces of Ireland.

Carriage name Layout Double Twin Seating
Down[4] Cabins[n 1] 1 3
Waterford[4] Cabins[n 1] 1 3
Leitrim[4] Cabins[n 1] 1 3
Fermanagh[4] Cabins[n 1] 1 3
Kerry[4] Cabins[n 2] 4
Sligo[4] Dining/formal 20
Wexford[4] Dining/casual 24
Kildare[4] Observation/social/bar all
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 One family suite per carriage by connecting door between double and adjacent twin cabin.[5] Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "connect" defined multiple times with different content
  2. ↑ One twin-bed cabin in Kerry, adjacent to corridor connection, is designed to be wheelchair accessible with 700-millimetre wide access route to day-facility carriages.

In December IE 201 Class-locomotive 229 moved the rake of eleven vehicles from Dublin Heuston Inchicore Works to Dublin North Wall sidings.[6] The Mark 3 carriages in the rake were ordered as 7601, 7149, 7104, 7129, 7169, 7158, 7171, 7122, 7130, 7116 and 7137.[7] As of January 2015 the carriages were transported by road to Brodie Rail Engineering in Scotland.[8][9] As of January 2016, two carriages have returned from Scotland, and are now at Mivan in Antrim having their internal fittings installed.

References

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  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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