From London and Crewe to Dublin By Train and Ferry
Ireland has an economic problem, as is well known. Commentators will argue the various reasons, but something that doesn’t help is that getting from Great Britain to Eire is not as easy as to get from Birmingham to Scotland. There are lots of flights, but they are not convenient or acceptable for everyone who wants to travel.
If you go to Dublin by train and ferry there is one train at 9:10 in the morning from Euston, that gets you to Dublin at 17:15, which is a journey time of eight hours and five minutes. I looked for tomorrow and the fare is only £32 one way. But there is only one service during the day, with another overnight.
So how fast could a service be done if the line was electrified all the way to Holyhead? Crewe from Euston can be done in two hours quite easily and it is only 84 miles from Crewe to Holyhead. The fastest services now take just short of four hours. but the trains are not electric or have the smooth ride of an IC125. The fast ferries take two hours for the crossing, but the larger slower ones take three hours fifteen minutes.
If we assume that Crewe to Holyhead can be done at a similar speed as Liverpool Street to Norwich, it would appear that a time of about one hour ten minutes could be obtained on this part of the route. So this would mean a time from London of three hours ten minutes in a smooth modern electric train. If this could be paired with a fast ferry this could mean a time of under five and a half hours if the sea conditions were good enough.
But this is more than about electrifying the North Wales Coast line, which it would appear that the Welsh Assembly would probably like to do. It is about kick starting the Irish economy. And that of North Wales too!
So surely instead of spending billions of euros propping the Irish up, wouldn’t it be better to spend use of that money to connect Eire to Europe more efficiently. After all, railwise, despite what some might believe, the UK is actually part of Europe.
It would be 84 miles of electrification and perhaps a subsidy to the Holyhead to Dublin ferries to make sure that the fast service was every three hours or so. Surely, that would be a more affordable option, as it would also benefit North Wales, which is not one of the more prosperous parts of the EU.
But it is not just about London to North Wales and on to Dublin. Properly built the line would also connect Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester to North Wales. As an example Liverpool to Holyhead would be under ninety minutes, which is the magic time that makes day trips easy. I also think it would make trips between North and South Wales quicker, but it would probably mean a change at either Chester or Shrewbury.
There are also other issues on the horizon. The major sources of employment on Anglesey, are the nuclear power station at Wylfa and the aluminium smelter. Who knows what will happen in the next few years? But if Holyhead and Anglesey had a first class electrified rail line to the rest of both Wales and the UK, it would help to attract long term jobs. It would of course help tourism and would probably make the University of Bangor even better.
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The Anonymous Widower 
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