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The 22000 Class "InterCity Railcar" is a
diesel multiple unit A diesel multiple unit or DMU is a multiple-unit train powered by on-board diesel engines. A DMU requires no separate locomotive, as the engines are incorporated into one or more of the carriages. Diesel-powered single-unit railcars are also ...
in service with
Iarnród Éireann Iarnród Éireann, () or Irish Rail, is the operator of the national Rail transport in Ireland, railway network of Ireland. Established on 2 February 1987, it is a subsidiary of CIÉ, Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ). It operates all internal I ...
in
Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
. They are the first IÉ DMUs built specifically for
InterCity InterCity (commonly abbreviated ''IC'' on timetables and tickets) is the train categories in Europe, classification applied to certain long-distance passenger train services in Europe. Such trains (in contrast to InterRegio, regional train, r ...
routes, although they can also work on some commuter routes. They are designed to operate at a maximum speed of .


History

In 2005, the Irish Government announced the €34 billion
Transport 21 Transport 21 was an Irish infrastructure plan, announced in November 2005. Its aims were to greatly expand Ireland's transport network. A cost estimate of €34 billion was attached to the plan at the time. The plan included continuing inves ...
proposal for significant improvements to transport infrastructure, with major emphasis on the railway network. As part of this, large-scale replacement of rolling stock was planned, then made up entirely of locomotive-hauled coaching stock, mostly
British Rail Mark 2 The Mark 2 family of railway carriages are British Rail's second design of carriages. They were built by British Rail workshops (from 1969 British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL)) between 1964 and 1975 and were of steel construction. Developme ...
and
Mark 3 Mark 3 is the third chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It relates a conflict over healing on the Sabbath, the commissioning of the Twelve Apostles, a conflict with the Jerusalem scribes and a meeting of ...
. IÉ ordered 120 replacement vehicles: in a major departure, the new trains would be 3 and 6 car DMUs rather than locomotive-hauled carriages. This order was extended to 150 vehicles in 2005, to 183 vehicles in 2007 and to 234 vehicles in December 2008. 41 additional centre cars were ordered in 2019 for delivery from 2021. No new driving cars would be ordered but as many services operate with two units joined currently it would be possible to reconfigure and release more units. All units underwent an in-service interior overhaul between 2019 and 2022. This programme included replacing the original cloth seats with leather and adding
USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...
power sockets at each seating bay, amongst other changes intended to reduce ongoing maintenance and cleaning costs.


Deliveries

Supplied by
Mitsui is a Japanese corporate group and '' keiretsu'' that traces its roots to the ''zaibatsu'' groups that were dissolved after World War II. Unlike the ''zaibatsu'' of the pre-war period, there is no controlling company with regulatory power. Ins ...
of
Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
for approximately €400 million, the fleet was built by a partnership between Rotem of
South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...
, who did the primary work, and
Tokyu Car Corporation is a manufacturer of heavy rail cars in Japan, formerly known as . The company is based in Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama, and a member of East Japan Railway Company (JR East) group. J-TREC manufactures rail vehicles not only for JR East and Tokyu Corpo ...
of Japan, who supplied the
bogies A bogie ( ) (or truck in North American English) comprises two or more wheelsets (two wheels on an axle), in a frame, attached under a vehicle by a pivot. Bogies take various forms in various modes of transport. A bogie may remain normally ...
. The first sets were delivered in March 2007, while the final sets were delivered in April 2012. In March 2007, a €79 million order was placed for a further 33 vehicles to be used primarily on the outer Dublin commuter network. This was added to with an additional 51 Commuter vehicles in December 2008. As of 2015, there are 63 sets: 28 3-car sets, 25 4-car sets and 10 5-car sets, in three different layouts. Two of the 3-car sets, 22010 and 22011, were delivered in July 2007 with corrosion damage received in transit from South Korea. IÉ did not accept delivery and stored the sets until October 2008 when they were returned to Rotem for repair, with a revised delivery date of early 2009. It was later determined that it was uneconomic to repair them, so Rotem added two additional units to the last order at no additional cost to IÉ. In September 2022 the first of 41 new intermediates were delivered, with the final delivery in March 2023. On 14 March 2023 millage accumulation runs begun for the first three of the new intermediate B cars utilising 22209 and 22309 as 'tractor units'


Operations

The 22000 class was primarily ordered for InterCity routes except the Dublin-Belfast services operated by
Enterprise Enterprise (or the archaic spelling Enterprize) may refer to: Business and economics Brands and enterprises * Enterprise GP Holdings, an energy holding company * Enterprise plc, a UK civil engineering and maintenance company * Enterpris ...
and the Dublin-Cork service, for which IÉ purchased 67 locomotive-hauled coaches in 2006, but they have also been used on off-peak Dublin-Cork services since November 2009. 22000 units have now replaced coaching stock on services from Dublin to Galway, Westport, Limerick, Waterford and Tralee, and 2800 Class and 29000 Class DMUs to Sligo and Rosslare Europort. The expansion of the Dublin
commuter belt A metropolitan area or metro is a region consisting of a densely populated urban agglomeration and its surrounding territories which share industries, commercial areas, transport network, infrastructures and housing. A metropolitan area usually ...
led IÉ to need dedicated long distance
Commuter Commuting is periodically recurring travel between a place of residence and place of work or study, where the traveler, referred to as a commuter, leaves the boundary of their home community. By extension, it can sometimes be any regular o ...
trains, and so purchased additional units for use on services to destinations such as Portlaoise, Carlow, Athlone, Dundalk, Kildare, and Longford; as well as Mallow in the Cork commuter belt. Plans by Enterprise to improve its services included the potential of purchasing DMUs to replace its locomotive-hauled coaching stock. Among the options under consideration was the purchase of further 22000 Class units.
NI Railways NI Railways, also known as Northern Ireland Railways (NIR; and for a brief period Ulster Transport Railways; UTR), is the railway operator in Northern Ireland. NIR is a subsidiary of Translink, whose parent company is the Northern Ireland Tr ...
was offered a variant of the 22000 Class to meet its "New Trains Two" requirement, before ultimately choosing a design similar to its existing Class 3000 unit, which became the Class 4000. The train was sometimes seen on the Dublin to Belfast railway line, on out-of-service transfer to Drogheda train service depot.


Unit types

As delivered, the first 30 units were of three cars, for use on InterCity routes, as were ten of the 15 6-car units. The remaining five 6-car sets and the 17 3-car sets ordered in 2008 were configured for long-distance Commuter services from Dublin. Combinations of two 3-car sets, three 3-car sets, two 4-car sets, a 3-car set + a 4-car set and two 5-car sets are possible. * A1 22131–40: Driving car, catering, wheelchair accessible WC, one wheelchair space, 36 1st class seats * A2 22207–30,41–63: Driving car, standard WC, 66 seats * A22 22201–06: A2 car with NIR TPWS/ AWS & radio system * A3 22307–63: Driving car, wheelchair accessible WC, two wheelchair spaces, bicycle storage, 54 seats * A33 22301–06: A3 car with NIR signal & radio system & parcels/bike space * B 22401–63, 631–45, 731–45: Intermediate car, standard WC, 72 seats * B1 22531–45: B car with sanding system ** 3-car sets: A2/A22 - B - A3/A33 ** 4-car sets: A1/A2 - B - B/B1 - A3 ** 5-car sets: A1/A22 - B - B1 - B - A3/A33 In 2013, IÉ announced plans to reform the 22000 class units from 3 and 6-car sets into 3 and 4-car units, to obtain better flexibility from them in regards to passenger numbers per train. However, it soon became apparent that replacing 6-car units with 4-car ones would lead to overcrowding, which caused IÉ to subsequently alter the proposal into sets of 3, 4 and 5-car lengths. The 20 cars taken off the original 6-car sets 22031–45 and inserted in the original 3-car sets 22011–30 got additional numbers 22811–30 but also kept the original number 22531–540,641,741,642,742,643,743,644,744,645,745.


Fuel economy

There have been attempts to improve the fuel economy of the 22000 Class. In 2008 the class were modified to shut down the engines after a period of inactivity if the drivers cab key was off, and in 2018 it was announced one three car unit was to trial a ZF transmission to replace the original Voith and it was hoped this might yield 19% fuel savings in some conditions. An additional nine cars are to be fitted with a diesel-battery hybrid MTU/
Rolls-Royce Rolls-Royce (always hyphenated) may refer to: * Rolls-Royce Limited, a British manufacturer of cars and later aero engines, founded in 1906, now defunct Automobiles * Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the current car manufacturing company incorporated in ...
power pack as a trial, with route-dependent fuel savings of up to 33%


Future

In 2018, it was announced that Iarnród Éireann were seeking to procure a further 41 new 22000 Class vehicles, encompassing three additional units plus a number of intermediate trailers intended to lengthen some of the existing fleet. The ultimate aim is to return the fleet to a mix of three and six-car sets. An order for 41 intermediate ("type B") cars, which would release additional units by reconfiguration of existing pairs, was confirmed in October 2019. As of the 16 February 2024, the first of these carriages has entered service.


Fleet details


Features

* Engine: MTU 6H 1800 R83, 12.8 L, 6 cylinder, 483
bhp BHP Group Limited, founded as the Broken Hill Proprietary Company, is an Australian multinational mining and metals corporation. BHP was established in August 1885 and is headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria. As of 2024, BHP was the world� ...
gross, traction per car. * Transmission:
Voith The Voith Group is a global technology company. With its broad portfolio of systems, products, services and digital applications, Voith trades in the markets of energy, paper, raw materials and transport. Founded in 1867, Voith today has aroun ...
T 312 R
IRRS Article
* Top speed: 160 km/h (100 mph) * Body: high quality stainless steel with some corrosion-resistant carbon steel components * Automatic PA system, PA and information display systems (Supplier: SA Viewcom) * Fully air-conditioned (Supplier:
Toshiba is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...
) * Saloon, external view of doors and front-facing
CCTV Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of closed-circuit television cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signa ...
camera and recording system (Supplier: Verint) * Catering facilities (some trains have buffet bars) * Individual base seating * Fire safety to BS 6853 Cat 1B, automatic fire extinguishing system for engines & fuel tanks * All sets have Irish standard CAWS signaling systems and train radio. * 3-car sets 22001–22006, as well as 5-car sets 22036–22039 have TPWS/ AWS for operation on
Northern Ireland Railways NI Railways, also known as Northern Ireland Railways (NIR; and for a brief period Ulster Transport Railways; UTR), is the railway operator in Northern Ireland. NIR is a subsidiary of Translink, whose parent company is the Northern Ireland Tr ...
.


Routes


InterCity services

*
Dublin Heuston Heuston Station, ( ; ; formerly Kingsbridge Station) also known as Dublin Heuston, is one of Dublin's largest railway stations and links the capital with the south, southwest and west of Ireland. It is operated by Iarnród Éireann (IÉ), ...
/
Athlone Athlone (; ) is a town on the border of County Roscommon and County Westmeath, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is located on the River Shannon near the southern shore of Lough Ree. It is the second most populous town in the Midland Region, Ir ...
to Galway Ceannt *
Dublin Heuston Heuston Station, ( ; ; formerly Kingsbridge Station) also known as Dublin Heuston, is one of Dublin's largest railway stations and links the capital with the south, southwest and west of Ireland. It is operated by Iarnród Éireann (IÉ), ...
/
Athlone Athlone (; ) is a town on the border of County Roscommon and County Westmeath, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is located on the River Shannon near the southern shore of Lough Ree. It is the second most populous town in the Midland Region, Ir ...
to Westport *
Dublin Heuston Heuston Station, ( ; ; formerly Kingsbridge Station) also known as Dublin Heuston, is one of Dublin's largest railway stations and links the capital with the south, southwest and west of Ireland. It is operated by Iarnród Éireann (IÉ), ...
to Limerick Colbert *
Dublin Heuston Heuston Station, ( ; ; formerly Kingsbridge Station) also known as Dublin Heuston, is one of Dublin's largest railway stations and links the capital with the south, southwest and west of Ireland. It is operated by Iarnród Éireann (IÉ), ...
to Tralee Casement *
Dublin Heuston Heuston Station, ( ; ; formerly Kingsbridge Station) also known as Dublin Heuston, is one of Dublin's largest railway stations and links the capital with the south, southwest and west of Ireland. It is operated by Iarnród Éireann (IÉ), ...
to Waterford Plunkett * Waterford Plunkett to
Limerick Junction Limerick Junction () is the interchange railway station for trains originating in , , , , and stations. The station opened on 3 July 1848. The station was highly noted for its layout which prior to 1967 required every train making a stop at ...
* Limerick Colbert to
Limerick Junction Limerick Junction () is the interchange railway station for trains originating in , , , , and stations. The station opened on 3 July 1848. The station was highly noted for its layout which prior to 1967 required every train making a stop at ...
*
Dublin Connolly Connolly station () or Dublin Connolly is the busiest railway station in Dublin and Ireland, and is a focal point in the Irish route network. On the North side of the River Liffey, it provides InterCity, Enterprise and commuter services to ...
to Sligo MacDiarmada *
Dublin Connolly Connolly station () or Dublin Connolly is the busiest railway station in Dublin and Ireland, and is a focal point in the Irish route network. On the North side of the River Liffey, it provides InterCity, Enterprise and commuter services to ...
to
Rosslare Europort Rosslare Europort () is a modern seaport located at Rosslare Harbour in County Wexford, Ireland, near the southeasternmost point of the island of Ireland. The port is the primary Irish port serving the European Continent with 36 direct servi ...
* Mallow to Tralee Casement *
Dublin Heuston Heuston Station, ( ; ; formerly Kingsbridge Station) also known as Dublin Heuston, is one of Dublin's largest railway stations and links the capital with the south, southwest and west of Ireland. It is operated by Iarnród Éireann (IÉ), ...
to Cork Kent (off-peak) * Limerick Colbert to Galway Ceannt (occasionally) * Limerick Colbert to Ballybrophy (occasionally) *
Dublin Connolly Connolly station () or Dublin Connolly is the busiest railway station in Dublin and Ireland, and is a focal point in the Irish route network. On the North side of the River Liffey, it provides InterCity, Enterprise and commuter services to ...
to Belfast Grand Central


Commuter services

*
Dublin Heuston Heuston Station, ( ; ; formerly Kingsbridge Station) also known as Dublin Heuston, is one of Dublin's largest railway stations and links the capital with the south, southwest and west of Ireland. It is operated by Iarnród Éireann (IÉ), ...
to Newbridge /
Portlaoise Portlaoise ( ), or Port Laoise (), is the county town of County Laois, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is in the Midland Region, Ireland, South Midlands in the province of Leinster. Portlaoise was the fastest growing of the top 20 largest town ...
* Newbridge / Hazelhatch & Celbridge to
Grand Canal Dock Grand Canal Dock () is a Southside (Dublin), Southside area near the city centre of Dublin, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is located on the border of eastern Dublin 2 and the westernmost part of Ringsend in Dublin 4, surrounding the Grand Cana ...
* Docklands /
Clonsilla Clonsilla () is a northwestern suburb of Dublin in Fingal, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Clonsilla (civil parish), Clonsilla is also a Civil parishes in Ireland, civil parish in the Barony (Ireland), barony of Castleknock (barony), Castleknock ...
to M3 Parkway * Dublin Pearse to Drogheda MacBride / Dundalk Clarke (occasionally) * Dublin Pearse to
Maynooth Maynooth (; ) is a university town in north County Kildare, Ireland. It is home to Maynooth University (part of the National University of Ireland and also known as the National University of Ireland, Maynooth) and St Patrick's College, Maynoo ...
(occasionally) * Cork Kent to
Midleton Midleton (; , meaning "monastery at the weir") is a town in south-eastern County Cork, Ireland. It lies approximately 16 km east of Cork City on the Owenacurra River and the N25 road, which connects Cork to the port of Rosslare. A satelli ...
/
Cobh Cobh ( ,), known from 1849 until 1920 as Queenstown, is a seaport town on the south coast of County Cork, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. With a population of 14,148 inhabitants at the 2022 census of Ireland, 2022 census, Cobh is on the south si ...
(occasionally)


Model railways

Irish manufacturer Irish Railway Models announced a 22000 Class model in October 2022 as their first DMU and it is due for release in 2024.


Accidents and Incidents

In January 2012, Set 22033 was damaged in Athenry during an incident. It was hauled back to Laois Train Care Depot by IE 071 Class Loco 076. On 17 July 2018, unit 22016 was involved in an incident at Laois Train Care Depot when the set collided with the buffers. The set was minorly damaged. On 29 June 2024, the 21.28 from Belfast Lanyon Place to Dublin Connolly operated by IE 22000 Class DMU 22037 was damaged outside Drogheda due to a deer strike. The set eventually made it to Dublin and was reinstated in service the following morning. On 10 February 2025, unit 22039 was damaged when it collided with a Timber Train in Westport. One of the DM cars (22139) was badly damaged in the incident. On 7 May 2025, unit 22036 was involved in a deer strike near Dundalk while working the 05.50 Dublin to Belfast train. The set was terminated at Dundalk and returned empty to Dublin and picked up the diagram the next day.


See also

*
Steam locomotives of Ireland A wide variety of steam locomotives have been used on History of rail transport in Ireland, Ireland's railways. This page lists most if not all those that have been used in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Irish railways generally fo ...
* Diesel locomotives of Ireland * Multiple units of Ireland


References


External links


Irish Rail Fleet Information website
{{Ireland Multiple Units Iarnród Éireann multiple units Hyundai Rotem multiple units Tokyu Car multiple units