This is the array of posters that were on display at Enniscorthy Railway Station yesterday; they would really encourage the nervous passenger to hang about the place on their own.
I cannot remember the last time that I saw a poster advertising an excursion train or promoting the joys of train travel to some exotic destination on the island. It's the same sorry assortment of posters that now 'decorate' all our railway stations - now largely devoid of staff or the most basic of facilities. More to follow...
Back in the 1960s posters extolling the joys of rail travel were produced for CIE by outside advertising agencies using the best artistic talent available at the time. These days many of those services such as the 'Radio Train' no longer exist and CIE seem quite content with the entire railway offering reduced to 3rd class - shure isn't it good enough for Paddy.
Even the Rambler ticket, these days rebranded as the Trekker is kept a closely guarded secret and there's zero promotion of it on their website or public timetable - of course it would be difficult to promote it in the latter as the timetable booklet has also gone the way of the Dodo. More to follow...
Even the more lowly events such as GAA, Racing and Football had special excursion trains and were promoted. The trip to the Mountains of Mourne was one that I was lucky enough to make myself in the 1960s - high tea included! Of course all gone now - not the mountains - but any attempt to make the railways relevant to the vast bulk of the population who haven't been on a train in years.
Some years back when CIE still produced a public timetable booklet I suggested to the CEO that it would might be innovative to include Ads for their then remaining restaurant "Restaurant na Mara" at Dun Laohaire in it and perhaps even the Fastrack parcels service....We know how that ended and the privately run replacement for the Dun Laoghaire restaurant was recently gutted by fire. Truly, where CIE goes bankruptcy follows...
Incidentally, the CIE/IE all-lines timetable is still produced, glossy and ring-bound solely for the information of their few remaining station staff. I did suggest that they could try running off extra copies for sale and they might recoup the overall cost....should have saved my breath to cool my porridge. I'll be back - got to do a post about IE's rodent problems next..
