Belfast-Dublin train

Witless

TBH - after one memorable experince of a bomb alert on the way to an international (we just made kick off with minutes to spare - courtesy only of the NIR employee who 'put' excursion ticket holders on the bus too rather than making them wait) I've always driven. I avoid the 'city' traffic by parking (free) at Malahide and taking the DART in.

michilin27

leftieM wrote: »

I've used it a few times over the last year and I've no complaints except the loos can be a bit yuck. Other than that it's by far the easiest quickest least stressful way to get into Dublin city centre. I use Tesco clubcard vouchers to pay for the tickets.

how did u do this? i shop in tescos all the time and go to dublin quite a bit!

jammin_2

Consider also the bus. €20 return from Dublin to Belfast. Belfast to Dublin is about 13 pounds return I believe. Journey takes about 2.5 hours each way.

EDIT: Journey by bus, Dublin-Belfast takes around 2.5 hours, not 1-1.5 hours as I originally posted. Oops, my bad.

leftieM

michilin27 wrote: »

how did u do this? i shop in tescos all the time and go to dublin quite a bit!

Pop onto the discount codes and vouchers section of this website. Basically, shop online for food or whatever, use one of the available vouchers - there's often one or two for 1000 points floating about - and turn the vouchers into deal tokens for Translink. £1 in clubcard vouchers is worth £4 in translink vouchers. Nice.

peterdoherty

leftieM wrote: »

Pop onto the discount codes and vouchers section of this website. Basically, shop online for food or whatever, use one of the available vouchers - there's often one or two for 1000 points floating about - and turn the vouchers into deal tokens for Translink. £1 in clubcard vouchers is worth £4 in translink vouchers. Nice.

can these be used for any translink product?

leftieM

peterdoherty wrote: »

can these be used for any translink product?

Here's all the information you need.

http://www.tesco.com/clubcard/deals/product.aspx?R=149&bci=4294967191|Travel

peterdoherty

leftieM wrote: »

Here's all the information you need.

http://www.tesco.com/clubcard/deals/product.aspx?R=149&bci=4294967191|Travel

ah ok so they can be used for

7 day Freedom of Northern Ireland ticket
3 day Freedom of Northern Ireland ticket
Enterprise Class, day return: Mon-Thurs and Sat

and not just any translink fare/ticket

leftieM

It's confusing. I saw the t&cs last time I travelled so I phoned translink to ask if they accepted vouchers for monthly returns on the Enterprise and was told they did and indeed they were accepted at the kiosk without question. I'd give them a call to see what they say.

motorguy

leftieM wrote: »

Does anyone remember the good old days when they had endless bombs/ bomb hoaxes, works, unannounced stoppages (ie train stopping with no-one telling us why or for how long) and you regularly had to get off the train to get a bus to the next town and get on the train again. Ah, the fun we had....

Yes, werent the kids at lurgan wee tinkers. Invariably they stuck something on the track at kilwilkee and good old translink would stop the train at lisburn instead of moira and dump everyone off. 200 people and 1 taxi...

Or the time they threw a brick at the driver of the enterprise and put him in hospital and the tracks were closed until they could get another driver brought over.

Sometimes i come over all nostalgic on a wet rainy evening and think about getting off at lisburn and walking home. :rolleyes: