SailRail and other Irish ticket questions

I'm advising a friend in Ireland who hasn't used SailRail before, and I think is only an occasional user of public transport in general, but there are various things that I'm not sure about, so I thought I'd see what the collective wisdom of the forum had to say. Hopefully some of the points will be of interest to other people as well as me.

1) Is it possible to buy a ticket that includes the ferry plus rail travel only on the Irish side, e.g. Athlone-Holyhead, and if so how can you buy it? (I’ve not seen any indication that such tickets exist, but I thought it was worth asking).

2) Is anyone likely to object to an eastbound passenger with a non-train-specific ticket spending a couple of hours longer in Holyhead than is strictly necessary, rather than getting on the next train? In the opposite direction I’ve sometimes (although obviously not with a SailRail Advance ticket) arrived in Holyhead earlier than necessary, and no-one has objected to my leaving the premises while waiting, so I would hope it would be the same going the other way.

3) If you are starting in Ireland, the only online way of buying Stena SailRail tickets appears to be to pay the Trainline £10 for international postage; can the Stena phone number given on the seat61 page be used to get tickets sent to an Irish address without a large extra charge?

4) Can Stena SailRail tickets be bought at Irish railway stations, or are the ferry terminals the only places where you can buy them without having to get them posted?

5) On the Irish Ferries website tickets involving an Irish rail leg appear to be unavailable for the next week or so; is this because there isn't time to post them out? (Tickets from Dublin are available, presumably because they can be collected at the ferry terminal).

6) If you get the connecting bus from central Dublin to the terminal (of either company), will there be time to buy a SailRail ticket at the terminal if you don’t already have one? I’ve picked up pre-booked tickets at that stage before, and bought a ticket just before departure having made my own way to Dun Laoghaire, and I doubt if there will be a flood of foot passengers who don’t already have tickets, but I thought I’d see what other people’s experience was before recommending it.

7) If the Dublin Swift is cancelled due to bad weather, my understanding is that if you already have a ticket for it you get put on the next sailing of the Ulysses, but sometimes this is not for many hours and it will be preferable to get the next Stena sailing. If you do that and your Irish Ferries ticket starts in Dublin you can presumably get it refunded as it's unused, but if you’ve already used the rail component on one side if the Irish Sea, is there any way of getting a partial refund, or are you inevitably out of pocket for the cost of the Stena ticket? (In that case it's presumably best just to buy a ticket for the ferry and resume using your original ticket on the other side).

8) If the Swift is cancelled, does the bus from central Dublin still run to get you to the terminal to sort out things like that?

9) It appears from the fares table on the Irish Rail website that a normal single ticket from Roscommon to Dublin costs 30.95 euros. However, if you use the ticket-buying facility on the website, even a Flexible ticket for this coming Monday is only 15.99 (only marginally more than the other two ticket types), and the conditions say that you can use any train on the day of travel without changing the booking. It appears from this that you get an almost 50% discount merely by using the website rather than the booking office, with no other downsides; is that correct, or is there a catch that I’ve missed?

10) How does the Irish ban on split ticketing (quoted below) work if you already have a ticket covering part of your journey? Do you have to get it refunded and buy a new ticket? Or does the second sentence mean that you can use two tickets as long as you’re not saving money by doing so? (And if that is the case, what counts as the relevant through fare if the two tickets are of different types?)

(From the Conditions of Carriage:

"Except where specially authorised, passengers are not permitted to re-book at an intermediate station for the purpose of continuing their journey by the same train. Two or more tickets covering different portions of one journey are not available unless the fares paid for such tickets are equivalent in amount to the price of a single journey ticket between the same points. Any passenger using two or more tickets covering different portions of one journey will be liable to pay the full ordinary single fare for the journey made and he or she may be liable to prosecution."

Thankyou for any answers that you can provide.

As far as I know...

1) You can buy any Irish station to Holyhead ticket either by calling Irish Rail or buying it at Connolly. No other station in Ireland offers through ticket sales. Cork, Dun Laoghaire, Drogheda, Dundalk and Galway used to. Same in Northern Ireland, only the Translink office in Europa Bus Station offers through ticketing using the Evolvi platform.

2) Unless on an Advance ticket from Holyhead you can catch any train.

3) Stena Line's Irish website sell Railsail tickets through to the UK. https://www.stenaline.co.uk/ferries-to-britain/rail-sail

4) See 1.

5) Possibly due to postage. An Post isn't known for its speedy delivery!

6) You should have time as you need to check in anyway. When purchasing the ticket they'll check you in at the same time. Take photo ID with you.

7) Yes you'll be moved onto the cruise ferry at no cost. If you change shipping company you'll have to pay for your own ticket and won't be able to claim a refund. If Irish Rail offer a delay repay scheme then you could claim through that. Although as it's not a train service you may have to put in a complaint with Irish Ferries.

8) Yes the Dublin Bus to the port will still run.

9) Tickets on irishrail.ie are web fares and are valid on any train unless specifically stated.

10) If you have a ticket from say Enniscorthy to Manchester via Irish Ferries but you want to travel via Rosslaire Strand a ticket for the additional part of the journey will be valid and you don't need to worry about split ticketing because the portion including the ferry is a CIV ticket and not covered by those conditions.

From my experience using sail rail,

Yes you can by a through ticket from any Irish rail station to any uk station, Irish Rail only deal with Irish Ferries for some reason.
Sail Rail can be bought at a lot more stations than mentioned above, I bought some in Tralee last year. The IE website says

You can buy your SailRail ticket from the following Iarnród Éireann Irish Rail stations: Athlone, Ballina, Cork, Drogheda, Claremorris, Dublin Connolly, Dundalk, Ennis, Galway, Killarney, Limerick, Limerick Junction, Longford, Mallow, Sligo, Thurles, Tralee, Waterford or Westport. For opening times please go to our find a station section.

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Stena Line which I used last May I bought over the phone and picked up on the day.

You should have time to buy on the day also.

Regarding leaving the station in Holyhead, while waiting connection, I never did this but was wondering about it. there was no one stopping people. Any sail ticket bought in Ireland is a hand written ticket that is treated as any time any permitted ticket, although the CIV cover on the ticket says 'break of journey is authorised wihout formality within the limits of the period of validity except for saver tickets where break of journey is permitted on return leg only.'

I would like to get this point clarified by some one more knowledgeable.

Regarding the Swift just hope it doesn't get cancelled Irish Ferries wont refund you for any cancellation to Swift.

Just adding a few points in red to the earlier post that covered most of the questions.

Steddenm said:

As far as I know...

1) You can buy any Irish station to Holyhead ticket either by calling Irish Rail or buying it at Connolly. No other station in Ireland offers through ticket sales. Cork, Dun Laoghaire, Drogheda, Dundalk and Galway used to. Same in Northern Ireland, only the Translink office in Europa Bus Station offers through ticketing using the Evolvi platform.

2) Unless on an Advance ticket from Holyhead you can catch any train.

To Clarify: Tickets issued in Ireland do not carry any reservations and cannot be held to the same booked train restrictions that UK issued "Advance" tickets have. Despite this Irish tickets are referred to in publicity as "Advance" for purchasing before the date of departure with a similar discount.

The T&C state no break of journey so strictly taking the next train would be expected however there is virtually no chance a passenger on a later departure from Holyhead would be questioned.

3) Stena Line's Irish website sell Railsail tickets through to the UK. https://www.stenaline.co.uk/ferries-to-britain/rail-sail

That link is for the UK website. Stena do not sell online in Ireland, phone booking or buying at ports only.

4) See 1.

5) Possibly due to postage. An Post isn't known for its speedy delivery!

6) You should have time as you need to check in anyway. When purchasing the ticket they'll check you in at the same time. Take photo ID with you.

Passengers arriving on the connecting bus (Not the Dublin Bus 53 if it is later than the 30 min check-in time) will be able to purchase a ticket, this is not at all uncommon. It is also regular at busier times that tickets will still be sold well past the 30 min cut-off if there is a backlog.

7) Yes you'll be moved onto the cruise ferry at no cost. If you change shipping company you'll have to pay for your own ticket and won't be able to claim a refund. If Irish Rail offer a delay repay scheme then you could claim through that. Although as it's not a train service you may have to put in a complaint with Irish Ferries.

Under Irish (and UK and European) law if you pay for something and it is not provided you are entitled to a refund. I am aware that Irish Ferries try to fob off passengers when the Swift is cancelled with taking the later Ulysees sailing. If this is not acceptable to the passenger then a refund is appropriate, they may need to be pushed for this however. Expecting a passenger to effectively bin an unused ticket with no refund and buy again with another provider is not right.

8) Yes the Dublin Bus to the port will still run.

Dublin Bus run the city route 53 that serves the ferry terminal, this has no connection to the ferry services and runs as per it's timetable http://www.dublinbus.ie/en/Your-Journey1/Timetables/All-Timetables/53/

The connecting bus service is run on behalf of both ferry operators by Mortons Coaches. If the morning Swift passengers are accommodated on the Ulysees sailing which has the same connecting bus. If the afternoon Swift is cancelled I don't know if the bus runs to the Irish Ferries terminal, unless Steddnm can confirm otherwise through personal experience I would suspect it does not run

When the Irish Ferries bus was run by Dublin Bus up to 2016, in the event of the Swift being cancelled IF also cancelled the bus so it did NOT run, that I can say for a fact.

As IF will not accommodate foot passengers on Epsilon sailings, the 14.50 Stena sailing is clearly the best option for the 14.15 Swift if it is cancelled. That IF do not automatically transfer these passengers is bad enough but that they do nothing at all to help their stranded passengers use this alternative is indicative of their poor attitude to customer service in general.

My advice for anyone wanting to use the 14.15 Swift is to keep a close watch on the IF sailing update page (as well as the weather forecast) and at the first sign of trouble make sure to leave enough time to get to the port to refund your IF ticket and get to the Stena terminal for the 14.50.


9) Tickets on irishrail.ie are web fares and are valid on any train unless specifically stated.

10) If you have a ticket from say Enniscorthy to Manchester via Irish Ferries but you want to travel via Rosslaire Strand a ticket for the additional part of the journey will be valid and you don't need to worry about split ticketing because the portion including the ferry is a CIV ticket and not covered by those conditions.

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