On one of the busiest weekends of the year for events in Dublin, including a hurling semi-final, the Dublin Horse Show and a Robbie Williams concert, trains are expected to be full to capacity, and many intending rail travellers may be unable to get tickets.
At Kent Station in Cork city early yesterday people queued for tickets for the special trains to Dublin for the Cork/Wexford semi-final in Croke Park on Sunday.
However, hundreds of people in the queue were told that tickets were sold out, and went away disappointed.
As the major events coincide, culminating in demand far exceeding supply, Iarnród Éireann is operating a control system which limits the numbers of people on trains to prevent over-crowding. All trains are expected to be booked, with no spare seats.
However, the company says that even with special trains laid on for events, in the absence of additional rolling stock nothing can be done to accommodate the growing number of passengers.
Mr Barry Kenny, an Iarnród Éireann spokesman, said that control sales - where passengers needed a ticket and a control card - were being operated on most mainline services this weekend. Tickets on all lines, including the special trains for the Robbie Williams concert on Saturday, were selling out rapidly.
"Some of the tickets on certain routes are sold out already, and we expect the others to sell quickly. The trains will be full to capacity. People should always book in advance."
Mr Andrew Roche, business development manager at Iarnród Éireann for Cork and Kerry, said there were three major events so the scheduled trains from Cork to Dublin were full.
"The key issue is that basically on the inter-city services there were 7.8 million passengers in 1994, which increased to 11.4 million in 2002 with no increase in the number of carriages."
Explaining events at the Cork station yesterday, he said the company put on sale tickets for three special trains for the hurling semi-final and advertised them. It had been done this way for years.
Tickets went on sale at 9 a.m., but people started arriving when the station opened for the first train at 5.15 a.m.
"The queue was much larger that we expected. At 7 a.m. we started walking down the queue and explained that there were only three trains and seats were allocated. Normally we limit the tickets to four each person. Maybe in future we will have to limit them to two tickets per person. A lot of people were disappointed."
The company continually made announcements that there were only so many tickets left.
Mr Roche denied there were angry scenes. He said although people were disappointed there was no rudeness or ugly scenes.They always advised the Garda of an event like that. Three gardaí turned up so people got the impression gardaí were called.
"A few years ago, we had extra trains on our timetables for special events but these trains have now been incorporated into the scheduled timetable. The downside is that when major events happen we are unable to respond."
He said Iarnród Éireann was working on new ticketing and seat reservation systems and on-line bookings. These should be introduced next year. The company had ordered 67 new carriages for the inter-city Cork/Dublin line, which would take three years.