Tickets for trains from Cork to Dublin this morning and the return journeys this evening for fans attending the hurling and rugby events have been sold out.
Iarnród Éireann warned that because demand was expected to exceed supply over this weekend all passengers from the Cork and Kerry region would be required to have a control card as well as a ticket.
On Wednesday, the rail company set up a new telephone ticket line to sell seats to GAA fans for the special train from Cork, Mallow and Charleville to Dublin Connolly station today for the Cork/Wexford All-Ireland Hurling semi-final replay in Croke Park.
Mr Andrew Roche, Iarnród Éireann's business development manager for Cork and Kerry, said the tickets went on sale on Wednesday at 6 p.m. and tickets for all 500 seats were sold in 50 minutes.
The decision to institute a call centre was made to avoid similar scenes to those at Kent station in Cork when hundreds of people queued for tickets for the Cork/Wexford semi-final last weekend.
Mr Roche said yesterday that all tickets for trains this morning going to Dublin were sold out.
The trains returning from Dublin to Cork tonight were also fully booked.
The demand is due to the combination of two events in Dublin: the semi-final replay and also the Ireland v Wales rugby international game in Lansdowne Road, he said.
There are some tickets left on the afternoon trains to Dublin but it is expected that fans travelling to the Tipperary v Kilkenny All-Ireland Hurling semi-final on Sunday in Croke Park will take up these.
There are also a few tickets left for tomorrow morning from Dublin to Cork, he said.
Control cards and rail tickets for any remaining seats will be issued on a first-come first-served basis. Cards were being sold in the usual way.
Mr Roche said the problems arose because extra trains, which would have been available previously when several events coincided, had now been added to the regular timetable.
With the increase in passenger numbers - 47 per cent since 1993 - special trains were no longer available.
Such growth in demand had not been met with an increase in rolling stock. Consequently the company could not respond to peak demand for major events, he said.