On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 21:40:02 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

The vestibules are quite large! Partly because of the need to
accommodate the stairs, but they are impressively big.

And what that means is that, together with the fact that you can't
have double-decker accommodation over the bogies and at the vehicle
ends, the capacity of a double-decker set of a given length tends to
be about 1.5 times that of a similarly-appointed single-decker set of
the same length, not double as some seem to think.

Given that the UK tends to use 2+3 seating, which the Netherlands and
Germany tend not to, that means that (because of the limited width on
the top deck meaning 2+3 would be impractical) it's nearer about 1.2
of the seated capacity of a typical British commuter train - and
probably about the same crush-loaded, as the low ceiling tends to mean
standing on the top deck isn't practical unless you're a midget.

That's not exactly efficient use of money, given what would need to be
spent to introduce proper DDs.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
To e-mail use neil at the above domain