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Third seats and standing room on commuter rail carriages
On 6 July, 14:21, wrote:
In article , (Paul Oter) wrote: On 5 July, 21:57, wrote: In article , One of the things I've noticed when travelling on Southern or South West Trains in the commuter belt is that their carriages generally don't have any sets of three seats on one side of the aisle. By contrast the local National Express London to Shenfield service has the old layout with one side having three seats except for immediately adjacent to the vestibles or doors. London Overground services have a mix with some third seats removed, and also has some side-ways seating that creates more standing room. A consequence on the National Express services is that the trains get horrendously overcrowded, not least because it's hard to move down the carriages quickly and so passengers instead crowd in the vestible areas. Consequently these are often rampacked, with people physically forcing their way in at Stratford, whilst not every seat is used. This has led to more than one incident and I fear it won't be long before someone's badly hurt or worse. An obvious simple solution would be to remove the third seats in the carriages, thus creating wider aisles that allow more standing room and also make it easier to get out of the train in time. This could reduce some of the sardine effect, and very few more passengers would have to stand as it's rare for every seat to be taken even when there is a scrum. How do the other commuter carriages handle this? The refurbishment of the class 317/2s to create class 317/6 changed nearly all the seating from 3+2 to 2+2. I think the only exception was around the pantograph down feeds. That's not my experience of travelling between Cambridge and Liverpool St in recent months. Although the 317/2s have been refurbished over the past couple of years (new seat covers and carpet, internal painting, garish pink colour scheme, removal of sliding doors around first class section) they're still 3+2 in standard. Even the ones branded as Stansted Express. None of the units branded as Stansted Express or in the new National Express livery is a class 317/6. They are either in "One" blue or the strange WAGN cream and red and brown and black (or whatever) colour scheme. The 317/2 to 317/6 refurbishment was completed in WAGN days. Agreed. I misunderstood the point you were making. My point is that when the remaining 317/2s were refurbished to 317/5 by National Express two or three years ago, they chose to keep the existing 2+3 layout rather than repeat WAGN's decision several years earlier to convert them to 2+2 317/6's. So, as on the OP's Shenfield line, NXEA clearly prefer 2+3 seating over 2+2 - even on these outer suburban units which regularly go to King's Lynn.. PaulO |
Third seats and standing room on commuter rail carriages
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Third seats and standing room on commuter rail carriages
John B wrote:
On Jul 6, 12:36 am, "Tim Roll-Pickering" T.C.Roll- wrote: Paul Scott wrote: Merseyrail are the only regional TOC to have done anything similar, but I'm not sure you are right about Southern, I think all their inner suburban 455s are all still 2+3. What definition of "inner suburban" do you mean though? I *think* I've seen 2+2 on some trains to both Epsom and Epsom Downs and location wise they're analagous to Shenfield, but I may be mistaken. All their 455s are 2+3. It's possible that SN has run the occasional Electrostar on Epsom trains. 455s and 456s are 3+2. 377s do run to Epsom and Epsom Downs, and have a mix of 2+2 and 3+2 seats within units - there are countless variations of 377 carriage layout. IMHO 3+2 doesn't work, as the middle seats are only of use for midgets or children, and the aisles are too narrow. -- Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK |
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