InTheEastMids
Member
- Joined
- 31 Jan 2016
- Messages
- 736
Disagree. Where the new grey seat covers have appeared, the seat cushion has also been replaced and we are back to 2008 comfort.not a single 222 seat cushion in stad class made acceptably comfortable
It's not the full update the trains still really need, but is addressing the most noticeable issue and does make them feel a bit less third world.
The number of seats per train does tell you something about ability to reduce overcrowding on specific services, but they had 5 standard class coaches so would expect something like 380-400 seats vsI can't easily figure out how many seats were on the HST fleet
2 x 810s (508 standard seats
But that also doesn't tell you about utilisation, which impacts the total capability of the TOC to move people from one place to another. EMT had a mish-mash of different length 222s and HSTs that I recall made utilisation inefficient. Plus a lot HST services I remember catching from St Pancras often emptied out significantly by Kettering. A lot of offpeak services were very empty.
[although I'm mostly on Nottingham trains, and accept that things may be different on Sheffields]
Main concerns about 810s are based on
- disappointing reliability/availability of similar GWR/LNER trains (based on reports on this Forum)
- specific trains (potentially offpeak/weekends) which will be 5 cars when they really need to be 10 - e.g. saturday mid-morning trains to London seem very busy
- whether they'll be a step backwards from the 222s in terms of ride quality (I wasn't wowed by GWR's or Scotrail's Hitachi trains)