In the Winter 2013-14 GB Rail timetable, there was an 0700 Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston service operated by Virgin Trains which called (pick up only) at Stockport at 0707 and then ran fast to London Euston (arriving 0900). Not sure when this was discontinued.
Every other hour there is a train along the same core route which does have end doors and a buffet - in fact it has a full restaurant car service for 1st class passengers.
Presumably such trains ran in steam days. After all there were non-stop trains between Kings Cross and Edinburgh back then.
Talgo have such a product already, and it goes faster than 140mph.
Key being Cardiff to Manchester has the Mk4 vanity project when the trains work. I do not think there has been a day yet when the train has run every 2 hours though, the diagram that starts with 1W13 05:32 Swansea to Manchester, then 10:30 Manchester to Cardiff is not even "booked" Mk4 yet which puts a 4 hour gap in the middle of the day, and in the evening peak, from Manchester (10:30 and 18:30 from Manchester are DMU as a result). I was being deliberate when quoting the full route rather than the reduced mess TfW introduced and still cannot get right.
I think, given the commuter centric traffic from places like Haywards Heath (just look at the per capita journey count!) that it would not be too bad at all for the passengers. When they are making the same journey dozens or hundreds of times a year they will become confident enough to optimise their journey just as they do now.
Buses generally travel at slower speeds than trains. How would you handle higher speed trains where aerodynamically a pointy nose is needed? There are also compromises in driving visibility and comfort for trains with gangway connections compared to those with a cab across the full width.
I must confess I was thinking more of the joins between carriages within units for the through walking between carriages. So if you had a 5 car 80x equivalent then it would be possible to get from the front seat to the back without needing to navigate any steps or sections too narrow for a wheelchair.
That would be good exercise.....get your steps in!
That would be good exercise.....get your steps in!
Even on trains intended for sub-urban and local services (which is what 380s do)? I'm pretty certain plenty of DMUs and EMUs back in the day didn't have two toilets per carriage!
Back in the day, most suburban emus were completely non-corridor compartmentalised (e.g. the class 505 used on the MSJ&A line) or at best gangwayed non-corridor (some of those used on the South London lines, when I was a student in London in the 1970s), so there were no toilets at all. The "bubble" cars (class 121 diesel railcars) used on the Coryton branch in the mid 1980s (before the introduction of class 150 dmu sprinters) also had no toilet.
The trams now used on the MSJ&A line don't have toilets.
The issue with saying none is that the stock then ends up on longer distances and people say "would you prefer a train with no toilets or no train?", see TfW and the inability to keep the two on loan Northern 150s away from services to Manchester from South Wales.
The 720s have ceiling displays that show you where the toilets are and if they are occupied.
That last sentence is an utter joke. Southern were notorious for prolonged production and operation of obsolescent if not downright obsolete old junk. For example the EPB had been surpassed by EMUs with LMS and LNER with, shock horror, sliding doors and other modern features in the late 30s. Despite that they carried on producing the same old slamdoor rubbish into the late 50s. Worse still the cause of "standardisation" meant that variants were inflicted countrywide
Love it, lol.Yes, and we've all been stood around on cold wet platforms waiting for someone to open those b****y sliding doors
On a more serious note, it was the Southern that developed long, comfortable, regular interval services whilst the rest of the country had to put up with ramshackle timetables of odd loco hauled and DMU's.
Couldn't agree more.
