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Your preferred railway seat type

Preference

  • Hard seats, e.g. Grammer IC3000 (GWR HST), Grammer E3000 (Desiro), ironing board etc

    Votes: 58 36.7%
  • Bouncy sprung seats, e.g. Mk1 stock, IC70 etc

    Votes: 100 63.3%

  • Total voters
    158
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TT-ONR-NRN

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You could also lift up one of the cushions and angle it against the arm rest to act as a pillow when doing an overnight - that's if you had a double seat to yourself.

If my seat cushion lifts up I move! It makes me feel like I’m sitting on a broken seat. The seats always did that on the unrefurbished ex-Southern 456s on services between Guildford and Aldershot! Drove me mad.
 
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DanNCL

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The Richmond seats that the Heaton based 156s have do exactly the same thing, as do the seats on the Tyne & Wear Metro trains. It's really annoying
 

Class465fan

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12 Jun 2016
Messages
262
Location
abbey wood
I assume you mean those with 2x2 seating, armrests and full tables as opposed to 3x2 seating, no armrests and half tables?
I do wonder why the middle coaches have the cramped 3x2 seating arrangement instead of the nice, spaced out 2x2 seating the front-end coach have?
 

AM9

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Because it gives those who don't board at the services' origin a chance of an (albeit cramped) seat.
 

43096

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I do wonder why the middle coaches have the cramped 3x2 seating arrangement instead of the nice, spaced out 2x2 seating the front-end coach have?
Because the old South Central division slam door fleet was a mix of BIG/CIG and VEP types i.e. some 2+2 sets and some 2+3 sets. Mixing within sets is more flexible as a single train type can replace the old whilst maintaining seating capacity. It’s actually quite a good solution, albeit not consistently implemented.
 

dcsprior

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795
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Edinburgh (Fri-Mon) & London (Tue-Thu)
I don’t like either! I like the Mallard seats in Standard, and the GWR HST and once again Mallard seats in First.

I also liked the East Coast first class seats, until Virgin recovered them and added something that looks like a headrest, but is far too far down, so I feel it as a lump at the top of my back (I'm not very tall, so that's not why).

Also, the recline mechanism is often broken, meaning the only way you can not have it reclined is to use the back of your legs to keep it upright - hardly comfortable. This problem has been around for at least the last 5.5 years, but was not fixed by the refurb which recovered them.

Still miles better than the weird half-height seats on the odd-one-out EC train.
 

TT-ONR-NRN

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I also liked the East Coast first class seats, until Virgin recovered them and added something that looks like a headrest, but is far too far down, so I feel it as a lump at the top of my back (I'm not very tall, so that's not why).

I don’t like that either!
 
Joined
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Messages
135
Am surprised no one has put this yet, so I will with tongue very firmly in cheek say..... an empty one that I can then use to sit on regardless of how hard or soft / sprung or firm / window lined up it is.....

Paul
 

xotGD

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Am surprised no one has put this yet, so I will with tongue very firmly in cheek say..... an empty one that I can then use to sit on regardless of how hard or soft / sprung or firm / window lined up it is.....

Paul
Does that include the centre seat of a 3 when there are two prop forwards occupying the window and aisle seats?
 
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Indeed, if someone wants to complain about a lack of seats then they also need to take a seat that is empty, including the scenario above. I'm not small by any stretch and will plonk myself in such a seat if it is empty.

Paul
 

yorksrob

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6 Aug 2009
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38,818
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Yorks
Indeed, if someone wants to complain about a lack of seats then they also need to take a seat that is empty, including the scenario above. I'm not small by any stretch and will plonk myself in such a seat if it is empty.

Paul

The thing is, on a traditional suburban unit, you never knew when two prop forwards might turn up and decide to take the seats either side of you.

Today, you are stuck with a harder seat, or a greater likelihood of having to stand, regardless of whether the said prop forwards turn up.
 

TT-ONR-NRN

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The 159 seats remain far and away the best Standard class seats in Surrey and Hampshire in my opinion.

Followed by 171 seats.
 

class387

Established Member
Joined
9 Oct 2015
Messages
1,525
The 159 seats remain far and away the best Standard class seats in Surrey and Hampshire in my opinion.
The refurbished ones aren't great though, the posture is wrong and the cushion is now too hard.
 

Clip

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28 Jun 2010
Messages
10,822
Much prefer the harder higher seats cos I'm a geet tall fat bloke
 

Rail Blues

Member
Joined
2 Aug 2016
Messages
608
I am 'blessed' with little legs and narrow shoulders and am a colossal 5 ft 8 in (on a good day) so find most seats are comfortable bar those fitted on the MK4s where the edge of the cushion digs into the back of my thighs.
 

cambsy

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6 Oct 2011
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896
My favourite seat at the moment is the Leather seats in first class on VTEC, really comfortable and look cool too, most seats are fine by me, prefer reasonable high backed seats, feel more support and can rest back on them, The seats on the VTEC EMT set in first class are not good, feel too low down on the back, don’t have problem with iron board seats as well padded in that department.
 

xotGD

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6,063
Yesterday and today I have compared & contrasted the seats on a 333 and a Northern 150.

While the width of the two is about the same, it is the curved shape and hardness of the 333 seats that are the biggest sources of discomfort when the train is not wedged. In both cases, I need more than my allocated width to be comfortable, but this is only a problem on peak services - sitting in the '3' when only the window and aisle are taken is the best bet to get extra width to sit in.

So if Northern are planning on taking the existing seats out of their 150s, can they put them into the 333s instead?
 

yorksrob

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38,818
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Yorks
Oh great. Seriously, it’s like these companies go out of the way to reduce comfort as much as possible!

I agree. Heaven forfend that they might actually do something to increase passenger comfort, like install tables or USB sockets. No just sling in crap seats (after first having meticulously recorded the opinion of the travelling public on seating styles and ignored it).

What an age we live in.
 

lincolnshire

Member
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12 Jun 2011
Messages
884
Most crap seat Virgin East Coast standard class seats, must have been designed by the same man that designed the seats for Little Chef establishments, they was designed that after 45 mins they would be uncomfortable to sit on any longer so there by getting you out for more customers to sit down and stop business people holding meetings at tables with just buying a couple of coffee,s in the time they occupied the table.
East Coast seats need the front edge higher to make your bottom lower and than your knees to sink into the rear of the seat and not keep feeling like your slipping forwards off it. It would have also been handy if the window side arm rest would have lifted like on 156.s as this would have allowed you to move about a bit to find a more comfortable position instead of the arm rest sticking in your side.
Best seats Hull Trains / Grand Central, East Midlands trains HST sets including the odd East Coast ones and even pacer and sprinter seats as the seat angles are better fro comfort.
Bring back the old MK1 compartment seats, proper sprung horse hair stuffed seats which may only had a new covering just about in there life of been sat upon. That was in the day when seats was seats with some comfort and spring in them.
 
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